Meaning and Ethics in 21st Century America

"Listen to the silence behind the engine's noise...It's a love song."
"For whom?"
"You are loved."
Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way by David Foster Wallace

Religion serves two basic purposes: meaning and ethics. It gives meaning to our lives (which we are naturally inclined to look for) and a moral code for a community to live by. So it serves needs on both an individual and group level.

Ethics needs to take place on a community level. Individualism leads to people pursuing their own form of ethics, which sounds good in the name of freedom, but I think has been sort of a disaster on the national level. Meaning, on the other hand, can be pursued on the individual level.

With religion's decline, as measured by both belief and church attendance, a vacuum has been created. I don't know if the problem has been with the shallow options that have filled the void or the fact that they are incompatible, tribal groups fighting for the same space.

The largest branch of neo ethics to fill the void has been social justice. A lot of this derives from the 7 themes Catholic social teaching, notably the "preferential option for the poor." The other major ideology to emerge has been the alt-right, although I'm unsure if they have a clear ethical system other than "immigrants=bad" and a desire for "law and order."

The Meaning of Meaning
Meaning is the answer to the question: What makes suffering worth it? This void has been filled with nationalism, tribalism, and the crusade against "the other"? Ernest Becker believed that once humans become aware of their own mortality, they seek immortality. Religion, and it's promise of an afterlife, accomplishes this. In its absence, people attach themselves to a cause, one that will live on after they die.

Although Christianity has been used to justify violence, oppression, and other terrible acts, a lot of early American Christianity was based on simply loving God and loving your neighbor. In neo meaning and the crusade against "the other", the basic tenet is to slay the evil dragon. It's motivated by war rather than love, fighting the devil rather than worshiping God.

The evil dragon can be the patriarchy, oppressors, immigrants, barbarism, government, or tyranny.  For example, social justice is less about feeding, clothing, and caring for the poor (love) than it is about smashing the oppressors (war) such as capitalism, white men, and the patriarchy in general.  Trump, torch bearer for the alt-right, has paid lip service to helping native-born Americans with tariffs on imports and deregulation on coal mining in an effort to help struggling Americans (love), but spends more time demonizing and deporting immigrants (war).

Habitat for Immigrants and Orphans
Instead of protesting outside Planned Parenthood (war) abortion opponents should promote abortion alternatives (love). The problem is that there are two alternatives; and neither are great. One, abstinence until marriage, is simply ineffective, especially to a secular crowd. The other, birth control, is anathema to conservative orthodoxy.

Maybe a third way is to support adoption. Create funds (publicly or privately) that provide care for unwanted pregnancies (health care and lost income support) and reduce the barriers, financial and otherwise, to attract more adoption parents. Imagine conservative Christians dialing back the "abortion is evil" rhetoric and taking the mantel of "adoption is your duty!" This would emphasize love over war. Either that or ease their stance on birth control.

The pro immigration crowd, instead of fighting government restriction, should be opening their house to immigrants. Give them food, shelter, and support until they get on their feet. The anti immigration group can't complain because this way the immigrants won't be using up public services. What better way to love thy neighbor while having some skin in the game?

This opens up a philanthropic opportunity for Habitat for Humanity. Instead of building homes for the poor, they could build additions to middle class homes for people who are housing immigrants/refugees or an adopted child who would have otherwise been terminated via abortion?

Empathetic Lives Matter
In communities with tension between cops and black citizens, adopt a system of voluntary service. Citizens who opt in will serve one day a year on the police force in lieu of jury duty. Each day, the police will be represented by members of the community who will be able to influence the cops' approach to community policing while also understanding the difficulty in the job. Those who opt out will not be able to have access to police services.

How do we address income inequality with love? What if, instead of forcing employers to pay a $15/hour minimum wage, employers gave customers the option to pay a voluntary surcharge during each transaction? This surcharge would have a suggested amount based on sales per month and how much each customer would have to pay to close the wage gap between what the employees make and a living wage. This surcharge would go into a fund that is equally distributed among the businesses employees at the end of each month.

Expand your "family"
What if your health insurance provider allowed you to add another member to your plan? Only, instead of a spouse or child, you "adopted" someone without access to health insurance. Think of the impact you can have on this one person's life! You can even bring them to their appointments and actually see their health improve from your actions. Or better yet, you can sponsor their health program. Maybe you and another family split the cost.

I get that war is simply a more motivating ethos than love. But using war to address a problem will only be met by war. With love, there is at least a chance of being met with love.

Love has been what is lost by this vacuum. It's right there in the neo ethics of social justice but no where to be found in the neo meaning of any of the post Christian ideologies. David Foster Wallace warned that this was the failure of postmodernism and called for a new type of fiction in which the "silence behind the engine's noise" is love.

Update
I'm not trying to say ethics derived from Christianity are better than those derived from social justice. I'm saying that we now have multiple competing ethical systems in our country and they are causing problems. I believe a solution is:

1. to derive your actions from the Greatest Commandment: love thy neighbor. Making your actions focused on love and not war will reduce conflict.
2. address your concerns on the individual level, rather than as a part of a group. Instead of "what can we do to fix this?" say "what can I do?" 

Mobilizing your tribe to fix something will inevitably lead to some form of coercion and more conflict. I also believe it's a hollow pursuit of meaning; once you slay one dragon, you'll always be looking for the next dragon and will inevitably make more enemies along the way.

Working through love on the individual level will produce less conflict and give more meaning to one's life.