The Art of Belonging by Hugh Mackay: book review

The Art of Belonging: It’s not where you live, it’s how you live (2014) is a work of non-fiction by social researcher, Hugh Mackay. It is the second book I have read by Mackay – the first was House Guest, a fictional story of a market researcher. This current book is categorized ‘personal development’ and described as a discussion of humankind’s need to be simultaneously independent and interdependent – seemingly mutually divergent traits. The Art of Belonging is a work of social analysis in a fictional Australian suburb called Southwood where Mackay sets his examples.

Mackay maintains that humans are, by and large, social creatures that need to live in close proximity to each other: “We are not good at surviving in isolation. We rely on communities to support and sustain us, and if those communities are to survive and prosper, we must engage with them and nurture them.” But the tension between independence (not relying on anyone else) and interdependence (connectedness with others) is why we feel conflicted and confused. How do we do this best – to please ourselves while being part of a functioning community? One way is to live in a small to medium city, village-like suburbs, or smaller apartment block rather than a mega-city in a high-rise skyscraper.

While the word ‘suburbs’ is often used disparagingly, they are where people establish ‘village-type’ communities. Tragedies and disasters bring communities closer together, but the natural human tendency is “to seek the security of being woven into the social fabric” – whether it is a community within a city or suburb, or whether it is a sporting community, cultural community, or work community. Humans are congregators, living in “cohesive communities” that produce “coherent moral systems.” When communities fragment or disintegrate, so do moral standards, maintains Mackay.

Why then do young people feel the need to leave their communities? This is not uncommon and not unhealthy says Mackay. In the United States and Australia people move house, on average, once every six years, mainly due to young people moving on. Even when people move on, they seek potential communities to put down permanent or temporary roots. After the age of 50 years, people move, on average, only once or twice more in their lifetime. But many people return to their home community or similar place later in life.

“Humans are by nature herd animals” and herds of 5-8 people are “the most efficient and practical size for a work group” for soldiers, workers, committees, boards, dinner parties, tutorial groups, and the like. However our domestic herds are shrinking. Low birth rates are threatening to fragment communities – most Western communities now have birth rates well below the replacement level of 2.1 babies per woman. Western households contain just 2.5 people and the number of single-person households is also decreasing. Contrary to threatening communities, they are leading to the revival of communities, says Mackay. Where people don’t have households to establish herds, they seek them elsewhere in their nearby environment: “herds are important to feed our desire for a sense of identity.”

Mackay says that one of the easiest ways to maintain independence while being interdependent is to “graze with the herd” – i.e. to eat with or near others in food courts, malls and cafes. The value of communal eating is not just confined to communities, but also to families. A 15-year study by Catherine Snow of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education showed that family mealtime conversations played a bigger role in children’s language acquisition than having stories read to them. Studies from the University of Illinois and Columbia University’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse showed a strong correlation between shared family mealtimes and performance at school. A study of 500 teenagers by Blake Bowden of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital found that “kids who ate dinner with their families at least five times per week were the least likely to take drugs, feel depressed or get into trouble.” That’s why Purdue University’s Center for Families urges families to ‘make mealtimes a priority!’

And social media? A 2013 Galaxy study found that 50% of Australians admitted to interrupting sex to answer their mobile phone – the more time people spend online and on-phone the less time they connect with real time friends and communities. A 2013 Kent State University study of mobile phones among 500 undergraduates, by Lepp, Barkley, and Karpinski, found that heavy mobile phone users were more likely to have lower average academic results, higher levels of anxiety, and lower levels of life satisfaction than less heavy users.

A 2011 paper by University of Sydney researchers O’Dea and Campbell in the Annual Review of Cybertherapy and Telemedicine reported a study of 400 secondary school students aged 13-16 years where “spending large amounts of time online for social purposes may increase psychological distress and have a negative impact on self-esteem.” Other studies showed that for all the positive benefits of social media there are downsides. A 1998 (pre-Facebook) study by Robert Kraut of Carnegie Mellon maintained that “the more people used the internet, the lonelier and more depressed they felt.” His research concluded that users’ feelings of wellbeing and social connectedness decreased.” However a 2012 study by Carnegie Mellon University found that when people were actively engaged with social media (posting messages or ‘liking’) their feelings of social bonding increased and their loneliness decreased. But Frank Duffy, a British architect, in 2007 argued that real places (instead of cyberspaces) offer “a level of meaning and vitality … that the virtual world cannot rival.”

The more reclusive people become the more likely they are to become bitter and cynical and to develop unrealistically negative views of the rest of the world: “We are still born to cooperate as well as compete, and we are not at our shining best when we retreat into … the position of the outsider.” Mackay concludes that everyone can find a place to belong: “There’s a place for us, somewhere …”

Mackay intersperses the findings of research, surveys, psychological studies, and facts throughout the book with examples from his fictional community in the fictional suburb of Southwood. The fictional characters struggle to reconcile their need to belong as well as their need for privacy and to live life on their own terms. Although the fictional characters are maintained and repeated throughout the book, there is no story, no plot, no depth – and therefore the interest, for me, are the snippets of information. The problem with that though, is that in ten or so years’ time the research findings may be outdated. By then I guess Mackay could write a revised version. However, I prefer the facts to the fictional characters, committees, and conflicts in Mackay’s fictional community because, for me, to belong is to face reality and get a life in the real world.