How to fix America’s spiritual crisis

The Gray Area with Sean Illing - Vox

Sen. Chris Murphy discusses a deep spiritual crisis in America, linking political polarization to loneliness, alienation, and the erosion of community. He argues that liberalism has failed to address these needs, allowing demagogues and technology to fill the void.

Key takeaways

• Loneliness and powerlessness drive much of today's political unrest.
• Liberalism provides freedom but lacks a moral or spiritual compass.
• Democracy and community institutions are essential for human flourishing.

Transcript preview

American politics is very good at giving us enemies. Politics in general is good at this. It tends to be much worse at giving us a sense of belonging. And that's a problem because a lot of what looks like ideology right now is really loneliness, distrust, humiliation, and people looking for some kind of anchor, which is what we should expect. People want to feel seen, They want to feel rooted, they want to feel like their lives are connected to something bigger. And when politics can't speak to that hunger, other things will. Markets will, algorithms will, conspiracy theories will, demagogues will. It's hard to talk about this because we don't have a reliable political vocabulary for it. This is not really a policy problem. It's hard to talk about this because we don't have a reliable political vocabulary for it. This is not really a policy problem. or not we have a system that can help people imagine a common life together. And what happens that the answer is no? I'm Sean Elling and this is the gray area. Murphy is what I was just describing. And this is very different from a paint by number politics or campaign book. Murphy takes seriously the idea that the country is, for lack of a better word, spiritually sick, lonely, atomized, commodified, angry. And his argument is that the Democratic Party, and maybe liberalism more generally, lost the ability to speak to that crisis. And that is what I wanted to talk to the senator about, not necessarily about what he thinks the Democrats can do to win the next election. But about whether this version of liberal capitalism can still give people a sense of meaning and belonging. Senator Chris Murphy, welcome to the show. Thanks for happening. Happy to be here, happy to have you. Okay, so let's get right into the book, right? I mean, this is, it's not really a policy book, though there is some policy in there. a deeper malaise or spiritual sickness, whatever you want to call it in the country. How would you describe that? Let's just start there. Yeah, I think this country is less happy than it has been in a long time. I think it's more lonely than it has been in a long time and I think fewer people wake up every morning knowing what their meaning, their purpose, their identity is. And I think there's all sorts of signs of that, growing rates of political instability. growing rates of self-harm or kids showing up in our emergency rooms than ever before and just lower rates of self-reported happiness on surveys. You could say that that's not something that government should concern itself with, but in fact we're celebrating 250 years of the Declaration of Independence and in that document it actually says that government is supposed to guarantee people the right to pursue happiness. Maybe we're not supposed to provide you with a last mile on that road, but we're probably supposed to provide you with actual to the things that you need to be happy. And as I studied, you know, why people seem to be less happy, more lonely, more exhausted, it seemed to me that there was a lot of government responsibility who set up a system of rules and norms in this country that make it a lot harder for folks to be happy. And so as a politician who spends all his time thinking and working to oppose Donald Trump, I wrote the book because I just, I think, I think it would be a, I think, mistake to just think we could solve our problems electorally there is a deeper spiritual rot in this country. We'll talk about the material conditions that gave rise to this but I mean ultimately is all of that to say that really and we can reach all the words we want to try to capture the problem cultural spiritual whatever but is all of that to say that this is really a problem that goes beyond mere politics? Of course. You know this is you know probably more a cultural problem a cultural problem than a political problem. But I do think that the rules and norms that have caused people to feel empty often have caused people to retreat from communion, right? We're spending half as much time today, you know, in person connection with friends and family as we did a generation ago. I think a lot of that is due to the rules that are set by government. So I don't know. that I'd say that it's beyond the scope of policy. Actually, I think that policy has a lot to do with it. But I think you first just have to understand how people are feeling, why they're feeling those ways. And once you do that, then I think you can match policies to meet those maladies. My argument here is that Congress, politicians, writ large, just don't spend a lot of time doing a spiritual metaphysical diagnosis of the country. And I just don't think we're doing our work. if we aren't first asking, like, what do people need to feel more fulfilled and happy in their lives? And it turns out that the answer is probably not a higher GDP or higher test scores for their kids. It's interesting. I've lived all over the country, including DC, but I'm from the deep south, the Gulf Coast. It's where I live now. And my politics are kind of weird in lots of ways, but I'm more on the left than a lot of people around me. But when I engage with Trump voters and there's a lot around me, find, deep down, if you can kind of get past the Fox News culture war bullshit and really drill down, what you find is they may not use this kind of language, but you find that people don't feel like they have a sense of agency anymore. Now I would say they may be confused in many cases about the causes of that disillusionment, but that is the general feeling. Do you think that is something that goes across all the partisan and ideological lines to typically... you know I'm making the case in this book that there are two things of many but two primary things that people need to feel purposeful and feel happy and fulfilled the first is connection you need to feel like you have people in your life that care about you you need to feel connected to a community you have to have a sense of belonging to something second you need to feel powerful people when they wake up in the morning you need to believe you need to feel connected to a community you have to have a sense of belonging to something second you need to feel powerful that the inputs will match the outputs and they don't feel powerful today. I think that's particularly acute amongst men who are going through this broader crisis of masculinity in the face of the the rightful rise of feminism but it hits them even harder when they at the same time have both lost their natural position of primacy in the modern world and they also can't work hard and get ahead. They feel really powerless. And yes, this is an economy that is intentionally designed to not give people a sense of agency and power. That's a big part of the book. In a liberal pluralistic society, like ours, where we do not agree about what's fair, what's just, or what's even worth valuing or wanting, or we don't agree about what it means to pursue happiness. Where do you think the common good, that's your phrase, common good, where do you think that comes from? What is the basis of that that? Yeah, I mean, obviously, De Tocqueville was all over this book and he worries deeply about that question, right? This is a country filled with strivers, right? People from different backgrounds speaking different languages. What on earth is going to hold them together? He has two answers. His first answer is democracy, right? Everybody is going to feel like they have a role to play in the setting of rules and norms. And so they're going to set aside their differences and work together in that common project of democracy, which felt strong, which felt strong new and wild at the time. Second, he says church, right? You know, which maybe is a code for institutions, right? There are going to be places where you can find meaning and identity that allow you easy access to connection communion and meaning each day. Our democracy is withered, it's heard, it's badly damaged, and people do not feel like they have a role to play in our democracy because billionaires and millionaires and millionaires and And church specifically as an institution has become a less healthy place, just not as many people are showing up, but other institutions aren't available either. And so I think I sort of look at to Toc fill and say, okay, what can we do to make democracy healthier so that people feel like that is a common project that they can engage in? And what about institutions? What about the things we can do to make people find a sense of belong? on an institution or other places where people might find easy identity. Yeah, you know, that's, to Tocville is such an interesting character. You know, and there's a critique of liberalism that I think a lot of people on the left avoid because people we don't like often make it, but it's not obviously wrong and it's that, you know, liberalism gives people freedom, but it does not tell us what the freedom is for. And if nothing else fills that space, those, Tocville, intermediate. institutions, religion, community, family, civic life, all of that. Then markets and algorithms and demagogues and I guess now AI will do it for us. I mean do you agree that that vacuum, for lack of a better word, is a real vulnerability of liberalism, maybe even a fatal. Yeah, I do. You know, I saw about four or five years ago that the new right that J.D. Vance was a big part of was doing a much more interesting critique of the spirit of the spirit of the spirit of the right of the spirit of the right of the right of the right of the right of the right of the right of the right of the spirit of the right of the right of the right of the right of state of the country than the left was. And they seemed to be crafting policies that answered the way that people were feeling empty, feeling that liberalism had pitted them against each other. And so yes, this book clearly comes from my own recognition that liberalism more broadly was failing Americans. And I think that that's inevitable in some ways because we are solideristic creatures. We are a solid jurisic creatures. We are a solidgeristic creatures. species. We survived thousands of years because we found a way to group together. We have selflessness in our biology and I give sort of a bunch of anecdotes and evidence in a book about why we know we actually want to be selfless, that we want to exist in groups. We don't want to be viewed simply as individuals. And I don't think that classical liberalism has ever been able to understand that spiritual health comes, you know, not. by freedom, spiritual health comes through communion and a sense of belonging to something bigger than ourselves. Well, the liberal counter is always to say, well, liberalism isn't supposed to provide meaning in that way. It is supposed to protect the spaces where unions and communities and all those institutions can fill that gap and provide the meaning. But, and you know