This is something that we don’t talk about enough. No, sir. And it’s truly a shame.
I think something has been lost in the way our current culture is addressing community. You read about bits and pieces of it in the news—kids spending too much time on their devices, video game enthusiasts dying because they literally didn’t take a bathroom break, even troubled people who commit acts of violence who had few or no friends, other than an online group or groups they associated with. Don’t even get me started on the people who are radicalized to various kinds of hateful beliefs through social media.
I could spend a lot of time quoting the research backing these statements up, but let’s just leave this Sunday Post with one: a RAND Corporation study from 2021 found that loneliness is a major factor in people adopting extremist views, and is a primary reason members join extremist groups in the first place.
So loneliness opens the heart up. The ideology takes root in the gap.
What people, and men in particular, are missing today is a lack of brotherhood. A lack of a common group where you are accepted and valued for being yourself. As the old sitcom used to say, “where everyone knows your name.”
In my world, a fourteen-year-old boy lost his parents, his siblings, and all of his extended family to a plague that devasted Granblue. Rather than meekly accept what cards fate had dealt him, he got up and did something about it. He found someone else who had lost his family, and said something to the effect of, “Would you be my brother?”
The surprised youth thought about it, and said yes.
Rinse. Repeat. By the time the first youth, a boy named Elias Ward, had turned eighteen, he had assembled a group of like-minded teenagers who had three things in common: they were all in the Granblue army. Second, they were all pretty darned good at martial skills, because when they weren’t busy with their normal duties, they spent their free time with each other, constantly honing their skills. And most importantly, they considered themselves a family, under Elias’ leadership. A family that came to be known as the Forty. And Granblue has never been the same.
If you ever watch the movie Gangs of New York, you’ll get some additional insight into this dynamic. Other stories speak to the same kind of bonds: West Side Story, or even Henry IV. We are hungry, even desperate to be seen. It’s fundamental to what makes us human. And we will gladly follow anyone who will fulfill that basic human need.
That quality makes us stronger together than apart. In the wrong hands, it is a recipe for disaster. In the right hands, however, we can become a force to be reckoned with.
In my life, a fourteen-year-old took the risk and asked another to be his friend. In your life, is there someone you could reach out to and do the same? You might not be preventing the next 9/11, but you’d be doing the decent, human thing.
And at the end of the day, that’s what truly matters, isn’t it?