Ours is a culture that tries to convince us we don’t need each other. Gen Z is a product of this culture, a generation that lives and interacts in a world of pixels and filters. As authors from Abigail Shrier to Jonathan Haidt to Jean Twenge have pointed out, despite their unprecedented connectedness online, our emerging generation is made up of increasingly isolated, disconnected, romantically unengaged adolescents.
But I don’t intend to pick on Gen Z: even among my own generation, I’ve noticed an unbundling of the communities that were so pivotal to my life just a few decades ago. Traditional institutions, once the avenue for meaningful relationships based on proximity and common interest, are crumbling. Churches are one obvious example, but there’s also no denying that the very nature of suburban community life is changing. We all have our own agendas, our own increasingly long to-do lists, and they virtually never involve taking the time to get to know the people we regularly see in the course of our day-to-day routines. No one, it seems, has time to engage in the real, flesh-and-blood world when the demands foisted on us by our (tech-driven) work, schooling, and other obligations take over.
I think another way to say this is: we live in our heads, not our bodies. There are numerous ways that we increasingly strive to defy the natural limits our embodiedness imposes on us, and our pulling away from community and connectedness is just one example. In this kind of world, it’s easy to forget that our physical bodies, and all the limits and inconveniences they impose on us (or others!), matter a great deal. So it’s no mistake that our August essays seemed to touch on that theme.
See, for example, Anne Marie Williams’s discussion of the increasingly popular fertility awareness-based methods of family planning that focus on helping a woman understand her cycles instead of aiming to suppress them. Then, Nathan Berkeley reflects on the Michigan ban on conversion therapy, a measure that is antithetical to the religious convictions of many doctors who rightly feel qualms about performing so-called “gender-affirming” surgeries, particularly on minors. Margaret Brady analyzes the burgeoning phenomenon of app-based dating and how it can lead us to misunderstand the very purpose of cultivating authentic romance. And R. J. Snell shares a view of human sexuality, when fitted with the proper guardrails, as conducive to human flourishing.
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Sign up and get our daily essays sent straight to your inbox.Other Noteworthy Pieces from Last Month
- “The Pronatalism of Silicon Valley,” Emma Waters
- “What’s Next for Venezuela? A Q&A with Angel Alvarado,” Matthew X. Wilson
- “They’re Our Parties and I’ll Cry If I Want To,” Matthew J. Franck
- “Make the Pro-Life Movement Great Again,” Brian S. Brown
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From the Archives
Our pages are replete with essays reflecting on why our embodiedness matters. See here for Richard Weikart’s reflections on the new eugenics of transhumanism, or here for Abigail Favale on a feminism embedded in a holistic understanding of human nature.
What We’re Reading around the Web
- Elayne Allen, “‘What Are Children For?’ Can’t Remain a Question Forever,” The Dispatch
- Joshua Blustein, “Ghetto Inflation: An Interactive Timeline,” Tablet
- James M. Patterson, “What Is Postliberalism?” The Dispatch
- Lee Oser, “Inklings on the Move,” Law and Liberty
Until next time, thanks for reading PD.
Image by Syda Productions and licensed via Adobe Stock.
