NEAR AND FAR

 

“(Astronomer Sir William) Herschel removed the speckled tent-roof from the world and exposed the immeasurable deeps of space, dim-flecked with fleets of colossal suns sailing their billion-leagued remoteness” - Mark Twain

 

The Reality of Isolation, Separation, Connection?

Dire Strait’s Mark Knopfler explains that their song So Far Away is about distances that have opened up between people, separated families and loved ones. Telephone (or these days, Internet) relationships were seen by him to be a joke because “they can’t work in the long term”.

 An African refugee in Sweden, in Henning Mankell’s novel The Shadow Girls: “As long as she kept her eyes closed she could imagine that she was still back in the village by the cold, clear river that spilled down the side of the mountain. But as soon as she opened her eyes she was thrown out into an empty ad unfathomable world, one in which nothing of her past remained except disjointed images of her escape”. (Mankell, H. 2012) 

Our dog Popcorn was badly abused, injured and abandoned as a pup. She is now settled in and is friendly to everyone. She tries always to be close to and rest her paw or head on one of us, a sort of dog-attachment-complex. And she definitely shows separation - anxiety if she is left behind when both Lynette and I go out.

Distance may be real or imagined, physical, relational, social, spiritual. All of these dimensions have manifested as we’ve seen the manipulation of information to create division and polarisation, connections between people broken. My co-authored, soon to be released booklet on using story-bridging to build bridges and not walls aims at teaching a process that fosters proximity instead of distance. The serious harm caused by a Draconian political imposition of masks and social distancing regulations without any valid scientific basis, in order to ‘combat’ the ‘pandemic’ prevents the closeness and touch that humans so need. It’s in our DNA. (Williams, G. 2020)

In South Africa, shamefully, the government excels at building walls and creating distance and enmity between racial and ethnic groups, in the process doing huge social and economic harm. After over a quarter of a century in power they are ratcheting up the legislation of quotas in business, sports, schooling, university and other arenas!  A newly released article by former CEO of the Institute of Race Relations in South Africa, John Kane-Berman, addresses a March 2022 paper by our Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) - a government/ statutory research agency that “advances social sciences and humanities for public use”. Their paper promotes a “view that the more a school’s racial demographics deviated from the demographic make-up of the country’s population, the more “segregated” it was. On this yardstick, even former white schools that were now predominantly black African were still “segregated”, as the desired norm for white pupils was 3.8% (their share of the total school-going population). Any excess was a case of the “hoarding of educational opportunities by the white minority and other socio-economically advantaged groups”. Kane-Berman relates a number of other shocking narratives about this sort of control of ‘overrepresentation’ - including how in 1930s Germany there was a concern about overrepresentation of Jews in schools and universities. (Kane-Berman, J. 2022) We know how those concerns played out.

Starkly contrast (in quantum physics) David Bohm’s understanding of an unbroken connection between any element of the universe and every other element over space and time (an implicate order) “… two subatomic particles that have once interacted can instantaneously ‘respond to each other's motions thousands of years later when they are light-years apart’" (The Cosmic Plenum) A whole different concept of space and time  distance.

 

What is real for you when it comes to this question of distance or proximity?

Spectra along which we see meaning and make choices?

So near and yet so far. A pipped-on-the-post photo finish. A miss is as good as a mile. A near-death experience. Last minute goals, tries, falls or runs that win or lose sporting matches, a war that seems distant and then imminent... Or the difference between real, perceived, imagined, desired “close to” or “far from”.  Considerations compounded and complicated by interconnected Physical, Intellectual, Emotional, Social and Spiritual spectra.

A lesson that comes to us from the diversity arena is that construal level theory, a largely ignored experiential/ behavioural difference between people – where differences manifest in how individuals relate to time and space and psychological-distance gaps arise:  

• temporal distance (past present or future focus), 
• social distance (connection push or pull), 
• spatial distance (physical location from face to face, next door, faraway places, ‘boardroom and garden’ situations, 
• experiential distance (reality, perception, sensation, imagination, dreams, reverie). 

We could add more: emotional closeness to our possessions, positions, means of power, religion, friends and family... separating and distancing resulting from language - diversity and babbling…  Overcoming these gaps and enabling belonging requires us to become far more prosocial, and are complicated and magnified these days by misinformation, division, new existential threats, fragmentation and severed connections on many fronts. 

My perception of the importance of nature and beauty within nature has changed recently since moving from city to village. My awareness has been raised by ‘in your face’ nearby surrounding mountains, much starker season changes, and the obvious closeness of farm workers to the land… And I sometimes think that cities can act as magnets for the concentration of dangers, power, wrongdoing – result in more anonymity and social distance - are places where things spread more quickly and widely (disease, anarchy, plundering...) - and the country seems relatively free of these things and dynamics

A number of recent conversations have highlighted how some people are shifting their thinking regarding their career prospects in this ‘pandemic’ era. Some see benefits of being in the eye, space, ear, touching distance of others (especially bosses and opinion leaders) in a physical workplace. They see working from home as a distinct disadvantage. Others have polar-opposite perceptions.  (Both schools would do well to note that being closer to nature and outdoors is beneficial to physical, emotional, mental, social and spiritual health. Being in nature helps relieve stress, gain perspective, counter brain fog, feel more human and alive)

In a parable loved by Polish-born philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer and also Sigmund Freud (Austrian founder of psychoanalysis), in ice-cold weather some porcupines huddle together and strive to get close to each other to keep warm. But they also have to be far enough away from each other so that they don’t prick each other. 

Austrian - Jewish philosopher Martin Buber pointed out the challenge of living not only next to others (nebeneinander) but with each other (miteinander). (Which incidentally raises the question of who we are when we’re alone). (Stan, C.M. 2020)

Sharyn Cooke and Bert Kling (in an Ed McBain mystery novel) who have big differences on a number of diversity spectra, work at having a close, relaxed, honest and loving relationship. Kling “described intimacy as a ‘shlep’, a Yiddish word that actually meant ‘to carry, or pull, or drag, or lag behind’ but which he took to mean ‘a long haul’ as in the expression ‘Man, that was a shlep and a half!’”. Sharyn has two pillows made. One white on black and the other black on white. They read: 

“Share

  Help

  Love

  Encourage

  Protect”. 

Not a bad acronym for relationships. Here is a relational- closeness exercise for you: 

 

Decide where on the circles of connection you want to place the most important people in your life (past, present and future):

 

First, put a name to each of the pictures below: 

 

(Add workplace colleagues, subordinates, contacts, spiritual relationships if you wish. I have known people to include God in the exercise they do and often this is because of some sort of disaster that has occurred. When disaster strikes people either curse or call on God, whose relationship positioning changes - in their perspective).

Then think about why you placed these people where you have on the circles diagram. What are the elements that have made for good or bad, close or distant relationships and connections?  What has been your 'complicity' in making them work or fail? What values have determined your placement of each person?  

And then, answer ‘Where to now?’  Think about where on your circles you would want these relationships to be in future. Which relationships do you wish to deepen or to cool? And what is your plan (thinking, feeling, acting) in each case? 

(This might mean writing a letter to a relative or child you have lost touch with, making a point of going for a walk with a subordinate who you have been taking for granted, inviting a colleague to breakfast, allocating less time to unnecessary meetings, email and social media chat groups and narcissistic conversationalists – and more time to forging meaningful one on one connections chosen by you, finding out more about another’s expertise, interests and cultural rules-of-engagement, deciding to forge a strategic connection that will be good for cooperative business, examining your own hesitancies, fears, stereotyping  .... )

 

Collective Aspects of Distance and Proximity?

The collective behaviour of a crowd is said to be contagious, even hypnotic and thus able to overcome individual independence and self-control, so the individual adopts the (closely-knitted) crowd’s behaviour instead of being driven by his/her own values, constraints and taking of responsibility. 

Closely related to this is the group pathology called ‘fragmentation of conscious’ (which  usually applies to more drastic, extreme behaviour – as in times of war, but can be read into the positions adopted by big pharma employees, health workers, politicians and others during the ‘pandemic’).

 In his book People of the Lie, M.Scott Peck relays the My Lai incident in South Vietnam in 1968, where members of the United States Army killed 500 to 600 unarmed villagers. Years later, he was appointed by the Army Surgeon General as chairman of a committee given the task of making recommendations about undertaking psychological research–to understand and help prevent such incidents in future. The committee’s recommendations were rejected for fear of embarrassing the status quo. The organisation, the US Army, protected itself. Scott Peck explains lucidly that group pathology was at play even though each killing was an individual act. He points out that different levels, as well as different departments within a hierarchy, can experience a ‘fragmentation of conscience’, especially under conditions of stress. This ‘fragmentation of conscience’ may be motivated by fear and self-preservation and the group thinking can result in:

• avoiding taking responsibility for what the wider organisation is doing 
• blaming other departments, or overall policies, or ‘management’ for what is happening (Scott Peck, M. 1998)

On the other hand, convergence theory says that like-minded individuals coming together will inform and direct crowd behaviour.

It’s a sort of chicken and egg situation – what occurs first (the individual or crowd status) may not be relevant. In both positive and negative developments. And as individuals form crowds, new behaviour norms may emerge.

I’ve come to believe that coherent small - groups (for example in the social construct of circles) have the highest chance of becoming a force for wide change as the results and energy within their circle radiates or ripples outwards. Being closer to a small community is one way of being a force for good in our broken world.

 

 Simultaneous Proximity and Distance?

 

Clown fish always remain completely separate from the anemone, but a mucus on their skin prevents them being affected by the anemone’s poison. Being close physically they are protected from predators, feed off anemone food. The anemone is kept clean as the clown fish remove and eat parasites. 

Team members at work may not like each other, may not be close to each other, but by not distancing themselves are able to jointly get results to mutual benefit – as is the case of a machine gunner and ammunition belt feeder who together face a common enemy.

Relational/ ego boundaries although variable, are necessary in all relationships – close or distant.

 

The Art of Life?

Accomplished mathematician Michael (from the Hebrew ‘who is like God’ or ‘gift from God') Behrens (of medieval origin - comprised of ‘bear’ plus ‘resilient’ plus ‘strong and brave’)  lives in the Hawaiian jungle. 

What ideas do you glean from his story (The Art of Life) with regard to distance and proximity (place, things, people, nature, being…)  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gUh8j5ui0o

For many it may be the realisation that much of what we might wish to be in terms of living a simple, purer life could be (to borrow from the Roger Daltry song) Just A Dream Away. And for some it may come down to that line from a challenging hymn that flies in the face of Arthur Scopenhauer’s thinking: “Nearer my God to thee” no matter what?

 

References

Cosmic Plenim, The    Bohm’s Gnosis: The Implicate Order 

http://www.bizint.com/stoa_del_sol/plenum/plenum_3.html 

Hamilton, Rebecca (2015) Bridging Psychological distance March 2015 HBR  https://hbr.org/2015/03/bridging-psychological-distance?cm_sp=Magazine%20Archive-_-Links---current%20Issue

Kane – Berman, John (2022) The anti-semitic origins of diversity and racial “representation” Daily Friend 25 April, 2022  https://dailyfriend.co.za/2022/04/25/the-anti-semitic-origins-of-diversity-and-racial-representation/

Mankell, Henning (2012) The Shadow Girls Harvill Secker, London

Scott Peck, Morgan M.D. (1998) People of the Lie: the hope for healing human evil Touchstone

Stan, Corina M. (2020) Philosophies of Distance and Proximity: Who Are We When We’re Alone? July 9th, 2020  https://lithub.com/philosophies-of-distance-and-proximity-who-are-we-when-were-alone/

Williams, Graham (2020) Are we losing touch? Storytelling in Business Blog, 15th July, 2020

http://storytellinginbusiness.blogspot.com/2020/07/touch.html

 

 

 

YOU GOTTA HAVE HOPE (AND HELP)

File:2013 Rainbow over Washfold.jpg In the public domain (Wikipedia Commons Images) 

 

THERE IS SOME DANGER IN UNBRIDLED POSITIVE THINKING

We tend to magnify threats and to underestimate our coping mechanisms, resources, ability to innovate when faced with obstacles, and our ability to see opportunity in crises. So, we need to balance our proclivity for negativity with a habitual leaning towards positivity – and see both the stars and the bars as we look at a reality beyond our confined space and place, and reframe our thoughts accordingly. But not to the point that we wear rose-tinted glasses no matter what the circumstances. A healthy, realistic balance should be maintained.

Positive psychology which can be traced to the likes of Lao Tzu, Buddha and in modern times to William James - and developed or punted by Abraham Maslow, Norman Vincent Peale, Martin Seligman and others - has become very popular. Positivity is a factor in a number of resilience models and has become a desirable leadership and life-style trait. 

At the intersection of psychology and theology we have seen misunderstandings, and the adoption of dangerously applied misinterpretations such as ‘the law of attraction’ – a magical direction of one’s thoughts to manifest what one desires, that is, to bring about a self-serving outcome. Worse still, is to try and foist ‘positive thinking’ on others. For example, it is not helpful but potentially harmful to tell someone who is suffering from depression (an illness, not a poor choice) to ‘think more positively’. (Andrée-Ann Labranche, a doctoral student in psychology, describes this as “emotional invalidation” which “involves ignoring, denying, criticizing or rejecting another person’s feelings”. Undermining their right to have, understand, accept, validate, own and work through their own feelings and behaviours. Her research shows that it is harmful to invalidate another’s emotions, and likely to invoke depressive symptoms or exacerbate existing depression, especially if this is done repeatedly.

(https://theconversation.com/toxic-positivity-why-it-is-important-to-live-with-negative-emotions-166008)  

Emotional invalidation takes away hope.

Blind optimism, irrational faith in positive thinking needs to be tempered, or it leads quickly to unwarranted belief in self (My will be done, not thine or yours). 

In seeking balance, we should heed what German psychologist and philosopher Erich Fromm said, that (extreme or ‘toxic’) optimists and pessimists are both lazy opt-outs. Nothing needs to be done, they imply or believe – either because all will be fine, or because nothing can be done. So, “Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair… To have faith means to dare, to think the unthinkable, yet to act within the limits of the realistically possible”. 

 

HOPE

And false or wrongly placed hope leads nowhere. A key bridge to acceptance of and working towards a future that is meant to be, is well-founded hope.

Fromm once more: “Hope is a decisive element in any attempt to bring about social change in the direction of greater aliveness, awareness, and reason. But the nature of hope is often misunderstood and confused with attitudes that have nothing to do with hope and in fact are the very opposite”.

The mystery of hope placed in a divine Creator plays a wonderful role in sound mind-positioning, and in the generation of effective, empowered action arising out of facing situations and threats realistically. Out of this process something beautiful emerges from the dark (as a lotus flower rises out of murky depths).

 

HOPEFUL LEADERSHIP

I love Winston Churchill’s balanced acknowledgement of a dire threat as well as his encouragement of a determined response during the early part of World War II, after the fall of France: “It would be foolish to disguise the gravity of the hour. It would be still more foolish to lose heart and courage...  In that supreme emergency we shall not hesitate to take every step - even the most drastic - to call forth from our people the last ounce and inch of effort of what they are capable … (and drawing on an injunction from a book of the Apocrypha that is echoed in The Lord’s Prayer) … As the Will of God is in Heaven, even so let it be”

 

HELP

Having lived in Rawsonville in the Cape for 4 months now, I’ve been able to observe a small -town culture of inquisitiveness about others, sometimes leading to a helping hand and at other times to critique but without getting involved, and using the excuse, ‘I’m minding my own business’. (This doesn’t exclude gossiping though: starting fires and spreading the flames without helping). At least there is more involvement here than one typically finds in cities.

Of course, ‘helping’ when it is not required or desired by the object of that help is usually not helpful. Even parents seeing their adult children going wrong, making mistakes, approaching disaster and hurt, may need to hold back and patiently wait with 'the bandages and ointment' until asked to help.

And when asked for help it’s best to weigh up the provision of our help on the asker’s best interests. (‘Yes’ isn’t always the best answer)

Nor is it helpful to tell anyone who is suffering or in difficulty simply to ‘think positive’. That’s an implied judgement that changes nothing except impose guilt or a feeling of inadequacy. But kindling hope in a realistically understood situation is helpful. Especially in this crisis-laden age of every ‘man’ for himself. And this kindling of hope may also kindle felt - love, and healing.

Helping instead of crossing to the other side of the street is what we could be more ready, willing and able to do. 

Most times the situations in which we may be in a position to give or receive help and hope is when we are off-line, away from isolating technology, and not distanced from others. In such a social context we are far more able to be open and available to sounder sensing, engaging, and responding.  Neurosurgeon Ian Weinberg puts it this way: 

“I would suggest that it is long overdue that we re-connect and re-engage in the flesh and with the natural environment so that we ensure a continual flow of healthy authenticity into our existence. This I believe is our birth-right and the solution to many of the current emerging maladies of mind and body”.

 

Let’s get out there, be of help, spread hope.