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Secular societies must build resilient, secular sources of meaning
The challenge of finding meaning in secular societies intensified in the 20th and 21st centuries as modernization eroded traditional sources of purpose rooted in religious authority. This trajectory traces back to the Renaissance’s humanist turn, which shifted focus from God-centered cosmology to human potential and individual agency. The Enlightenment accelerated secularization by privileging reason, empirical inquiry, and individual rights over dogma and divine revelation, establishing liberty and self-determination as core values. These foundations enabled the Industrial Revolution’s emphasis on practical science, efficiency, and material progress, which delivered unprecedented existential security through rising living standards but also disrupted traditional communities and fixed social roles.
Ronald Inglehart’s modernization theory, developed with Christian Welzel, explains the resulting tension through two interlocking value shifts. Economic development moves societies from traditional to secular-rational values—diminishing the authority of religion, family, and custom—and from survival to self-expression values, prioritizing personal autonomy, creativity, tolerance, and self-realization once basic material needs are met. Post-industrial prosperity in the 20th century, especially after World War II, amplified these changes, producing widespread secularization. Yet this created a vacuum: religion had supplied coherent narratives, communal belonging, moral frameworks, and transcendent purpose. Without them, individuals must actively construct meaning through work, relationships, consumption, political causes, or self-actualization—endeavors that prove fragile, subjective, and unevenly accessible.
The Information Age has intensified both the opportunity and the strain. Digital connectivity and knowledge abundance offer new avenues for self-expression and global communities, aligning with self-expression values. However, they also fragment shared narratives, amplify individualism, and expose people to constant comparison and information overload. In highly secular, post-materialist societies, many experience meaning deficits manifested in rising rates of anxiety, loneliness, and searches for alternative “religions” such as wellness culture, nationalism, or ideology. Inglehart and Welzel note that while these value shifts foster democracy and personal freedom, they do not automatically provide the deep sense of purpose once anchored in religious tradition. The ongoing challenge is therefore to build resilient, secular sources of meaning—through education, meaningful work, civic participation, and authentic relationships—that sustain human flourishing in an age of unprecedented autonomy and uncertainty.
Go to Loss of a sense of community.
References
Inglehart, R., & Welzel, C. (2005). Modernization, cultural change, and democracy: The human development sequence. Cambridge University Press.
Inglehart, R., & Welzel, C. (2010). Changing mass priorities: The link between modernization and democracy. Perspectives on Politics, 8(2), 551–567.
Inglehart, R. (2018). Cultural evolution: People’s motivations are changing, and reshaping the world. Cambridge University Press.
Taylor, C. (2007). A secular age. Harvard University Press.
World Values Survey. (n.d.). Findings and insights and the Inglehart-Welzel cultural map. https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org
