A spotlight was shone on gaming culture when it became known that the young man charged with killing Charlie Kirk was a gamer. It is a growing worldwide phenomenon whose major adherents are young men in their twenties. Many become so immersed in gaming culture that it becomes the defining feature of their lives.

As with America’s fixation with zombies, which I will get to a little later, gaming culture is a direct result of the search for meaning in postmodern life. Humans are hard-wired for story. As I have written many times, we do not sleep without dreaming, and we do not dream in mathematical equations. Well, at least most of us don’t. We dream in stories. Story is a biological necessity for humans.

Today’s world is bereft of meaningful metanarratives, (big stories that explain the meaning of life and provide structure for living.) With our need for story being biological, when our culture provides no meaningful stories, we will create our own, hence the arrival of gaming culture, among other cultural shifts taking place today.

What is the allure of gaming culture? It gives the participants a role in a big story with understandable rules, a clear task, and a way to increase their standing in the world. They can immerse themselves in the game and get in a flow state in which they lose track of time, something that happens to all of us when we are immersed in something that requires our full attention. All of these are missing for young people today.

Video games do not require a high emotional quotient or the ability to bodily interact with other humans, making it attractive to those with a left brain preference and/or right brain deficit. It might be noted that with the arrival of AI “relationships” these young people can also have all kinds of interactions, including sexual, without human contact, something we already see on the increase.

Gen Z, those born between 1997 and 2012, is a generation marked by a sense of digital fluency, pragmatism, and unfortunately, meaninglessness. No wonder they gravitate to video games. They provide the elements otherwise missing from their lives.

Interestingly, Gen Z is also returning to church, conservative churches to be exact. You might be surprised to learn that more young men are turning to church than young women. One third of Gen Z are not religious and 38 percent never go to church. None of that is a surprise. But 24 percent go to church every week, quite a surprise, with young men more likely to attend weekly than young women. Only 60 percent of Gen Z females say they are religious, while 66 percent of males say they are.

What kinds of churches do these young men attend? Conservative churches that give them a role in a big story with understandable rules, a clear task, and since only men are allowed into leadership, a unique way to increase their standing in the world. Sound familiar?

With only men allowed in leadership, conservative churches actually have a one-up on video game culture. If we understand this, we understand the allure of Charlie Kirk, a man with a limited education but  high intelligence, with a focused ability to make arguments from very specific categories in rapid-speak that demands one’s full attention. He gave young men a big story with understandable rules, a clear task, and a way to advance in the world.

Had he not been killed, as the years passed Kirk might have come to see the sadly narrow categories of intellectual ability he had nurtured. He might have come to understand the need for a better education, and he might have come to see that his brand of Christianity had more in common with Plato than Jesus. But then again, the kind of power and notoriety he enjoyed would have made it difficult to develop the self-examination necessary to come to those insights. Tragically, we will never know the ways in which he might have grown had he come under the influence of better angels.

When we see the dilemma of Gen Z young men, however, we can understand Kirk’s meteoric rise. He provided a religious and political alternative to gaming culture, with the added feature of misogynistic notions of leadership. Mark Driscoll provided the same elements when he was in his heyday at Mars Hill Church in Seattle, before he was let go for his “domineering leadership style, quick temper, and arrogant demeanor.” One wonders if those features of his personality would have caused him to be terminated today? I’m thinking probably not.

The current fixation with zombies is also a sign of a culture that has lost any sense of meaning. Zombies move collectively, but not communally. They move in the same direction with arms outstretched, but alone. Now, think of the streets of Manhattan during rush hour? What you see is people moving collectively, but not communally. Only instead of their arms stretched out in front of them, they are stretched downward and slightly forward as they stare at their phone screens.

Zombie culture also illustrates a world in which there is no spiritual transcendence. There is a resurrection, but it is not to life as a greater being. One is resurrected to life as a lesser being.

Cultural trends do not develop in a vacuum. If we are willing to spend the time necessary to study them, they will provide clues into the sicknesses of our times. The loss of meaning in today’s world is an epidemic. AI is not going to help, as humans become less connected, and ultimately, less necessary. It might be time to take another look at the Luddites.

And so it goes.