More and more, the emoji form of this gesture is being interpreted as a high five.

New surveys say that religion is on the decline. According to Pew data reported on NPR, both America as a whole is trending away from devotion:

Among the findings:

• The share of Americans who say they are “absolutely certain” that God exists has dropped 8 percentage points, from 71 percent to 63 percent, since 2007, when the last comparable study was made.
• The percentage of adults who describe themselves as “religiously affiliated” has shrunk 6 points since 2007, from 83 percent to 77 percent
• The shares of the U.S. adult population who consider religion “very important” to them, pray daily and attend services at least once a month have declined between 3 and 4 percentage points over the past eight years.

But more dramatically, young people in particular are practicing at a much lower rate:

Skepticism about religion is especially evident among young people. The Pew study found that barely a quarter of “millennials” (born between 1981 and 1996) attend church services on a weekly basis, compared with more than half of U.S. adults born before 1946. Only about 4 in 10 millennials say religion is important in their lives, compared with more than half of those who are older, including two-thirds of those born before 1946.

While we can debate all kinds of fun things around this topic, like what’s causing it, if the trend is permanent or reversible, the juiciest might be what it means for the country.

How will a less-religious citizenry affect life in America, both for good and bad reasons?

Does that mean a net positive or negative for society as a whole?

Is this a trend worth encouraging or preventing?

If religion is personal, should it even matter?

We’re talking way beyond pretentious Mensa member stuff here.

Everyone thinks they’re at least fairly smart. Lots of smart people are humble about how smart they are (but really wonder if they’re even smarter than most people give them credit for). Lots of not very smart people are awfully confident that they’re smarter than you think they are. Is it possible we’d be better off if we all knew for sure exactly how smart we are, or would this be a disaster?

Imagine there were a way to measure intelligence absolutely, taking into account all the factors that you perceive to make someone “smart”. So through some process, your knowledge, wisdom, intuition, insightfulness, critical thinking, and ability to articulate ideas clearly, across all subjects or expertise, could be factored down to a simple number.

Imagine also that this is instantaneously applied to everyone in the world, which makes it possible to know with certainty, based on a percentile, where you or anyone else really stood in relation to every other person on the planet in terms of intelligence. You might be 47% or 83% now, but suddenly, you would know for sure.

Then imagine that some technology (a digital readout across your forehead, online database searchable by your mobile device, whatever you want) allows you to not only know your absolute intelligence rating, but also any other person’s, anytime you want.

[Note: I’m assuming it is possible to change this number with effort. Studying, learning, even just gaining life experience would potentially add to your rating, assuming you were gaining intelligence more than others who are not trying as hard. So this number isn’t a lifetime sentence or privilege (though some might have a genetic head start or natural hurdle to overcome), but a totally accurate real-time measurement relative to everyone else in the world.]

If it were possible to know this, would you want to?

If it were possible to know this about everyone else (and for them to know it about you), would you want that also?

How would this knowledge impact your day-to-day life, and how you deal with the people in your life?

How would it affect society in general, from things like education to job interviews, dating to elections, even just watching TV or sports?

Some messages are subtler than others.

You can play The Beginner’s Guide in a couple hours, tops. Playing it feels unlike playing any game you’ve played, because there aren’t really objectives to complete or decisions to make and there’s definitely no way to win or lose. The most accurate description of TBG I could come up with is calling it the world’s first interactive critical essay on video games; a game built to explore what games mean to their creators and the people who play them.

The conceit is that the narrator (the maker of the “actual” game you’re playing) is taking you on a guided tour of a bunch of half-finished game ideas created by a fellow game designer he admires. The thrust of the conversation focuses on how games reflect the ideas and personalities of their creators. The biggest point of contention is this: creating for the sake of creating is a pure act — personal, private expression — and then once anything is shared with an audience, the work inherently changes. There are expectations the audience brings to the work, there are interpretations and assumptions made about the work, and ultimately a whole new set of demands made on the creator of the work.

The interactive mode of exploring this idea makes for a very novel, very engaging exploration of the creative process. I loved going on this journey. But I liked it most for being one big exercise in examining my relationship with any of the creative works I enjoy.

Does creativity inherently lose something when it’s shared? Does it require an audience, or change as soon as an audience gets involved?

For things you’ve made, how do you factor in the audience while making those things?

For things you’ve enjoyed as an audience member, what, if anything, do you feel the creator owes you as a creator? Is that a fair exchange?

A topic best depicted in the abstract.

If you truly want to be challenged emotionally and ethically, I suggest — though with the requisite warnings about content that’s troubling, difficult, and may put you in a head space you do not want to be in — listening to the Love + Radio episode, “A Red Dot”, an extended interview with a man describing what it’s like to live life on the sex offender registry.

This isn’t a gawking look at how awful people live. It’s an attempt to empathize with a person who for many will be the least empathetic person you can think of. And it’s successful in that it doesn’t let him off the hook for making some very bad decisions, or having moments that suggest there’s a lingering disturbance within this person. But it also confronts us with the fact that a man can make a bad decision and continue paying the price for the rest of his life, no matter how he may learn, or grow, or change. It’s heavy stuff. I dare you to listen and not find yourself, at least at moments, feeling that empathy.

The tough question is, what can or should be done in this trickiest of situations?

If it’s acceptable to keep persecuting people after they’ve paid their debt, what are the limits to punishment?

Do we believe people can change enough to be forgiven, or at the very least left to live their life?

If we do, why is it ok to keep vilifying them? If we don’t, do they deserve what we put them through, or is there a better way to handle those we want to permanently ostracize?

This book could easily provide 20 more posts, but it would almost feel like stealing.

Chuck Klosterman’s I Wear the Black Hat collects a dozen or so essays about how we see certain figures in society as good or evil, and how sometimes the differences we feel so deeply aren’t as clear-cut a distinction as we might think. What we forgive in one person, we villify in someone else. Or the ways and reasons we remember some of our heroes ignore what other figures are hated for, often depending less on what they’ve done (or believed), but how they presented it to the world. Lots of good conversation (or at least chin-scratching contemplation) fodder, as is usual with Klosterman.

One passage in particular jumped out as a good reason to turn the lens back on myself, especially in the shadow of recent events:

Clear, unsubtle satire on TV shows like SNL and The Daily Show and The Colbert Report can succeed as entertainment, but they unintentionally reinforce the preexisting world: These vehicles frame the specific power holder as the sole object of scorn. This has no impact beyond comforting the enslaved. Power holders — even straight-up dictators — are interchangeable figureheads with limited reach; what matters far more is the institutional system those interchangeable figureheads temporarily represent.

So what does this mean, outside of an academic discussion about power? Well, maybe this: If you want to satirize the condition of a society, going after the apex of the pyramid is a waste of time. You need to attack the bottom. You need to ridicule the alleged ideological foundation an institution claims to be built upon. This is much, much more discomfiting than satirizing an ineffectual prime minister or a crack-smoking mayor. This requires the vilification of innocent, anonymous, working-class people.

As happy as I am to see The Daily Show in particular continue doing good work poking the giant, it may be a way for me to go on feeling superior while laughing at those in power. I sit on my couch venting my frustrations through comedy, while they go right on running-slash-ruining the world.

Does satire ever actually change anything for the better, or is it just a way to feel better about what’s wrong with the world?

Which satires are the most effective? What would make others more so?

Are the biggest fans of satire the people that are actually doing the least to make a real difference in the world?