OldSoul.blog

Like many families, our family has a social media chat group that we use to share news, arrange family gatherings, and post photos (both cute and embarrassing ).  This past week the chat became momentarily heavier, as family members discussed the apparent escalation of youth crime in our area.  My contribution to the thread included this too-simplistic observation:  To some extent it’s a matter of priorities – we spend billions of dollars removing level crossings and building freeways because those things have more electoral appeal than funding effective diversion programs for young people, or funding social housing, or better-resourcing schools and public health programs. I know that’s a bit simplistic, but I reckon it’s one factor in the puzzle.  I had thought of including a comment lamenting the demise of church youth groups and the like (which I felt had helped keep young people ‘out of trouble’ in my own adolescent years), but I didn’t want to again be the one to make our family chat ‘churchy’!

So, while the family thread quickly returned to its usual mix of topics, the brief foray beyond our private world continued to exercise my mind.  I wondered what it was about my experience of church youth groups, Boy Scouts and footy teams that makes me think they might have kept me and my friends ‘out of trouble’.  My chat comment indicates that, in providing a place to go, a group to belong to, and activities that both entertained and educated, I believe these ‘diversions’ gave me a platform for healthy formation, a platform that some, perhaps many, young people do not have access to these days.   But the solution must entail more than simply recovering or re-popularising youth groups, Scouts or sports teams: can I identify some underlying principles that might point to both cause and solution?

In the midst of my rumination, the latest edition of Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files [Issue #295] landed in my inbox and I read,Loneliness is the breakdown of the overarching structure of things, a feeling of separateness or exclusion from the sum and substance of the world.  It reminded me of an article I wrote during the COVID years, The Deep Loneliness of Humanity, and I wondered: could it be that loneliness is a factor in the inappropriate ‘acting out’ of young people?  And not just young people: could it be that the deep loneliness of humanity is at the heart of many of the aberrant behaviours, addictions and anti-social attitudes of (at least) western cultures?  Researchers tell us that loneliness has reached epidemic proportions within our society.  It is strange but true that people can live, work and play in high-density urban centres and still feel lonely. Even high-profile AFL footballers, people who spend their lives immersed in a team context, have spoken of feeling lonely and isolated.

In his article, Nick Cave references philosopher, neuroscientist and psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist who says we require three things to attain a meaningful life. The first is feeling part of a wider community – family, friends, and society in general. Second is an understanding of nature and a connection to the natural order of things, (and third) we need to form a relationship with the sacred or divine – this can be found in art, music, poetry and religion, where we acknowledge the ineffable and all-encompassing force that holds the world together.  These days I might equate the second and third factors, but I do recognise that in my youth, the church youth group, Scouts and sports teams, along with family, school and other networks, provided me with this framework.

Is it too simplistic to suggest that some breakdown in social cohesion is a factor in the rise of youth crime?  I am no expert, although in my professional career I have worked with young people – the well-adjusted and the mal-adjusted, with people addressing addiction, with people experiencing emotional ups and downs, and with people living rough, and I have heard many of them speak of feeling lonely and isolated.  I even recall one young man, a resident in a youth accommodation project I was engagement with, telling me that he didn’t really like the other people in the ‘gang’ he was part of, and didn’t like doing the things they did together, but he liked the feeling of belonging to something.

I wonder to what degree this is true today of those who choose unhealthy lifestyles and demonstrate destructive behaviours?  Could it be that, for some people, the need to belong to something, to be important to someone, outweighs their social conscience and skews their moral compass?

And there’s more. Tricia Gates Brown, writing in The Christian Century, posits that our problem isn’t just loneliness, it’s species loneliness. Shes writes, human beings have cut ourselves off from the nonhuman species inhabiting our world. In our desire for dominance and self-gratification we have put ourselves in solitary confinement, and in the worst cases become the tormenter of all things nonhuman. We have deprived ourselves of love relationships with nonhumans. This ‘species loneliness’ is making us sick. We were never meant to operate as an autonomous and independent species. We desperately need the full cooperation of other species to survive, from large mammals that maintain a crucial balance within ecosystems to microbial communities in our own guts. As a result of our non-cooperation, interspecies disconnection is breaking down the systems humans depend on.

I get this.  I know from my own experience how a day spent immersed in nature can be restorative, or how a walk with the dog can refresh my weary spirit, or how a moment spent contemplating a dragonfly can nurture my soul.  And I know I’m not alone in this awareness.  How much more effective might this connection with non-human species be if we were deeply intentional about it, really attended to the relationship by looking into the eyes of the bird as it watches us go by, or feeling the pavement under the feet of the slater as it scurries out of our way, or noticing how the grass bends beneath our feet as we walk on it.  Maybe, just maybe, the antidote to the loneliness of our generation is closer and simpler than we thought.  And maybe addressing this deep loneliness of humanity will help, at least in part, to provide the meaning, the sense of belonging and the deep connection to that which is beyond us that McGilchrist suggests is the key to a healthy and constructive life.  May we nurture these connections in our own life, and may we dare to invite those who are at risk to share those connections with us.

A final word from Nick Cave:  These days, I try my best to maintain genuine relations with the world – with my loved ones, with nature, and with the sacred – in a comprehensive and participatory manner. Overall, I have found that this keeps the twin devils of loneliness and meaninglessness at bay.  [Red Hand Files #295]

David Brooker

31^st July 2024