The desire for identity and “to belong” is exceptionally powerful.

People need to get off of social media and get more hobbies. Go belong to a needlepoint club or mushroom hunters or basket weaving.

What about people meet on Sundays to talk about ancient philosophy, with a few long-term goals such as ending hunger by working in food kitchens and raising money for other charitable causes? If these Sunday meetup clubs get large enough, maybe they can run hospitals or schools.

I think we should call the leaders of such Sunday Meetup groups "Priests", or maybe "Ministers".

That would be great. I read that there are secular masses that actually do that.

The ones you mentioned do not meet to talk about ancient philosophy. They meet to talk about an imaginary entity you come to kneel to and pray it does not bring the end of the world.

The managers of these groups also expect the participants to tell them what they did wrong (confession) and when they hear that a guy is going to rape someone because he feels that need, they cowardly cover for him. Mostly because they put their comfort above the life of someone else (secret of confession).

So yeah, that wood be good but for now this is just a meeting of people who learned this from their parents and do not want to think about the whole craziness of the idea.

The charity work is nice, though.

That's like a Linux User Group meeting to talk about anything but an OS Kernel.

Speaking of philosophy. Didn't the Buddha say "you won't be punished for your unhealthy focus on politics, you will be punished by your unhealthy focus on politics"? Seriously, politics plus social media equals missery. I have an older family member who, I was surprised to learn, has forgotten pets he cared for for years and fun family events of the past, but he certainly remembers every political slight and wrong people in Washington DC have experienced. As if an evil spell was cast to replace all happy memories with aggravating memories.

(And I think the answer is no, the Buddha did not say that.)

From an evolutionary standpoint it makes perfect sense, but there are some unfortunate downsides