The Thread That Holds

Culture in a Fraying Society

Apr 21, 2025

In an age marked by division, disconnection, and cultural drift, the threads that once held communities together feel increasingly frayed. Fewer shared spaces, fewer collective rituals, and a rising sense of isolation have weakened the bonds that nourish empathy and understanding. And yet, even in this fragmented landscape, there are powerful forces that continue to uplift and unite us — through the arts, through shared purpose, and through the simple, profound act of showing up for one another. Building on the last four posts, this chapter explores the cultural shifts that contribute to our current moment, the role of community and creativity in sustaining resilience, and the enduring human capacity for hope.

Culture and Community

The need for connection and community is primal, as fundamental as the need for air, water, and food.
- Dr. Dean Ornish, American physician and researcher

The arts strengthen community bonds, create new means of connection and understanding, and offer a continuous, powerful, and resilient source of individual and collective identity.”
- Sarah Burford, Chief Operating Officer, CANVAS

Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others. Black America ever lives under that skeptical eye.
- Ta-Nehisi Coates, American writer

Now that we’ve looked at the economy, climate, technology, and government, let’s talk about culture, which encompasses the state of our society and the narratives that define our collective experience. Over the last 50 years, the United States has experienced a long, slow degradation of civic and community engagement. As people have self-selected and compartmentalized into silos, our realities have become so disparate that, as nonprofit executive Aubrey Merriman put it, “we’re going off a cliff and we can’t even agree that there’s a cliff.”

We’ve lost the ability to have empathy and understanding, even if we disagree, and to have a good argument and not fall out with each other. As a society, impact investor Peter Cafferkey observed we are simultaneously saying it is no longer acceptable not to have an opinion and sharpening our knives to take each other down if we disagree. Many discussed the importance of civic dialogue, building bridges, and doing more listening. Misperceptions and hypocrisy need to be broken down. We have to be more reflective of the issues we ignore and seek first to understand others and their views, not change them.

Historically, these skills were honed in community with each other, and now people have fewer opportunities to gather with those they do not already know. In particular, there has been a decline in religious affiliation. Whereas 90 percent of Americans identified as Christian in 1972, it is now down to 63 percent, with religiously unaffiliated now up from 5 percent to almost 30 percent (and only a minor increase in other religions).^[1] Fifty years ago, churches and religious institutions were where many people looked for moral standards but also to build and hold community.

Leadership expert and author Brené Brown described the benefits she experienced from going to church in her 2018 talk at Washington National Cathedral as saying “peace be with you” to people she may not agree with (and having them say it to her), singing with strangers, and breaking bread with people she does not know. These are powerful everyday occurrences that no longer occur for many Americans. There are now fewer places for people to meet, and with busy schedules many are no longer seeing each other at parks and libraries. Plus, with remote work increasingly the norm, people are not bonding at work as often either, which is particularly detrimental for young people just getting established.

Concurrently, the arts are now both more important and more neglected than ever. Art takes many forms, from music to painting to film and photography and so much more, and is often a form of storytelling that brings people together around a shared narrative and experience. It emphasizes the importance of understanding our meaning as human beings. For some it is what life is about – the pursuit of beauty – and a counterpoint to the materialistic focus of capitalism. People find themselves in museums or theatres or festivals in community with strangers having powerful emotional experiences that are a source of joy and connection.

The arts are also a form of cultural expression and seeing one’s history and culture reflected in community is critical for a sense of belonging. Just as religious affiliation and practice has been declining, so has engagement with and funding for the arts. Where attending plays, concerts, or even going to the movies was a mainstay of culture 20 years ago, people now are more likely to consume cultural media in the comfort of their own home, further reducing opportunities for collective experiences that can shape a shared reality.

And while many of these changes have been years in the making, COVID played a key role in exacerbating the challenges we experience as a society. In particular, it laid bare and amplified racial inequities that have long existed in our society, with Black and Latino communities disproportionately on the frontlines of the pandemic and one-third of US Asians knowing another Asian who was threatened or attacked since COVID.^[2]In the summer of 2020, racial justice became a national priority, facilitated by the Black Lives Matter movement and catalyzed by the murder of George Floyd, with an outpouring of support that resulted in an estimated 20 million people participating in demonstrations across the country, the largest protests in American history.

Across society, this movement was revelatory and animating for many, and deeply unsettling and threatening for others. Racial justice has remained a priority for almost everyone I interviewed. Social entrepreneur and philanthropist Sheri Sobrato in particular spoke passionately about the importance of all people feeling safe and having a sense of belonging, enabling everyone’s full talents to be expressed, and harnessing those talents for the benefit of humanity and the planet. And there is a recognition of the intersectionality of issues like democracy, climate, income inequality, reproductive freedom, and LGBTQ+ rights, all of which are part of the racial reckoning and are improved with a more equitable society. In the words of former Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone, “we all do better when we all do better.”

Yet we are also seeing a strong backlash, with racial preference now deeply politicized and often misunderstood, further feeding distrust and fragmentation in society. The new administration’s executive orders plus strategic use of high-profile law suits has had a chilling effect on efforts to level the playing field, and concerns for personal safety – especially of Black leaders – has led organizations not to publish their street address and to hire private security for their people. Allies and leaders now need to demonstrate the courage of their convictions in the face of potential personal, organizational, and financial risk, which comes at a high cost and is leading to burnout, even among the most committed.

The upshot of these compounding cultural trends is a fraying of the societal fabric across multiple lines, further reinforcing the economic, environmental, technological, and political trends we discussed previously. And yet community and connection are exactly what nourishes us in challenging times, sustains our optimism, and lights the way forward.

Sustaining Hope

Every morning I awake torn between a desire to save the world and an inclination to savor it. This makes it hard to plan the day.
- E.B. White, American author, July 1969

Despite the challenges of our time and with only a few rare exceptions, every person with whom I spoke identified as an optimist. And yet in almost the same breath, they would acknowledge just how hard it has been to sustain their optimism in recent years. They spoke of cultivating self-care practices – meditating, spending time with family, children and pets – of being out in nature, going for walks in the neighborhood, and gathering with others to play tennis or pickleball. They lit up describing the power of seeing the world through the eyes of a two-year-old – “may we all be that excited about a new pair of underpants!” – of living in the moment, nurturing relationships over time, and going deeper, not faster. Savoring the day.

But they also talked about the importance of finding meaning in one’s work or, in the words of Viktor Frankl, the importance of having a purpose-driven life,^[3] as cited by philanthropy executive Elizabeth Christopherson. For those driving social change from behind a desk, it was important to spend time “in the field” with people on the frontlines, learning about new ideas and innovations taking hold, seeing things work and organizations break through despite the challenges. And for those who were not able to get outside the office, storytelling about the “wins,” making them vivid, and cheering them together as a team was a source of joy and inspiration. Finding purpose directly in the office was equally important, with people realizing immense satisfaction mentoring young people and seeing team member growth, creating a culture that offers a sense of agency and choice, embracing responsibility rather than casting blame. Many emphasized the value of understanding what we are fighting for, not just what we are fighting against. Saving the day.

But as humans, we need more. In an age of “rampant loneliness,” we need a sense of connection and community to sustain our optimism. On average, most of the people we know are good and a positive outlook often comes from time spent with others. Some spoke of efforts to recreate the town square, talking with neighbors and engaging locally. Others highlighted the important role of conferences and gatherings to bring people with common values together around shared purpose and experiences, and weaving together diverse networks to get real work done.

For me, a lightbulb went off after a particularly wonderful morning spent at the Barnes Museum in Philadelphia where I coined a new term, “art bathing.” Just as “sun bathing” and “forest bathing” have well known restorative properties, so does time spent with the arts, whether in a museum, a cultural festival, a concert, or a movie theatre. Art has well-documented positive impacts on mental health, including reduced anxiety and improved empathy, mood, and cognitive function.^[4] And art venues are one of the few places where people can still gather with strangers and experience shared joy while reinforcing diverse cultural representation and belonging. Finally, artists often lead society in moral imagination, seeing around corners to what will be not only possible but also important in times ahead, creating forums for civic dialog and engagement.

In many ways, what people need most is resilience, the ability to take life’s challenges in stride, getting back up when knocked down and maintaining faith in oneself and the world. Hopelab identifies the formula for resiliency as having purpose and connection, but also agency. Where purpose and connection have been discussed previously, agency is a sense of control in one’s life, that people have the power and resources to act to their full potential. Agency can be cultivated by parents, friends, or in the workplace. Where employees feel a high level of agency, it often leads to higher job satisfaction and lower turnover. Many spoke of explicitly seeking to cultivate resilience and agency in teams post-covid, providing more flexibility in how goals are achieved and explicitly finding ways to make people feel good about what they are doing.

Finally, many noted that every generation has its challenges, but life has been better over recent decades for most people. As human beings, we fall prey to recency bias, believing things are worse now than they ever were, when objective facts show that they are not. As entrepreneur and venture capitalist Mark Selcow observed, “the last 100 years have been outrageously successful” by any number of measures – infant mortality, longevity, food yields – but we are also tackling significant and longstanding issues, and with “many boils getting lanced at the same time, it’s getting stinky.” And philanthropy consultant and advisor Willa Seldon was quick to point out that encountering obstacles is a sign of progress, quoting “Hindrance isn’t a contradiction to the path, it is the path.” In other words, the path is the story, not the obstacles. Backlash against progress is inevitable and we need to stay focused and push through, which requires courage, determination, and strength of will.

This perseverance takes many forms. In her TEDTalk, Christina Figueres conveys a fierce conviction that we must and we can rise to the challenge, saying “we don’t have the right to give up or to let up.”^[5] Throughout his life, Archbishop Desmond Tutu consistently referred to himself not as an optimist, but rather “a prisoner of hope.” Activist Kumi Naidoo says “the moment of history we find ourselves in is one in which pessimism is a luxury we simply can no longer afford.” Aubrey Merriman defines himself as an “unapologetic hope-aholic.” And Shashi Buluswar says “happiness is wearing blinders to avoid knowing about the problems. Optimism is staring the problems in the face and saying we’re going to fight this.”

As for me, I’m all-in on optimism, but I believe we need more clear and consistent storytelling for good, highlighting what is working alongside the challenges of our time, so we don’t have to work so hard to identify narratives of hope and move collectively to make them real. There have been many reasons for optimism over recent decades but society discounts them and media often ignores them. So stay tuned for a compilation of collective insights about so much of what has been going right in the world and then let’s talk about how we turn the tide and harness philanthropy and storytelling as a force for positive change.

The Elephant & Butterfly

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