The walls we build

[duncan drennan]

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This is from Hugh Macleod's Hughtrain on gapingvoid.com. He uses it to illustrate the barriers between markets and the internals of a company and speaks about the porousness of x and how much are A & B aligned.

Being a Friday it seems my brain is in a bit of a philosophical mode.

We bought our first house this year. It is not in a suburb that is "the place to buy", just a very average suburb. What's amazing about where we live is that there are very few walls, and the neighbourhood kids play in the street until late at night. I was sitting chatting to my neighbour last night and he was commenting on how this is so rare.

So, getting back to the picture and applying it slightly differently. Let's say A is me or you, or any citizen of our country. B is everyone else.

In SA our (affluent) culture is to build the biggest wall along X that we can afford, but essentially that disconnects us from B, or disconnects us from the people around us (as you can imagine this principle can be applied to lots of things).

So we have this vicious circle going, crime drives up walls, which in turn disconnect us from the people around us, which exposes us to more crime, and drives up bigger walls.

I'm not suggesting breaking down your walls and turning off the electric fence, maybe just connect to someone this weekend, whether that's your wife, children, neighbour or friend. Connect, speak, enjoy, because when people start to communicate, really communicate, walls come down between us and the world changes.

Have a great weekend

[duncan drennan]

I posted the first post quite a while ago, but reading No Impact Man today made me think of it.

Probably it feels that way because, according to the boffins who research what makes for happiness, the “positive psychologists,” people quickly get used to almost any set of conditions. Within a few years, lottery winners and people who become paralyzed tend to return to the same level of happiness they had before their change in circumstance.

What people can’t get used to, though, is the loss of one of the main factors positive psychologists find does have a lasting affect on happiness: community. In fact, in may be that breakdown in community in the United States is one reason that, although material wellbeing has increased hugely in the last 50 years, rates of depression, substance abuse and teen suicide have skyrocketed.

We move away from our families and friends. We stay in the office until all hours. We travel endlessly on business trips. We spend our spare time in front of screens instead of with each other. All these things, we do because we think they will ultimately make us feel better, but in fact, they undermine our connections to each other and make us feel worse.

Read the full post on No Impact Man

Imagine what a stronger country we would have if we all managed to somehow feel connected to each as part of a unique and wonderful community.