Hakluyt
01-02-2006, 06:19 PM
It turns out that doing good is a selfish act
Dec. 31, 2005. 01:00 AM
JENNIFER WELLS
You can look back, or you can look forward. What's it going to be?
I have before me a Statistics Canada report, which I am using as an aid to focus on the latter strategy. What's past is past. How are we going to make it a better year?
The StatsCan study — not, I grant you, the most festive of accoutrements for this particular day — is all about belonging (that's "belonging" not "longing"). Released last week, the report probes Canadians' sense of belonging within their communities, which it is able to do through something called the Canadian Community Health Survey.
I had never heard of any such survey. But now I know that close to two-thirds of Canadians surveyed reported a strong sense of community belonging. The data, collected over the first six months of this year, tell us that 64 per cent of Canadians feel a strong sense of belonging, which is a relatively impressive figure in that the previous data set, in 2000/01, showed a significantly lower 58 per cent.
There are a number of attendant facts that don't necessarily surprise. Newfoundlanders, at 79 per cent, report the strongest rate of community belonging. Major urban centres tend to have the lowest rate of community belonging. And Toronto is dismally disconnected, with just 59.1 per cent of us saying, yes, hey, we feel plugged in here. For statistical examples of respondents worse off in this regard, we can look to Montreal and numerous regions in the province of Quebec. Outside of Quebec, we are the poorest performers, if I may put it that way.
Elsewhere in this newspaper I have written recently of what social scientists call "social capital." It's a topic that Harvard professor Robert Putnam explored in his best-selling Bowling Alone. "Whereas physical capital refers to physical objects and human capital refers to properties of individuals," wrote Putnam, "social capital refers to connections among individuals — social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them."
But what's it worth and how do you measure it?
Putnam cited a number of ways in which social capital "works its magic," as he phrased it. One that jumped out at me was this: "People who have active and trusting connections to others — whether family members, friends or fellow bowlers — develop or maintain character traits that are good for the rest of society. Joiners become more tolerant, less cynical, and more empathetic of the misfortunes of others. When people lack connections to others, they are unable to test the veracity of their own views, whether in the give-and-take of casual conversation or in more formal deliberation."
I suppose it's the time of year that has caused me to get particularly stuck on this as an area of study. I feel better when I shovel the neighbour's sidewalk. I really do. I don't know if there's any chemical boost in the brain that could be measured, but I do know that if someone at StatsCan asked me whether I feel "good" or "better" by doing so, I would answer without reservation "Yes."
To carry the thought one step further, do we feel less, say, irked by a neighbour's habits if we make the time to connect in this way? The answer I would say again — there's no science in any of this — is "Yes."
And it's likely, but by no means required, that the neighbour will reciprocate in some manner.
The StatsCan study on community belonging makes what seems to me to be a similar case. Research, say the researchers, has long established a causal association between social relationship and health. The individual who is socially isolated is more likely to suffer from poor mental and physical health.
"More recently," says the report, "the notion of `social capital' has received increasing attention in health research....High levels of social capital have been linked to lower mortality rates, lower rates of crime and increased perceptions of positive health."
Interestingly, the survey didn't simply measure respondents' sense of community belonging, but also queried their general physical and mental health.
"A strong sense of community belonging was associated," concluded the researchers, "with substantially better self-reported physical and mental health."
What begets what? Does a strong community somehow translate into good-health behaviours? How is the association made?
We don't actually know.
Robert Putnam wrote in Bowling Alone about "bonding social capital" as a kind of "sociological superglue." But he also warned of the decline in the stock of what social capital we've got left. We vote less, we spend less time in groups and more in isolated circumstances. We're generally less engaged.
Do we need any studies to tell us that lives lived increasingly disconnected from those around us push us relentlessly toward a life ruled by one rule only: self-interest?
But here's the rub now presented by StatsCan: we continue lives of pure self-interest only at our peril. We now know it's bad for us. It's bad for our health. It is, therefore, in our own interest to be more generous of heart.
Fancy that. Scrooge learned the lesson eons ago, of course. But these sorts of reminders keep skating away on us.
Get engaged. Live longer.
A lesson, I think, perfect for 2006.
Jennifer Wells' column appears Saturday in the Life section. Email: jwells@thestar.ca.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1135810214690&call_pageid=968332188492
Dec. 31, 2005. 01:00 AM
JENNIFER WELLS
You can look back, or you can look forward. What's it going to be?
I have before me a Statistics Canada report, which I am using as an aid to focus on the latter strategy. What's past is past. How are we going to make it a better year?
The StatsCan study — not, I grant you, the most festive of accoutrements for this particular day — is all about belonging (that's "belonging" not "longing"). Released last week, the report probes Canadians' sense of belonging within their communities, which it is able to do through something called the Canadian Community Health Survey.
I had never heard of any such survey. But now I know that close to two-thirds of Canadians surveyed reported a strong sense of community belonging. The data, collected over the first six months of this year, tell us that 64 per cent of Canadians feel a strong sense of belonging, which is a relatively impressive figure in that the previous data set, in 2000/01, showed a significantly lower 58 per cent.
There are a number of attendant facts that don't necessarily surprise. Newfoundlanders, at 79 per cent, report the strongest rate of community belonging. Major urban centres tend to have the lowest rate of community belonging. And Toronto is dismally disconnected, with just 59.1 per cent of us saying, yes, hey, we feel plugged in here. For statistical examples of respondents worse off in this regard, we can look to Montreal and numerous regions in the province of Quebec. Outside of Quebec, we are the poorest performers, if I may put it that way.
Elsewhere in this newspaper I have written recently of what social scientists call "social capital." It's a topic that Harvard professor Robert Putnam explored in his best-selling Bowling Alone. "Whereas physical capital refers to physical objects and human capital refers to properties of individuals," wrote Putnam, "social capital refers to connections among individuals — social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them."
But what's it worth and how do you measure it?
Putnam cited a number of ways in which social capital "works its magic," as he phrased it. One that jumped out at me was this: "People who have active and trusting connections to others — whether family members, friends or fellow bowlers — develop or maintain character traits that are good for the rest of society. Joiners become more tolerant, less cynical, and more empathetic of the misfortunes of others. When people lack connections to others, they are unable to test the veracity of their own views, whether in the give-and-take of casual conversation or in more formal deliberation."
I suppose it's the time of year that has caused me to get particularly stuck on this as an area of study. I feel better when I shovel the neighbour's sidewalk. I really do. I don't know if there's any chemical boost in the brain that could be measured, but I do know that if someone at StatsCan asked me whether I feel "good" or "better" by doing so, I would answer without reservation "Yes."
To carry the thought one step further, do we feel less, say, irked by a neighbour's habits if we make the time to connect in this way? The answer I would say again — there's no science in any of this — is "Yes."
And it's likely, but by no means required, that the neighbour will reciprocate in some manner.
The StatsCan study on community belonging makes what seems to me to be a similar case. Research, say the researchers, has long established a causal association between social relationship and health. The individual who is socially isolated is more likely to suffer from poor mental and physical health.
"More recently," says the report, "the notion of `social capital' has received increasing attention in health research....High levels of social capital have been linked to lower mortality rates, lower rates of crime and increased perceptions of positive health."
Interestingly, the survey didn't simply measure respondents' sense of community belonging, but also queried their general physical and mental health.
"A strong sense of community belonging was associated," concluded the researchers, "with substantially better self-reported physical and mental health."
What begets what? Does a strong community somehow translate into good-health behaviours? How is the association made?
We don't actually know.
Robert Putnam wrote in Bowling Alone about "bonding social capital" as a kind of "sociological superglue." But he also warned of the decline in the stock of what social capital we've got left. We vote less, we spend less time in groups and more in isolated circumstances. We're generally less engaged.
Do we need any studies to tell us that lives lived increasingly disconnected from those around us push us relentlessly toward a life ruled by one rule only: self-interest?
But here's the rub now presented by StatsCan: we continue lives of pure self-interest only at our peril. We now know it's bad for us. It's bad for our health. It is, therefore, in our own interest to be more generous of heart.
Fancy that. Scrooge learned the lesson eons ago, of course. But these sorts of reminders keep skating away on us.
Get engaged. Live longer.
A lesson, I think, perfect for 2006.
Jennifer Wells' column appears Saturday in the Life section. Email: jwells@thestar.ca.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1135810214690&call_pageid=968332188492