A primary part
of the TOV Center’s mission is to assist people in the creation and maintenance
of value-based relationships and communities. Beginning in the 1970s, and with
the passage of each decade, fewer Americans are actively involved in
face-to-face communities and loneliness is becoming an epidemic that has deadly
consequences. Today, I want to share some quotes from three books I have
recently read that are related to this topic.
The
following quotes are from The Impulse
Society: America in the Age of Instant Gratification by Raul Roberts ©
2014, Bloomsbury, New York, NY:
(1) Indeed,
social connectedness is actually more important than affluence: regular social
activities such as volunteering, church attendance, entertaining friends, or
joining a club provide us with the same boost to happiness as does a doubling
of personal income. As Harvard’s Robert Putnam notes:
“The single most
common finding from a half century’s research on the correlates of life
satisfaction, not only in the United States but around the world, is that happiness is best predicted by the
breadth and depth of one’s social connections.” (p. 132)
(2) Only then
can the self-gain some relief from the short-term values of the marketplace and
reconnect to values that are more essential, more permanent, and more human. As
important, it is only as we step back that we realize that much of what we’re
so frantically seeking in the consumer marketplace actually lies elsewhere. (p.
256)
(3) So much of
what many of us hunger for today is connection – making deep, authentic,
meaningful relationships with others; we’re still driven, as sociologist Robert
Nisbet put it half a century ago, by “the quest for community.” We can’t fulfill that quest, by
definition, in a consumer culture that prioritizes immediate, self-centered
satisfaction. (p. 256)
The
following quotes are from The Village
Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier, Happier, and Smarter) by
Susan Pinker © 2014; Spiegel & Grau, New York, NY:
(1) The
universal hunger to connect and belong explains much of human behavior from
birth until death. Our very survival depends on it. (p. 8)
(2) Beginning
from the first moments of life and at every age and stage, close contact with
other people – and especially women –
affects how we think, whom we trust, and where we invest our money. Our social ties influence our sense of
satisfaction with life, our cognitive skills, and how resistant we are to
infections and chronic disease. (p. 9)
(3) If you’re
surrounded by a tightly connected circle of friends who gather regularly to eat
and share gossip, you’ll not only have fun but you’re also likely to live an average of fifteen years longer than a
loner. (p. 10)
(4) Despite this
powerful evidence, our habits are becoming more solitary. Since the late eighties, when social isolation was first earmarked
as a risk for early death in a landmark study in Science, more and more people say that they feel isolated and
lonely. (p. 10)
(5) Oxytocin and
vasopressin, two neuropeptides that are secreted into the bloodstream when we
form and maintain meaningful relationships, help damp down stress and heal wounds. (p. 63)
(6) Feeling lonely is as painful as being
wildly hungry or thirsty. . . Like physical pain or hunger, loneliness
effective says, “Hey, you! If you don’t
find your people (or they don’t find you), you’re a goner.” (p. 63)
Jewish Law in
Gentile Churches: Halakhah and the Beginning of Christian Public Ethics by Baker Academic (November 1, 2003).
(1) In ancient
civilizations, society and human
moral agency were always imbedded in community. (p. 89)
(2) Late
twentieth-century Europe and especially North America have witnessed the
gradual corrosion of their public moral consensus; as a result, meaningful
ethical discourse in society has become increasingly difficult. Where a shared foundation of morality
cannot be assumed, how can one speak about right and wrong? (p. 145)
(3) There is a
need to think about law legally
and morally. (p. 146)
The
bottom line is that our future is based on our ability to create face-to-face relationships
with others and creating communities. Just as building a house begins with
laying a strong foundation, we believe that relationships and communities must
also be based on a solid foundation – TOV
Values that place Life as the highest value and top priority.
Let
me know what you think. Are you interested in value-based relationships and
communities?
Shalom!
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