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2 Comments

1. Fiona Marsden says:

   10 October 2010 at 1:10 pm

   Hello Andrew
   I was listening to your interview and found the concepts you spoke about very interesting and pertinent. As someone who has transitioned from a high level of religious involvement to a focus on community involvement in disability issues your comments really struck home with me.
   Fiona
2. Ian Currie says:

   10 October 2010 at 6:22 pm

   Hi Andrew

   I look forward to reading “Disconnected”. For some time I have been working on the idea that Connection is one of the deepest of human motivators; one can see how the instinct for connection between people (and earlier, between animals) has arisen from the survival advantage in the strength of groups over individuals.

   This feeling of connection seems to be what produces the sense of “meaning” in our lives. This may or may not be connection with other people: depending on attitudes and psychology, people may form deep connections with pets, with a musical instrument or musical genre, with art or craft or literature, with a religion, with a sport, with one’s mobile phone, with Facebook… I believe that even drug addiction can come into this category of deep connection in the early stages. One of the hallmarks of this sort of experience, when it is “working” well, is the experience of ecstasy, or deep calm or deep peace or satisfaction. In many contexts, this experience is referred to as a “spiritual experience”, though I prefer to avoid this term as it often has religious implications, and it is important to understand that there are many non-religious ways to access this life-giving experience.

   It seems to me that this climactic experience is what causes the sense of meaning in our lives. It also seems obvious that the occurrence of the experience does not guarantee that all types of connection experience are necessarily “a good thing”. Some suicide bombers are deeply motivated by connection with their religion and with other believers. Many German people leading up to the Second World War, indoctrinated with the lies and hate propaganda against Jews, were inspired by Hitler’s oratory and felt a deep connection with him and the fascist movement. Other examples are football hooliganism, institutionalised race hatred and sometimes gang rape.

   The most important ingredients in community glue (what holds groups and communities together) are shared interests supported by this deep instinct to connect.  In recent decades this instinct has been denied by right-wing political movements as they focus on individualism and personal greed.  The move towards privatisation has systematically undermined community institutions that have taken decades or centuries to establish…. institutions like libraries, hospitals, schools and universities, support for the disabled etc etc… and it has been distressing to find so-called left-wing parties sometimes embracing these policies as strongly as their right-wing opponents.

   One of the stabilizing forces in any community is community pressure for ethical behaviour.  This requires a degree of transparency in who is doing what.  This is being compromised by the spreading anonymity of an increasingly mobile and digital world.  This combined with the destruction of community institutions is slowly destabilising and dissolving our communities.  The result is wide acceptance of blatant greed in financial institutions, greater wealth gap between the rich and the poor, more violence and other crime, more drug use, escalating spending on prisons, plus all the already mentioned effects of destruction of schools, libraries, hospitals etc.

   We are finally able to see exposed the effect of extreme right-wing policies.  The fact is that we all do have selfish instincts and these can be a powerful motivating force.  But it is also true that we have strong instincts towards community and interpersonal connection.  These two instincts are catered for by capitalist and socialist principles respectively.  In a balanced society we need a balance between these two powerful motivating principles.  The recent focus on just capitalism is about as stable as a one-legged wallaby.  It needs both legs to move forward!

   Probably I should have waited until I have read your book, next on my “to-buy” list, before dumping all this… but I was quite inspired by your interview on ABC’s Radio National today, and would welcome comment. Good luck in your new job!!!

   Ian