Lewis thinks that the modern Western world tends to give us a choice between solitude—not always easy to choose—and “inclusion in a collective,” a collective for Lewis being an environment in which we all have more or less the same status and identity: as, for instance, part of the audience at a concert, or the crowd at a football game. What tends to get lost in our world is membership, which is neither solitary nor anonymous. Lewis explains: How true membership in a body differs from inclusion in a collective may be seen in the structure of a family.
