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Comment by bmj | Hacker News Reader

I just turned 50. About 30 people showed up for the party my wife threw for me, and those were exactly the people I wanted to be there. I'm guessing my definition of "party" may be different from yours, but in the last two months, the community we've embedded ourselves in (via our church) has gotten together for my birthday, the darkest night of the year, and New Year's eve. These aren't raucous affairs, but rather 20-30 people getting together to eat good food, drink good wine, and enjoy each other's company.

In the darkest days of the pandemic, this same group got together outside nearly weekly, weather-be-damned.

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> the community we've embedded ourselves in (via our church)

I think you've hit on something important here. Without getting into the merits of religious belief, the rapid increase in loneliness seems to be strongly correlated with the rapid decrease in religiosity. There just aren't any institutions prepared to replace church communities.

For my part, I get more than enough socialization through my church community: I actively turn down opportunities to socialize because I'm saturated already.

I've got a theory that religion is the convergence of community, morality, spirituality, and mysticism.

In a move to reject the mysticism we're throwing the baby out with the bathwather.

I think the new religions are gyms, fitness classes, sports, volunteering, book clubs, etc. My wife made friends at such places.

But it also depends on a person. I have never made a real friend at a gym or fitness class. I haven't done anything else like join sports team or book club. I also used to go to religious building (mosque) but never made new friends there. So don't think you really need religion for community building.

All those examples you mentioned while you may find some good friends, they cannot entirely replace the purpose of a religious community. Religion and spirituality are far more than a social club or hobbyist group. Maybe you did not make friends at a mosque for some ever reason, but it is more than just a place for friendship. Religious buildings serve communities, promote unity, educate children, and it is all based on belief and practicing these beliefs. True brotherhood in faith far outweighs most any other type of relationship between people.

What you've got there is legacy wealth and power, obtained by violence no less, using it's wealth and power to build local indoctrination centres that help sustain the legacy. If that wealth and power built MtG play centres or I dunno milk shake shacks, you'd now be lamenting the value that chilling milk has on communities.

Edit: this sounds way more antagonistic than I wanted. I was aiming for cheeky. Happy Friday, fellow beneficiaries of historical violence!

We place so much emphasis on what we believe as a prerequisite for belonging to a religious community. Maybe its enough just to be hopeful those beliefs are true and suspend our doubts for a little while.

Undoubtedly the secularization of society has something to do with this, but even that may be part of a slowly evolving trend toward dissolution of civic organizations more broadly. The “Bowling Alone” idea.

I’m involved in a music festival held annually in our city in Canada. It’s organized by the Kiwanis club. But looking at the volunteers who are all septuagenarians and octogenarians, I wonder how long this can last. As far as I can tell, there is zero recruitment of younger adults.

I think we have a built-in need to observe, compare and compete with each other for status. Social events once supplied the forum for that to happen in a convivial setting. Now it’s happening 24/7 in social media and every other online channel. The need is being met elsewhere.

More generally, I think that finding a local community group with a common interest is key here to generating social connections. The common interest is not everything but it is the spark to try and start those connections.

Conversely, I have found it very hard to just establish connection to my local community (i.e. my neighbors) without any sort of central interest. The few of us who are close friends have tried to reach out and create more of a community and have hosted block parties and BBQ's in our neighborhood. But everyone else is still just "my neighbor" to me and not "my friend".

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