The Rise of the Nones and Hopefully the Decline of the Amorals
No, these are not the same group.
Nones are a mix of irreligious, agnostics, atheists, disassociated, non-aligned, and disinterested people in a religious landscape.
Amorals are rational profiteers who are blind to long-term costs, negative externalities, and collateral damage in their mindless pursuit to increase production, create and distribute product, and acquire profit one ‘quarter’ after another.
Amorality has driven the world through global warming to climate change while poisoning our bodies, killing communities with cancer, polluting our water and land, stealing our savings, and scamming our families. Regulation can be used to limit them, control some of their worst inclinations, right some wrongs, return some loses, and protect some lives. Regulation sought to reduce their harm by cleaning water, air, products, and markets of “ill spill.” From Ronald Reagan taking solar panels off the White House to George W. Bush not implementing the Kyoto Protocols to Donald Trump removing the US from the Paris Climate Accords, progress was stalled and hindered by the amorals. These were major moves by US presidents that stopped America from acknowledging a soon-to-be-future of both climate and energy issues, but more importantly they serve as warning beacons of the broader neglect that exists deeper down in the economy and across all of those decades.
Nones are the recently appearing ‘group’ (or ‘non-group’) that have some Americans in a panic, even as they, this newly emerging group, are nearly unknown consciously by the general public and maybe even by the people who are in this group. Nones are growing and being reported occasionally in lesser spaces, but they are still just below the surface of most discussions in the public. They mostly know who they are and that they exist. They are slowly gathering, but usually in other spaces for other reasons. They still currently lack a self-aware group consciousness. Nones go to NFL games rather than church. Nones do yoga and mindfulness exercises. Nones are on social media and pursue life meaning through large weekend concerts, Comic con, motorcycle clubs, travel sports teams and networks, and their own explorations on the Internet and Wikipedia. The yearly Pew Research poll puts them as the second largest “religious group” in America and growing fast. They are wedging in the middle between Protestants and Catholics, but will probably be the largest group in America very soon as they have been growing consistently for the last few decades.
Amorals may be and should be in decline or we are in even more trouble. The cost for their past blind and/or ignorant foolishness must now soon be paid. They will try to blame others, but the guilt is obvious and the offenders are known. For example: the great opioid war is now paying indemnities. Exxon and the Koch brothers won their fight to overuse oil in many destructive ways, but they are now exposed for their scams.
The nones lost faith in the biggest religious traditions and many unwieldy corporate institutions, like these profit-seeking behemoths, but the tenacious hedge funds are even more out of control and amoral, so we are nowhere near a safer place. Nones will continue to use modern skepticism and some cynicism to leave the dogmatism and the overt self-righteousness of traditional religion. This is a driving force for why the mainline Protestant denominations went into free fall decline and quickly were replaced by less-dogmatic, more independent and free thinking, and more non-denominational, ‘cult of personality,’ and suburban ‘mega-non-churches’ who have gobbled up Christians as they left their steepled, faith-spaces just before they almost joined the new nones. Will these new ‘poll-barn,’ megaplex e-churches with attached sports complexes be able to stem the flow to the nones? As more religions add to their numbers in the US, Americans are going to have more choices. More Americans will choose options other than Christianity and will add to the ranks of people who are in multiple religious traditions, experiences, and cultures. Some of these new religions do not have deities and this both confuses them and frees them. Now that they are free from “In God We Trust” and can turn to “In good we trust” will they reattach with spirituality within a religious context or outside of it? Religions no longer have a monopoly on spirituality in general and within individual people’s lives. The Essenes, the Hypatia(ns), the Sufis, the Lollards, the Hussites, the laity-worship-communities of the early Renaissance, and the Copernicans are now having their day.
Civic humanism is the middle ground of these two trends. We need to care about the larger community and look beyond mere profits. The seventh generation principle can return and Adam Smith’s concern for the “moral sentiments” can reemerge. Amorality will dissolve in the heat of our drought-stricken deserts of our former agricultural heartlands and nones can coalesce around newly discovered civic virtues that unite them in their quest for self-actualized personal and collective transcendence.
Hopefully in the future, when it comes to amorality, we will have None of it.
:) Be OPEN