The State of the Self - Have we Lost a Sense of Community...

[mike carey]

'Do your remember when if you didn't know something ... you didn't know it?'

'Unless you got in the car and went to the library to look it up.'

'Luxury! We had to catch the bus.'

'Unless you were one of those kids whose parents had had a salesman convince your parents to buy a set of Encyclopædia Britannica.' (I was one of those.)

The full title of the thread should have included the words '... in a post-pandemic world', and the exchange above was a symptom of one of the things that has changed almost everything this century for better or worse, but the pandemic may have been one of the tipping points in that it may have 'intensified a culture of excessive individualism, narcissism, and disconnection from one another'.

This is an interesting discussion from the Adelaide Writers' Festival last week, broadcast on ABC Radio National, that both posed the question and explored some of the ways to counteract it by looking at the world beyond the immediate and the self.

The State of the Self: Have we lost a sense of community in a post pandemic world? - ABC listen

WWW.ABC.NET.AU

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Despite the promise that we were “all in it together”, the COVID-19 pandemic led to a flight from sociability. While...

 

[TonyDown]

Thank you for sharing that link.  An interesting discussion. 

I recall how my mother would jump up from the dinner table and rush to our set of encyclopedias whenever the discussions led to an opportunity to look up some topic and recite it so we'd learn about it.

I was puzzled by the eucalyptus comment, whether they were blaming the fires in part on the type of trees.  Certainly there were eucalyptus trees that blew down during the wind but it was the wind that was the terrible factor with the fires.  I suppose I knew the eucalyptus isn't a native tree in California but hadn't heard much about it since I moved here years ago and was told by my aunt for some reason they can be a nuisance.

Geraldine Brooks discussing her coping mechanism after her husband died reminded me of Joan Dideon's The Year of Magical Thinking, although swimming with turtles sounds preferable.

The question of State of Self and specifically how to explain our frame of mind in the States and specifically to the French has actually come up for me on another chat board with many European members.  Although I thought about offering my 2 cents, why we think like we do, in the end I didn't. 

Perhaps it was more rhetorical anyway.  And like was stated during David Marr's radio show, if anyone tells you they have the answer, one ought to run away.

Edited March 9 by TonyDown

[mike carey]

3 hours ago, TonyDown said:

I was puzzled by the eucalyptus comment, whether they were blaming the fires in part on the type of trees.

I don't think Ms Kushner was blaming the trees for the fires, but their presence would certainly not have helped. Eucalypts are fire tolerant and many depend on fire in their life cycle. They do inhibit the growth of other plants near them, and in fires the eucalyptus oil in their leaves can burn explosively. That said, conifers are also fire prone so it wouldn't be down to the gum trees alone. What is true is that they do not occur naturally there so anything about them that contributes to fires is a reason for them not to be there, but they are. And as an exotic species they don't have the other pests and parasites that constrain them in Australia.

I can't comment on the comparisons between US and French responses to the pandemic, but Ms Brook's characterisation of the Australian response, the we were all in this together, rings true. The state government with the toughest border restrictions (but relative internal freedom) won an unprecedented 53 of the 59 seats in the state Parliament in an election in early 2021.

I've meant for some time to get a copy of Julia Baird's book Phosphorescence. I should do that now, although I've still not finished the novel I was reading at Palm Springs last year.

[TonyDown]

4 hours ago, mike carey said:

I don't think Ms Kushner was blaming the trees for the fires, but their presence would certainly not have helped. Eucalypts are fire tolerant and many depend on fire in their life cycle. They do inhibit the growth of other plants near them, and in fires the eucalyptus oil in their leaves can burn explosively. That said, conifers are also fire prone so it wouldn't be down to the gum trees alone. What is true is that they do not occur naturally there so anything about them that contributes to fires is a reason for them not to be there, but they are. And as an exotic species they don't have the other pests and parasites that constrain them in Australia.

I can't comment on the comparisons between US and French responses to the pandemic, but Ms Brook's characterisation of the Australian response, the we were all in this together, rings true. The state government with the toughest border restrictions (but relative internal freedom) won an unprecedented 53 of the 59 seats in the state Parliament in an election in early 2021.

I've meant for some time to get a copy of Julia Baird's book Phosphorescence. I should do that now, although I've still not finished the novel I was reading at Palm Springs last year.

Their brief discussion of toxic empathy confused me.  I hadn't heard the term.  Now I see books and podcasts on it.  Of course there are!

 I find it worrisome that our modern sense of self will risk losing or rejecting that ability. 

Why not reject the plight of others, those deceivers, those losers, those who are different?   <-- Sarcasm. 

 Is that an idea circulating in Australia?   I see it's a good fit over here.

[soloyo215]

7 hours ago, TonyDown said:

Their brief discussion of toxic empathy confused me.  I hadn't heard the term.

"toxic" something has become a recent trend to define behavioral patterns that are unhealthy harmful, and disguised as beneficial, loving or healthy. It's based on things like passive-aggression or obsession with denying reality.

@mike carey Thank you. I have something to listen to in the plane on my way back home soon. I'll comment then.

[TonyDown]

On 3/9/2025 at 6:30 PM, soloyo215 said:

"toxic" something has become a recent trend to define behavioral patterns that are unhealthy harmful, and disguised as beneficial, loving or healthy. It's based on things like passive-aggression or obsession with denying reality.

@mike carey Thank you. I have something to listen to in the plane on my way back home soon. I'll comment then.

I found the origin of toxic empathy.

It doesn't really relate to harmful behavior.

It's too political to go into, so I won't.