Comments on material conditions, expectations, and community
The following is an excerpt from a private exchange that I sharing with permission from my correspondent. The quoted/indented parts belong to my correspondent.
The topics relate to two recent publications of mine and there are references herein, which assume knowledge of these texts:
- The lie of socialist feminism (2026-09-05).
- On managing curiosity (2026-09-05).
First of all, I see in my milieu that the feminist ideology has indeed made us more individualists. But another powerful reason for the young (and not so young) people to not have a family is simply because here in Spain we can’t even afford to have a house (I know it’s the same in your country, hence your Hut). And because the prevalent ideology, the few people that can afford a house are thinking that they don’t want to do more sacrifices, so they just prefer to not have kids and have more money to themselves.
The material realities are there and I am well aware of the numerous difficulties. My background is of poverty, which was made hard by successive financial downturns. Though I also suspect that those are a convenient excuse to not review our modern day expectations.
I can live at the hut because I have accepted the frugal life. I do not go on vacation, for example. I do not visit fancy places and dine at posh restaurants. I do not own a luxury car. I have no chance of competing with anyone on that front. But I do not feel the need to do so, because I did the demanding work of changing my expectations: I do not play that game.
I realise that I can live with less and accept this fate. In paying attention to my environment, I also learn how less is more. I find beauty in nature, which fulfils me. I also have emotional stability and regularity in my everyday life, which allows me to be incredibly creative and productive. There are no distractions because there is not much competing for my attention, not much which I have a desire to acquire as an impulse buy.
The hut is a house, though it also is the symbol of a lifestyle as well as the possibility of a new beginning; a beginning that has immense potential of meaningfulness. The Syrian refugees in my vicinity are the same in this regard: they make more with less, despite their own harsh fate.
Maybe we as a Western culture got used to the bonanza we had before and are now made inflexible. We yearn for the cornucopia of the American dream. Our mind is set on the life of the Disney royalty. We do not wish to adapt to the new realities and choose instead to believe that we have no options whatsoever.
I am the kind of person who likes to make things happen. If the world is too rigid, then something must break. I will not die without trying. And I will fight to the best of my abilities. Sometimes the rigidity is in our own head and sometimes it is in the institutions that frame us.
Whatever the case, we have to identify its source and then figure out how to change it. This we do by being proactive and thoroughgoing. We do it by finding the essentials that we can live with and/or by trying to connect with others in order to rebuild networks of solidarity that every member can benefit from.
I also observe that the few people that decide to have a family coincidentally are the ones that have more rooted Christian values. I think that in this regard religion helps towards the building of the extended family. Maybe that’s why there are other ethnic groups here in Spain growing even more than the native population, which is typically less religious (something akin to the Syrian Muslim people you mention).
It is not a coincidence because religiosity gives you a framework that is not about maximising material possessions. Compare that to the prevailing secular cult of money, which measures your worth in terms of how much you have of everything you can purchase.
The root, though, is the local community, not Christian values per se. Our societies are nominally Christian throughout. Go to every corner of Cyprus, for example, and you will find a church, a monastery, a priest, a monk, and crowds with hundreds of people ready to partake in some event. This, however, they do while living the big city life, which is a daily experience of individualism or of atomic families in a sea of strangers.
I am writing this on a Sunday morning. There will be a liturgy at the closest church soon. I have been there several times and used to visit other such places in the hope of finding simplicity of spirit. Outside the church, there is a parade of opulence.
The most expensive cars carry people with the fanciest of clothes. They all gather to speak about the paradigm of Jesus, which is frugality and the ethos of not keeping to oneself. They will praise the lord while inside the church. Then they will leave to continue with their want for overabundance, with all that entails about their one true god, which is money.
I sound cynical, I know. “Cynical” is another way to tell me “I acknowledge this is descriptive, but I still do not like the reality you are pointing towards”.
My view, in short, is that “values” is not an abstraction. It has to be embedded in everyday conduct. Otherwise it is tokenistic.
So those who practice the values, they have the community as a result. You cannot buy a community. It is built over time and is a multigenerational phenomenon. Those who embrace the ethos of sharing and of giving away are contributing to the collective they are members of and are doing their part for there to be a common good beyond their own private interest.
Which leads me to the article about curiosity. To become successful, you need a goal. If you want to be happy with who you are, you need to set a clear objective. Maybe this is the key that religions have, they lead the people towards an objective and thus make their lives fulfilled. With curiosity is the same, if you laser-direct it as you explain in your article you can feel accomplished.
Yes, I think religion has that immense potential. It is why religious communities endure through the centuries. Whereas the various ideology clubs come and go, as do those trends which are based on fashion.
I do, nonetheless, think that religion has this effect only when it is expressed through a community that has intergenerational solidarity. The grandmother teaches the grandchildren her values, while also raising them in a spirit of love. Upbringing and acculturation happen simultaneously. The kids will grow in a stable household. They have fond memories of what they lived through, so they eventually become tutelary figures to their own grandchildren. This is social reproduction and this is when religion is done right.
The cycle is broken as soon as the grandmother is not around the grandchildren. The extended family is reduced to the atomic family, which inevitably becomes the single parent and ultimately the singular person who is strictly individualistic. Even if this person is keen on spirituality, they cannot go anywhere with it while remaining confined to the logic of individualism. Either they will submit to the needs of the collective, which leads to communities, or they will have their own private god, which is an alias for their ego.
Religion cannot have this effect of enduring the test of time when it is reduced to a private affair of spirituality, of one’s relationship with god. Nor can it have it when the church is yet another venue for materialist competition. This kind of spirituality dies with the individual.
This is where we are now in much of the Western world. God is your talking buddy because you have no friends. You seek to learn more about the precepts of your tradition because what you really want is the community that vivified that culture. The tradition itself does not have a life without the people that make it. It comes to life when it is enacted as daily experience.
By reading the corpora we deepen our understanding of the various topics. Though we do not build communities this way alone. We have to actively seek people and we must work to bring them close together. This is what I am working on right now, though it is a big project that will take a long time to be realised. It is especially challenging since I must contend with people’s expectations, as I noted above.
There is a high chance that I will fail, but as I already mentioned, I am not the kind of person who gives up without trying in earnest: I will do my best and see what happens.