But isn't it a private matter?

Not only were things invested with significance in the premodem imaginary, but the social bond itself was enchanted, sacred. “Living in the enchanted, porous world of our ancestors was inherently living socially” (p. 42). The good of a common weal is a collective good, dependent upon the social rituals of the community. “So we’re all in this together.” As a result, a premium is placed on consensus, and “turning ‘heretic’ ” is “not just a personal matter.” That is, there is no room for these matters to be ones of “private” preference. “This is something we constantly tend to forget,” Taylor notes, “when we look back condescendingly on the intolerance of earlier ages. As long as the common weal is bound up in collectives rites, devotions, allegiances, it couldn’t be seen just as an individual’s own business that he break ranks, even less that he blaspheme or try to desecrate the rite. There was immense common motivation to bring him back into line” (p. 42). Individual disbelief is not a private option we can grant to heretics to pursue on weekends; to the contrary, disbelief has communal repercuss—James K. A. Smith, How (Not) to Be Secular, 30 (emphasis original)

<idle musing>
Are they wrong? (Honest question.)

Over the weekend I was reading a book published in 2006, and they were decrying the loneliness epidemic in the United States. Mind you, this is before the ascendence of social media and the plague we call smart phones!

I'm not saying I want to go back to the days before all that (and Smith/Taylor assure us that such a thing is impossible), but a bit less individualism (like maybe 90 percent less!) would be a good thing...

Just an
</idle musing>