We live in a world where there is no universal agreement about values, nor what counts as right action, nor what sorts of lives can be counted as whole and integrated; we are dis-integrated persons. This is the core problem identified by Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue. How does this problem manifest itself? Many of us do not know our neighbors; home economics devolves into impersonalized encounters with big-box retail. We are anonymous to our CEO, who operates at seven levels of managerial remove. Participatory governance seems an abstraction. Religious or civic involvement, if we choose to engage, is often just another consumer choice. The combination of these factors leads many to feelings of alienation, powerlessness, even anger, but not to beatitudo, to joyful wholeness.

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