One thing that I&#x27;ve noticed and that kind of concerns me is that in my environment (urban, well-educated, white, late-twenties, Western-Europe) there&#x27;s a distinct lack of regular interaction with people who are significantly older, younger, less-educated, and&#x2F;or &#x27;less&#x27; white.<p>Perhaps the reason why I notice is it that in my previous Evangelical Christian life I interacted with a much greater variety of people through regular church-related activities (every Sunday and Thursday, and special events on top of that).<p>From mentally disabled (apologies if that&#x27;s not the PC term) to genius-level mathematicians, from as-local-as-&lt;insert typical local food&gt; to a huge amount of different ethnic backgrounds, from watching babies in the Sunday kindergarten to volunteering for &#x27;coffee duty&#x27; at events for seniors, and from dirt-poor to local jeweler&#x2F;banker&#x2F;realtor; all of that came together on, at the very least, a weekly basis. And it&#x27;s one of the few things I really miss from my church-going years. Literally every single one of those people in some way enriched my life.<p>I think it&#x27;s a very good thing to try to counterbalance increasingly common lifestyles of &#x27;homogenous interactions&#x27; through initiatives like this. I really think it does increase empathy, and I really think it&#x27;s necessary.