I recently joined Facebook, the online “social network,” and set up a personal page.  On Facebook, only those you allow to be your “friend” are able to see your profile.  I have enjoyed playing with this new toy, looking for people I have known and never or rarely see, or with whom I have limited opportunities to communicate.  I already have connected with several, including a high school buddy I lost track of when we graduated and went separate ways 36 years ago!

Behind sites like Facebook, I think, is the reality that many people are lacking a sense of positive relationship with others, individually and in community, and there is a genuine need for that.  

Dick Meyer, author of Why We Hate Us:  American Discontent in the New Millenium, observes, “The social scientists who study human happiness have found quite clearly that as Americans have grown more prosperous, well-fed and sheltered, healthier and long-lived, they have not grown happier.  That, to me, is the great puzzle of our times.  But one part of the puzzle is also clear:  the greatest variable in happiness is the quantity of human relationships.  Here, more is better.”

Meyer suggests that as we make the many choices available to us:  where to go to school, where to live, how to pursue our vocations,  even what our bodies will look like (cosmetic surgery is very popular), we end up losing connection to a community in which to be grounded and in which to build meaningful relationships with others.

Meyer is one of those non-religious folks who seem obsessed with religion, and he maintains that our society’s easy mobility, and our narcissistic approach to most aspects of our lives, including faith, contributes to the decline of organized religion and its institutions:  The communal benefits of churches, synagogues, mosques, etc. have eroded significantly, and people are feeling the effects in terms of happiness and emotional well-being.

He may have a point.  Many people have no denominational identity or loyalty, and look for a church that reinforces their personal opinions; some congregations claim to want to attract new people – new “members” – but when it comes to inclusion of these folks, they do very poorly, recycling longer-term members in leadership roles; a consumer-oriented mindset regarding churches is becoming the norm.  Community is difficult to build under these conditions.

So, failing that, and other efforts at community, people look elsewhere.  The need for human connection and relationship is deeply-felt, but sometimes it seems more and more remote.