And our biology. Dunbar's Number shows that the human animal is capable of maintaining about 150 'meaningful' social relationships. Anyone outside that rather small circle is just an 'acquaintance' or less. You can (and many have) debated the exact value of Dunbar's Number, but not the base premise. Humans are a pack animal. That pack can only be around 100 animals before it begins to fragment into smaller groups. Those groups need a way to define who is "in" and who is "out" of the group, so stratification happens on multiple levels. Our new technologies that allow us to simulate close connections with thousands of people further tax the limited resources of our internal social map and capabilities, and force us into pretending a closer connection with more people than we can actually connect with. The result is isolation due to your own internal filters/capabilities knowing you are not fully engaged with as many people as you pretend to be. If you moved into a cabin in the woods, how many people would actually visit you? That's the measure. That's the fear. Religion or no, social stratification is kind of baked into our societies.