The digital world obscures many truths, but the unsettling way social media distorts our sense of community is the most insidious of its deceptions. This distortion’s impact on modern community runs deep. More than evolving the tools we use to communicate, the proliferation of social media has altered our very definition of community. Our communities have been — are being — removed from their actual surroundings. We’re displacing ourselves.

Enter the Benedictine charism of stability, our monastic elephant in the (chat) room. Unlike the mendicant orders, Benedictines make a lifelong promise to a particular community. Why would applying this ancient Christian principle be a salve for the modern world’s digital woes? Because it puts community back in its proper place. It attaches community to a particular place, to be more precise. The Benedictines may be unique in adopting stability as a vow, but its value is readily available to all of us.

Social media tries to convince us that it’s possible — worse, that it’s good — to divorce community from place, compartmentalizing the two. Stability, on the other hand, asks monks to pledge fealty to a particular community, located at a particular monastery, for life. This commitment is lived out daily in concrete, tangible action. Everything outlined in the Rule of St. Benedict, which is arguably the most universal of all monastic guides, is inseparable from the individual’s commitment to a single community. The universal anchored in the particular.

In our digital-first society, embracing this monastic wisdom would help heal our communities by restoring the proper order of relational encounters. Now more than ever, we must intentionally privilege flesh-and-blood communities, making space for intimate conversations and allowing ourselves to be uncomfortably close to each other again. If we want to alleviate the social media-fueled epidemic of loneliness, we must first stabilize. Being close to one another causes friction. But it also brings a depth of community that’s otherwise impossible.

Relocating ourselves online requires reorienting ourselves toward our own communities, remembering that community must be grounded in place to thrive. St. Benedict’s ancient advice shows us how.

This video by a Benedictine monk explains the vow of stability in greater detail. I’ve had nice conversations with Br. Francisco and highly recommend his channel.

It’s fashionable to reduce our identities in two interconnected ways: measuring our worth by what we make and limiting what we make to what we can create on our own. The first reduces people to machines of production; the second reduces culture to the sum of individual contributions. Both are life-sapping lies.

I don’t want to blame all the world’s problems on social media, but there’s an undeniable connection between its rise and the prevalence of hyperindividualized brand identities. So-called “personal brands” collapse self into work by design. When our work is inseparable from our worth, how could self-promotion still be considered a sin?

To be fair, one’s self should inform one’s work, but conflating the two in turn sacrifices self to work. This deteriorates human identity. We must restore the right hierarchy: properly ordered, there is one’s self and there is one’s work. The former should shape the latter so that the latter doesn’t distort the former.

We are more than we do. We’re also capable of building bigger than we are. But to achieve such heights, we must take great care to reset the boundaries between who we are, what we do, and our true value as human beings.

Our worth is immeasurable because of who we are, regardless of how much we contribute. We must remember that about ourselves and about others. When we do, we not only catalyze but elevate our collective work.

Friends, that is how cathedrals are built.

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N.B.: I’m not blind to my own hypocrisy: this criticism has me in its crosshairs, too. Let’s remember who we are and then get back to work building something bigger than ourselves — together.

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