Shared Values

Can a Society Survive Without Them?

I ran across this quote the other day:

Christmas is the day that holds all time together.
-- Alexander Smith

It is a very Christian sentiment, and it got me thinking about how much society has changed over the years and about what it is that holds a society together. It isn’t surprising that this quote is unapologetically Christian. Smith was a Scottish poet who lived from 1829 to 1867.

He lived in a different world. A Christian world. At least with respect to the West.

The foundation of Western society, the common belief that held society together, was Christianity. Sure, there were different variants, often in conflict with each other, but our laws, morals, and social norms were based upon a common set of values which were largely taken from Christianity and the Bible. At least broadly speaking. Christianity wasn’t the entirety of Western civilization, but it supplied a shared moral framework within which those other institutions operated.

What is our common denominator today? Is it still Christianity? The table below shows that the percentage of people claiming to be Christian has declined significantly and, in some locations, it has declined to such an extent that Christianity is now a minority in some Western countries.

The decline in Western religiosity is a complicated topic with many mutually reinforcing changes. Science gradually replaced religion as the West’s primary explanatory authority for the natural world. Rising existential security reduced the need to explain things that once made life extremely precarious: infant mortality, famine, disease, premature death, war. Religion, which was once an important factor in a person’s identity, became just another choice a person could make. And the list goes on.

However, we don’t need to explain why things changed to recognize that they did—and that Christianity can no longer be considered our common belief system. As much as many of us may wish otherwise, it is not the glue that binds us together.

So, if Christianity isn’t holding Western countries together, what is? What has replaced Christianity as the bedrock of Western society?

“Liberal democracy?”

That is certainly something all Western countries have in common, but you can’t hold a society together with something so simple as “I have rights.” Rights conflict, so are as likely to cause conflict as to prevent it.

“Freedom” doesn’t work either, as it only unites us when it is threatened. And even then, it is only if we all agree what freedom means. And we don’t.

Many have suggested that “civility is the glue that holds society together.” It’s certainly a catchy quote. However, civility is less a glue than it is a means to avoid conflict. I can be polite to people in a foreign country without needing to have anything in common with them.

The longer I think about this and the deeper I dig trying to find bedrock, the more worried I become. I fear that over the last 50 years Western society has slowly replaced Christianity with “multiculturalism” and “tolerance,” and if I’m right, that’s a big problem.

“Multiculturalism,” as it is currently practiced in the West, requires adherents to believe one of two things, each wrong in its own way. The first requires supporters to believe that culture and values are somehow separate. That people from China, India, or Iran are just Westerners who dress differently, speak a different language, and eat different types of food. The second belief, which at least pays lip service to the existence of significant differences, assumes that cultures can coexist without shared values.

Both assumptions are seriously flawed. Culture and values are not distinct; they overlap. Different cultures may share some similar values, but they do not share them all. How different cultures are from each other greatly influences how likely it is that they can coexist. Believing otherwise is what has contributed to much of the strife resulting from mass immigration.

“Perhaps,” you might say, “but certainly tolerance is a good thing, right?”

Sure, but “live and let live” is hardly a unifying creed. Tolerance may be a virtue, but it’s a negative virtue; it doesn’t tell us what to do, but rather what not to do. If anything, it promotes the fragmentation of society by promoting, or at least tolerating, the creation of sub-communities that have little in common other than some shared infrastructure and the right to vote.

I fear that in our efforts to “live and let live,” to believe that everyone is essentially the same and wants essentially the same things, we have planted the seeds of our own destruction.

My question to you is this: can a society survive indefinitely without a shared conception of what is good?

About the Author
Phil is a freelance writer, Canadian Navy veteran, and classical liberal. He has lived and worked in both Canada and the United States and currently resides in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he writes on politics, individual rights, free speech, and whatever else catches his fancy.

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