Do you feel lonely? If the internet is to be believed, we’re
currently suffering an epidemic of loneliness. Many are keen to blame social
networking, but it might not be that simple.
A recent survey by Relate in the UK found that a significant
minority of people had no close friends and rarely felt loved. This kind of
bean counting is always suspect as you can never know if people are telling the
truth. What one person defines as a friend, another may see as an acquaintance,
so some of us may be more lonely than we’re willing to admit.
Splendid Isolation
Humans are social creatures. We thrive in supportive
environments and the more social connections we have, the happier and healthier
we tend to be. We hate the idea of being cut off from others, and the threat of
ostracism is enough to ensure we behave and go along with the crowd. In the
past, excommunication from the tribe would have meant certain death, and it’s
still the case now that a lack of genuine connection with others is linked to
higher death rates.
Social exclusion is painful and we’re understandably keen to
avoid it, but loneliness isn’t about being alone, even if the two are often
conflated. Loneliness is about not
feeling connected to others, and that can happen even when surrounded by ‘friends’.
We live in crowded urban environments, but often have no
real connection with those around us. How many of us even know the names of our
neighbours? I know one or two, but that’s only because I’ve taken in parcels
for them, not because I’ve made an effort to get to know them. Even after a
recent fire in the building, we all kept to ourselves again once the danger was
over.
As a society we have a tendency to withdraw into our own
little worlds, hidden behind locked doors and widescreen TVs, and then bemoan
the decline of the neighbourhood. We fall into an Us v Them mentality which is reinforced by the media and much of
what passes for ‘connection’ on networks like Facebook and Twitter.
Why do we do this to ourselves?
Loneliness seems to be part of the human condition. Even if
we’re lucky enough to have genuine personal connections with family and
friends, there’s often still a deeper part of the self that is held back.
This is how the ego works – it defines itself by exclusion,
by building walls. As long as you’re operating through the ego, you will be
lonely, whether you allow yourself to feel it or not. Our culture provides
plenty of distraction and misdirection to ensure we never discover the truth
about our discontent. But it’s very simple: until you transcend the ego and its
petty fears and games, you will be unable to form genuinely satisfying
relationships with anyone, including yourself.
It is our
identification with the ego that makes us feel lonely. It also drives
conflict and lack of trust within our communities, fuelling the Us v Them
mindset.
Blitz Spirit
The ego problem appears to be a big stumbling block, but it
doesn’t take much to overcome it. There are countless examples of people coming
together to tackle a threat to their community. In the face of natural
disasters or emergencies, a sense of community springs up and goes into action,
almost as if it were lying dormant and just waiting for the right moment.
Emergencies remind us we’re all the same and that anyone can
become a victim of tragedy or disaster. A life-threatening situation brings
people together and reminds us that life is more meaningful if we live for each
other, rather than just for ourselves. In the Joy of the Blackout, Sean Crawley
looks at the upside of a community forced to get to know each other in an
emergency:
“..Books, photo albums, playing cards and acoustic instruments are resuscitated back to life as the grid-dependent plastic gadgets sit powerless in the corner. ..the long lost art of face to face human interaction is rekindled as the internet’s virtual worlds and social networks collapse at the speed of light… Family members get to know each other again, or for the first time, and some of those neighbours who you invited over to share the now-thawed side of lamb are actually not weirdos at all. People share food, stories and human-powered tools.”
Another example: in May, devastating floods caused death and destruction across Bosnia and Slovenia. The area was torn apart by war in the
90s, with neighbours killing each other in the name of nationalism. What
remained has now been washed away in the floods, but the Yugoslavians have
rediscovered their solidarity, “..this
time, we’re not killing each other. We’re helping each other instead.”
Levels of Community
To move from a defensive Us v Them stance to one of
supportive community depends upon our relationship to power. If we use the
power-over model, we’re more likely to rely on force to maintain order and
believe we must defend ourselves against a world filled with enemies. This is
how things are done around the world today, and it makes the slow unravelling
of civilisation so much more destructive. Not everyone responds in the same way
to danger or crisis, and in extreme situations people often pull apart rather
than pulling together.
To transform this lack of connection we need to change the
way we think and how we see ourselves. It means moving from power-over to
power-with in order to recognise our inherent interdependence and
interconnectivity. None of us can survive alone. We’re not self-sufficient and
we need each other.
Active Hope
explores four levels of community. Each progressively widens our sense of self
by demonstrating how we belong to a larger whole. The four levels of community
are:
- Groups we feel at home in
- The wider community around us
- The global community of humanity
- The Earth community of life
Groups we feel at
home in are small groups of like-minded people working together to bring about
changes in the local community. It’s easy to feel connected to people with whom
you share values and common goals. This is a good place to start to reconnect
before venturing further afield into..
The wider community
around us is where people come together for larger causes. The Transition
movement is a good example of this level of community. This is a global network
of initiatives working towards building community resilience in readiness for
the failure of the old industrial model of civilisation.
The global community
of humanity is about recognising we’re all in this together. As Martin
Luther King Jr. said, “We are caught in
an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. What
affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
The Earth community
of life recognises that we are embedded in nature and dependent on it to
live. Protecting other species and ecosystems is our duty. Without them, we
cannot live. Activist and writer Duane Elgin puts it like this:
“Our extermination of other species has been compared to popping rivets out of the wings of an airplane in flight. How many rivets can the plane lose before it begins to fall apart catastrophically? How many species can our planet lose before we cross a critical threshold where the integrity of the web of life is so compromised that it begins to come apart, like an airplane that loses too many rivets and disintegrates?”
The more we cling to our fragile egos, the more we fear each
other. The more we fear each other, the more we hate. The more we hate, the
more we kill. Loneliness is unnecessary. We don’t need to protect ourselves
from each other or from nature. The natural world has our backs. The Earth has
supported us from the start. We are not at war with the air and water and earth
that keep us alive. It is only our misguided perception of ourselves as
separate from life that keeps this whole sorry mess going; and it won’t be
going for very much longer.
“Only when humans have completed the transformation of Earth from a luxuriant, verdant, bountiful and nurturing home into something akin to their own sterile, barren and lifeless inner landscape will they finally understand the horror they have visited upon themselves; and then it will be too late.” – Richard Posner
It’s time to remember whose side you’re on. Pick a team.
Next we look at the effects of time speeding up in Slow Down: How to Travel in Time
Image: Reaching out
