“(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.
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/
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
No comments:
Post a Comment