Build on connection
In the first of several year-end posts, I reflect on the power of connection and care as a foundation for our social, political, and economic systems.
Dear friends: This is the first of several year-end posts intended to address the themes this page presented in 2021. Today, I reflect on the power of connection and care.
In the last few years we’ve learned a lot about how our neurobiology is wired by and for the ability to care for one another. It’s the story too often hidden by more popular narratives of competition and survival of the fittest. Our brains thrive on connection.
So what if we set out to build to enhance connections? To build social, economic, and political systems that are designed to maximize our capacities for compassion and care?
Consider a connection-based economy. The consumption-driven economy would crack open, as we refocused on giving and interacting. Instead of being driven to buy more, convinced that we are not enough without the next object or trend, we would be invited to share more. Price would no longer be the bottom line; we would consider the true full cost of purchases on our communities and environment.
Without competition for profit as the highest value, innovation would shift away from massive investments in boundary-pushing technologies, objects for consumption, and mass scale entertainment. Economic rewards for compassion and connection would incentivize innovation in care-giving systems, broadening their reach and rewarding those who work in service.
Consider a connection-based political system. Leaders would be elected for their ability to bring communities together, to capitalize on the strengths of the whole. Problems facing society would be “the enemy” instead of demonizing other groups of people. Voting would expand as a sacred rite of participation, open to all. Equality before the law would not only be an aspiration, but would be acknowledged as a bedrock for all other types of political success.
Consider a care-based society. The “essential workers” of the pandemic would be compensated according to their contributions: nurses, food providers, teachers. Value would be associated with what folk give, rather than what they can extract.
This might all seem fantastical, but it is grounded in the primary strategy that has helped the human species out-compete most others: working together. The countries that earn the highest marks on the health and well-being of their populations are the social democracies that build to a great extent on these principles.
Building on connection means building on a foundation of understanding our human capacity, and it honors our values of inclusion, equity, and compassion in ways no other system can.
Check out the sources after the photo. As always, I appreciate your company on this journey; please share this newsletter by forwarding the email to anyone you think would find it of interest.
Global Health Index for 2021:
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/healthiest-countries
Resources on the neuroscience of connection:
https://onbeing.org/libraries/the-brain-neuroscience/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/parenting-neuroscience-perspective/202102/understanding-the-neuroscience-compassion
https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199977925.001.0001/acprof-9780199977925-chapter-9