Links: Connection, Compassion, and Well-being
The subtitle of the book I’ve written about my brother Dan is Splicing the Ties that Bind. The subtitle references a key theme of that book: family and other social ties, or lack of them, is a quality of life issue, but it’s more than that; it is, in fact, a matter of life and death. This is a categorical truth (and so few are). Connections don’t save everyone—the social power of at least one of the connected parties is to some degree determinative—but a lack of connection compromises well-being to the point that it may well be, sooner or later, fatal.
There are many types of connection that promote many kinds of well-being, but we all need to share bonds with others, certainly for our emotional health but also for our survival. A widely circulated observation attributed to noted anthropologist Margaret Mead (but for which I could find no definitive source) makes this point:
Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed.
Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal.
A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery.
While few of us are at risk of becoming meat for prowling beasts, all of us are likely to become sick, wounded, or otherwise incapacitated for some time at some point in our lives. Receiving treatment and resources is contingent on our social bonds. Support in times of need is not available to everyone; people die because they lack connections to anyone—to anyone, that is, who has enough power or resources to help.
Early in the course of the COVID pandemic, it became clear that the age and medical fragility of many nursing home residents put them at more risk of contracting and dying from the virus than other populations. It’s been a year since free vaccination became available to health care workers, but COVID contagion remains a significant problem in nursing homes because a number of workers refuse to be vaccinated. A federal court has suspended a mandate that health care workers be vaccinated, which continues to put nursing home residents at great risk. In light of this situation, a frustrated, mystified medical expert is quoted in a recent NBC News article asking, “Where is the national outrage?” The answer is, that outrage is largely absent, because those who feel connected to nursing home residents are outnumbered, outvoiced, and outvoted by those who don’t. Those who are able to make the rules don’t acknowledge a social bond with these residents. In fact, the absence of ties with those who have the political heft to determine policy is at the root of many of the social problems that plague distinct populations (people who are homeless, disabled, elderly, nonwhite, poor, LGBTQ, and others).
A lack of connection also affects other species, causing immense suffering and death. “Pet” status, granted to animals with whom human beings have bonded, is what separates dogs and cats in research labs from those who live in our homes. Pets escape the neglect and violence routinely faced by animals who belong to no one. But ownership alone is not what saves them. Billions of chickens, pigs, cows, turkeys, and other industrially farmed animals are owned, as are breeding dogs in puppy mills, but they are viewed solely as economic units. They lie beyond their owners’ sphere of compassion and so are denied belonging in the sense of bonds. The same is true of those animals who are hunted, or whose habitats are destroyed. Ties to caring human beings is what protects pets from the fates of other animals.
Our individual sphere of compassion—the boundaries we each set that determine whom we consider worthy and unworthy of concerned connection—largely determines our personal, social, and even political orientations. Those we locate within our circle are “us”; the farther away from that core we place a given group, the more “other” they become, viewed as “them.” We feel the bonds of compassionate connection to, and so try to protect, “us”; we feel less compassion and less connection, if any at all, to “them,” and so are unwilling to expend energy or resources on their wellbeing.
Where is our “national outrage” at the endangerment of nursing home residents by personnel unwilling to get vaccinated? Where is our anger at those who use animals in ways that deny them connection—with humans or each other? Where is our fury at the denial of some people’s civil rights?
When we fail to rage against the endangerment or suffering of others, we lack compassion. And our circles need enlarging.