The % of Americans who claim no religion has nearly doubled in 18 years.

[rocketpig]

jv103 said:
@Rocketpig-I don't know if individuals are necessarily nihilists if they don't believe in a religion. ->I think that the void that is looking to be filled will be done so, to some degree, in the fields of philosophy and the arts. It's hard to look back on western civilizations artistic achievements without seeing religion's fingerprint but that should come (as it has been for quite some time).
" There is no collectivity, just a random group of individuals who happen to coexist in the same space." - Personally - I think this comes more from the inflated egos that are quite plentiful within the United States. The rather selfish rugged individualist history I think plays a larger part in the lacked collectivity. (I haven't seen the whole us so I don't know) I did see much stronger communal bonds in Madera, Portugal when I was there for six weeks in 2003 then I ever have in the US in general.

I'm not claiming people are nihilists (or even anarchists) if they don't believe in religion, I just see two movements happening across the Western world; one denying religion, the other clinging to it. With that comes a certain attitude of "I don't need anything from the community", which creates different takes on life. On the upside, we have progressive and individualistic thought. On the downside, we lose touch with our own sense of humanity and become isolated figures solely interested in our own achievement.

As you said, the United States is the perfect example of this. We've always been the "rugged individuals" willing to buck the current trends and do whatever the fuck we want. On the other hand, much of this has been lost in the US with an embrace to being even more isolated than they already were to begin with. We're a culture that, unlike Europe, is not only mobile, but is increasingly unwilling to acknowledge even those people that immediately surround them. We're the perfect example of how the "videogame" culture has taken hold and made an already powerful-yet-isolated country even more isolated through technology.