Who's In Charge (Our False Self Or Our True Self)? Part 2: Community
What The Great Divorce can teach us about the company we keep
In The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis characterizes Hell as partly a lack of community. Lots of people live there, but they rarely interact. Instead they get in fights and then move away from each other; further and further out, until most people are living an eternity without any meaningful human connection.
Whatever you think of Lewis' theology, this idea of a lack of community as characteristic of the worst fate that we can experience strikes me as a pretty insightful point. As humans, we are social animals. As U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy puts it in "Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation", "Social connection is a fundamental human need, as essential to survival as food, water, and shelter." Murthy again:
"Loneliness is far more than just a bad feeling—it harms both individual and societal health. It is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death. The mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, and even greater than that associated with obesity and physical inactivity."
There's a reason that solitary confinement is considered to be a form of torture. It's tough to think of a more bleak existence than wandering forever the halls of a run-down mansion (as one of Lewis' characters does) with nothing but our own thoughts for company.
But later in the story, Lewis adds some nuance to this idea of Hell as a lack of community. It turns out that Hell does have some community. One of the characters, an egocentric scholar, mentions a pretty unstimulating writer's group that he's a part of. But the communities in Hell are bad. Somehow, they don't bring the characters joy. Instead, they simply rub salt in the characters' psychological wounds.
So what makes a community good or bad?
I think a bad community is one that brings us down, spiritually and psychologically. It's filled with people who let their False Selves dominate them; and all of those False Selves then reify and reinforce each other. In The Great Divorce, these communities are characterized by people who get in fist fights over small insults. Like these characters, we can embrace petty grievances and let those dominate us. Then we can lash out at other people, thinking that we're merely evening the score or even being magnanimous (I'm hurting him less than I myself feel hurt) but in reality simply causing more pain. When enough of us in a group live this way, the result truly is Hell.
Or we can end up gripped by fear that a reasonable observer would tell us is trivial, and bad communities will instead tell us that we're right to be scared. In turn, we'll reinforce their fears; and together we can drive each other into terror and hiding. Or one of will feel guilt or shame, and the other members of a bad community will pounce and tell us how right we are to be dragged around by remorse over mistakes we made decades ago and that we would give anything to undo. In bad communities, we become—not the higher and better versions of ourselves—but the lower and baser versions, in a vicious downward cycle. We become, not gradually more free of fear, guilt, anger, and shame; but gradually more and more dominated by them.
The social science research I've seen seems to support this. In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt cites a study that looked at how contagious negative emotions are. The findings were clear: negative emotions tend to cluster. Here's how Haidt summarized it: "When a woman became depressed, it increased the odds of depression in her close friends (male and female) by 142%." (Interestingly, the study didn't find that depression was socially transmitted by men. My own experience tells me that other negative emotions, especially anger and bitterness, can be; though I confess I haven't seen research on this topic).
So if a bad community is full of people who let their False Selves dominate them, what characterizes a good community? I think a good community is full of people who are trying to live more out of their True Selves. In so trying, these community members inspire us to do the same. And when we live more out of our True Selves, we in turn inspire them. Rather than a vicious cycle towards lower and more painful forms of living, we find ourselves in a virtuous cycle of mutual inspiration and personal growth. We each move ourselves (and inspire each other to move), step by step, out of mental pain and into joy and peace and loving connection.
I think communities like this are good for another reason: they can help us to see our blind spots. I think a lot of us hold ourselves back in ways that we don't fully see. I know I do. A community of people who are cultivating their own discernment and who want the best for us can help us to see and let go of those broken ways of being.
And, ideally, we can return the favor. As our community helps us to live more out of our True Self, our discernment grows; and as our discernment grows, our ability to help our fellow community members to live more fully out of their True Selves grows too. It becomes a second kind of virtuous cycle.
Again, the social science research I've seen seems to support this. Haidt cites a prior study by the same study authors, looking at how contagious positive emotions are. Again, the findings were clear: positive emotions tend to cluster. Here's how Haidt puts it:
"They [the study authors] found that happiness tends to occur in clusters. This was not just because happy people seek each other out. Rather, when one person became happier, it increased the odds that their existing friends would become happier too. Amazingly, it also had an influence on their friends’ friends, and sometimes even on their friends’ friends’ friends. Happiness is contagious; it spreads through social networks."
So here's our action item for the week. I'm not saying that we should let go of communities that we think are bad, at least not as a first step. Too much of the internet will tell us to jettison relationships at the drop of a hat, but I think a lot of those relationships are salvageable. There can be memories and deep friendships there that we can be too quick to throw away (especially if we ourselves are in pain at the moment).
Instead, I think we should do something more nourishing; adding to the good, rather than taking away from the potentially-bad. You have someone in your life who you admire, who has a peace and contentment and inner joy about them that draws you to them. Reach out to that person (or group) and make plans to spend just a little bit more time with them than you normally would.
And then, during and immediately after spending time with them, notice whether or not you feel like you're living just a little bit more out of your True Self.
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