I buy your argument that we value children too highly in relation to adults, but I think the connection to religion is under-formed at best. If nothing else you

I buy your argument that we value children too highly in relation to adults, but I think the connection to religion is under-formed at best. If nothing else you need greater specificity of blame: surely there's a common theme with higher correlation than whether people follow a church that split from Catholicism 500 years ago, given the huge variation within that category. Myself, I'd argue that the way we've built towns has lent itself to destroying community and wealth. We put people in cars so they don't interact with their surroundings. We put the cars on massive road networks we can't afford to maintain (to say nothing of the sewer and water out to the edges of towns.) Then a downturn cones and we cut services because the maintenance is crushing us. We build places that aren't meant to last, and then only the rich can afford to move to the next generation's good suburbs. Everyone left behind was too poor to get out, and now they'll suffer decreased services and accessibility as the local government spends on the new growth areas. Given such a miserable setting, people are unable, by fact of their patterns of life, to look out for one another. Culture breaks down, because there's no community maintaining it. The earth-conquering strength of human teamwork is not utilized in these places; the new suburbs are full of people wealthy enough to overcome that, but the aging ones have no such strength.