Is there still no place like home?

My unsuccessful 3,000 word entry to the 2019 Nine Dots Prize...


One

Just to the south of Birmingham’s city centre a front garden is littered with syringes.  The street is busy with the local trade in sex and drugs. Behind me I can hear the slowing approach, pause and departure of the sundry customers in their mid-range saloons.

Inside the tiny terraced house we find a broken world.  Abandoned cans of lager and empty food containers jostle with the flotsam of tired toys.  A naked light bulb hangs from a single bleak flex.  The smell of marijuana, stale booze, burnt toast and dog food is almost emetic.  Drug paraphernalia in chrome, glass and plastic is gathered into small piles in easily accessible locations.

People live here.  It is a home.  It is brutally clear that the people living here do not – cannot – look after their home.

Two doors down, children’s muddy shoes are stored carefully in the small porch.  The day’s groceries are in their wicker bag in the hall.  A child is doing homework at the kitchen table and a pile of pressed shirts sits beside a floral ironing board.  There are no needles in the front garden: the mother explains that she clears them away each morning, just before leaving with the children for school.

My companion tells me that the woman we have just seen is one of a growing number of local residents who are reclaiming their streets.  Some, she says, are like the family we met earlier: they barely manage their own lives.  Others are stronger or more resilient - or something - and they have the capacity to look after their own home[i].  Some reach to the front garden; some venture as far as the pavement to clear away the needles, perhaps even the weeds from around the base of the lamppost.

And some, she says, seem to have enough of whatever-it-is to stretch to the entire block or even the street.  “Street stewards, we call them”[ii].

It’s as though home comes in different sizes, I reply.  For some, home stops at the front door; for others, the end of the street; for still others, home encompasses the entire neighbourhood.  Home isn’t just somewhere you come from, or somewhere you live: it’s a place you look after.

It’s a place that someone looks after.  Hopefully.

Two

Home, for good or ill, is one of our most powerful myths[iii].  Home is where we come from; and it’s also where we’re at.  In this liquid age of hyper-connection[iv] we may well be from ‘anywhere’[v] (wherever you go, there you are[vi]) but when we press the Home button, where do we go?

An enquiry into the myth of home takes us in at least two directions: how myth in general works; and how this particular myth works.

We humans are story-telling creatures reliant on the tales we tell (of) ourselves in order to frame our condition[vii].  We have to explain the world in order to navigate it.  We build our explanations using symbols and we cluster the symbols into ‘stories’ or ‘narratives’.  A particular form of these – the ‘myth’ – is of especial importance.  The world, though suddener than we fancy it[viii], is insufferably complex and overwhelming.  Our sensory systems reduce that complexity to something more manageable; but our operating systems still rely on a whole host of short-cuts, or heuristics[ix], to help us get through the day.  If we had to think everything through from scratch each time, we’d never have come this far.

A myth is a type of heuristic.  It is not a tale of heroes or dragons – though it may be.  It is not a falsehood as distinct from a truth.  A myth is an author-less explanatory account of an experienced phenomenon.  It is a story, held in our heads, that effectively packages some part or parts of our world in such a way that we can function without having to worry all the time.

Myths can be more or less precise.  Look back at traditional myths and we find a curious plasticity.  Is the Hindu god Kali male or female or both?  For the Greeks, did the Giants and the Olympians battle at Pellene or Thrace?  In Norse mythology, did Ymir summon humanity from his armpits – or did Odin summon it from the trees?  It doesn’t matter. 

What matters is that the myth captures some aspect of the world and looks after it on our behalf.  (Its precision or imprecision is, in fact, an adaptive advantage: as circumstances evolve, so too the myth.)  We avoid the difficulty of having to recall the detail – instead we easily and quickly summon the myth.

To function effectively, however, a myth has to work in two ways.  For an individual – a ‘centre of narrative gravity’[x] – each myth is a component of the self-story, the story of who you are, of who I am.  My identity comprises the stories I tell myself, and these stories include various myths.  I am, in part, myth.

At the same time, myths are collective items[xi].  A group of people with a shared myth, however apparently outlandish, comprises a community.  And vice versa: a community comprises a group of people with a shared mythology.  To be a part of a community – a sports club, a religious assembly, a nation state – is to share in its myths.  This is what belonging consists of: to have shared myths. 

And herein its power.  A myth is simultaneously a deeply personal, internalised narrative central to individual identity and a collectively owned story that is central to belonging.  Issues of truth and falsity and of precise or imprecise form are unimportant: it is the function that matters.  I am a person who believes A; I am a member of the group P that also believes A.  This is who I am, and how I belong.

Our myth of ‘home’ is redolent with this duality.  My identity includes my notion of home; and home is a fundamental part of my belonging.

The duality is evident in the etymology of ‘home’.  Its origins have both a personal, individual aspect (‘of the earth’ or ‘earthling’[xii]) as well as a collective aspect (‘where one lies’ or ‘where one’s forebears lie’).  We find a sense of ancestry, of connection, of beginnings.  We glimpse the story – the myth – of who we are, and where we come from.

When we turn to the way in which home is addressed in the ancient myths, we encounter something striking and, for the West, paradoxical: the notion of return.  Home is not just the place we’re from: it’s the place we leave, and the place to which we return.  We leave home on our journey, our quest, our saga.  On the way we grow, we change, we make progress.  So deeply embedded is this element of our home-myth that it is central to the entirety of Western culture: progress.  We have to make progress.

And yet – we want to go home.  We have to go home.  At the end of all that progress - we (want to) go back.

As Odysseus discovered, however, home is not waiting patiently and inert for our return[xiii].  Home is alive, it is dynamic.  We may go back in space; but we cannot go back in time.  In our absence, the maintenance of our home depends on the effort and care of others.  Without that care, or if the effort is threatened or thwarted, there will be no home to which we can return.  Someone, somehow, must look after home.

And suddenly we can see how, emerging from the very heart of our home-myth – and, by extension, deep inside our sense of identity and our sense of belonging – a dramatically under-appreciated truth: that our entire sense of ‘progress’, that post-Enlightenment sensibility permeating not just our notions of individual development but the entirety of science, politics and commerce, is critically dependent on ideas of custodianship and care, of diligent maintenance.  Someone, somehow, has to look after the home.

Three

Communication technologies may have made the world a smaller place, but home has grown bigger.  These technologies – iconic manifestation of ‘progress’ and current apotheosis of the three-century Enlightenment project – mean that we are now everywhere.  And in being everywhere, we could be from anywhere, or nowhere at all.  Perhaps this means there is no longer a place like home. 

But fifty years ago, when the astronauts of Apollo 8 photographed planet earth rising above the lunar horizon, we found out exactly where we’re from.

Often heralded as having given important momentum to the burgeoning environmental movement[xiv], the ‘Earth Rise’ photograph provided a visually digestible way of appreciating the earth’s finitude.  Here we are, blue and fragile, floating in space.  Just look!  Of course the resources must be limited.  Of course this is our home.  Of course we must look after it.

And yet – we haven’t.  The intervening half-century is a dismal catalogue of reckless abuse: habitat destruction, species depletion, soil degradation, pollution of land, air and water, the emission of gigatonnes of carbon dioxide[xv].  We seem to be treating our home – this bigger, planet-sized home – as if we were low-capacity drug-addicts on the worst estate in town.

We need to do two things.  We need to expand our notion of home; and we need to ensure we have the capacity to look after it.  We need to stretch from our living rooms to our front gardens, from our front gardens to our forests, from our streets to our cities, all the way to the entire planet.

And if we are to develop the capacity truly to look after this new, bigger home, we need to challenge the isolated and brash notion of ‘progress’.  We need to re-integrate progress with its sibling ‘care’.  We – each of us – needs to be looking after our new, bigger home, every day, with the same routine commitment, the same notions of custodianship and care that the majority of us bring to the maintenance of our quotidian dwellings.

How can we do this?  We need to upgrade our myths.  If my sense of self truly depended on my notion of this planet as ‘home’; and if my belonging to this thing we call ‘the human race’ depended on a shared myth of that same notion of ‘home’; then maybe, just maybe, we might avert catastrophe.

Four

Achieving such a transformation is no easy task.  Indeed, it may at first sight seem absurdly utopian.  The IPCC has, after all, made it clear that our situation is now urgent[xvi].  Our home is in real jeopardy.  We need – surely – concrete action.

The evidence, however, whilst it reveals some important gaps in our understanding, also provides important pointers, not only to the means by which we might develop the necessary myths but also to the possibility of rapid change.

The core of the evidence base concerns the issue of ‘diffusion’: how do new technologies, ideas and beliefs spread?  What are the factors that shape the nature and pace of diffusion; and what are the distinguishing characteristics of successful innovations?

Seminal work on these questions was conducted by Everett Rogers[xvii].  His focus was on technologies, but subsequent work has extended into the realm of ideas, beliefs and behaviours[xviii].  This work intersects with the substantial evidence base on the role of advertising, marketing and public relations in ‘the engineering of consent’[xix], as well as with the developing field of behavioural economics[xx].  Collectively, these domains of enquiry have been exploring how and why people believe one thing rather than another; how these beliefs change over time; and the links of both through to behaviour.

Not everything is fully understood.  Precisely how ideas and beliefs compete with one another inside an actual individual human, for example, remains contested.  Similarly, the issue of ‘multiple belongings’ remains an issue.  If my ‘belonging’ is a function of the myths I share with the various communities of which I am a member, what can we say about how these belongings play out with respect to one another?

On the other hand, we now know a great deal about social contagion, about the importance of catalytic individuals, and about homophily.  Homophily is the tendency of people to associate with others that they perceive to be ‘like me’ and is crucial to understanding the ways in which novel beliefs are transmitted.  The most influential person in your life is someone who you think is like you – but a bit better[xxi].  If that person adopts a new belief or behaviour, you are dramatically more likely to adopt that new belief or behaviour than if someone you hold in low regard does the same.

Such people are not merely the ‘social influencers’ of contemporary social media fame; they are embedded within all social groups, both digital and material[xxii].  These individuals both embody and tell stories of disproportionate importance to the operation of social groups.  Their perspectives and statements often heavily outweigh alternative sources of information and they have a powerful role in giving credence to authorless beliefs.  In effect, these people are the prime legitimators of (new) myth.

In addition to evidence on mechanisms, there are instructive instances of rapid and dramatic change in behaviours and beliefs.  Malcolm Gladwell brought several such examples to widespread attention[xxiii] including the sudden popularity of Hush Puppies, the fall in New York’s crime rate and the post-War disappearance of the hat.

With the evidence and examples it is possible to move from speculation to possibility.  We can conjecture viable tales of home – not just of leaving home, but of looking after home – that build on existing myths, but which stretch and enhance them.  We know of particular types of people who, in living and telling their stories, are the keystones of new myths.  We know the mechanisms that will shape the diffusion of such new myths and can work to maximise the chances of rapid uptake.  We can – with sufficient will and appropriate humility – initiate and support the kind of transformation heralded by a fifty-year-old photograph.

There is still no place like home.  It is bigger than it used to be and it needs a lot of looking after.  I am not suggesting that we abandon the technical and technocratic mechanisms already underway.  We must, however, find new ways to supplement existing approaches with methods that speak to our hearts as well as our heads.  The diffusion of new myths of home may be just such a way.

Five

Several years later I returned to south Birmingham.  The drug dealers, pimps and sex workers had moved on.  A new air of optimism seemed to emanate from the very fabric of the place and permeated my discussions.

I met a lady who had moved to the area from Worcester. She talked to me about the floods[xxiv].  It’s awful to have your home flood, she told me.  All your belongings are destroyed.  You have to move out.  It takes months to sort out the repairs and the insurance.  The media cover the story for the first few days but don’t seem interested after that.

Everyone’s instinct is to have their home repaired exactly as it was.  Everyone thinks – well, it was awful, but at least it’s over and I want my home back.  Just as it was.

Then it floods again.

You can’t believe it, she said.  You just can’t believe it.  This sort of thing only happens once, surely.  And now it’s happened again!

It’s only when it happens a third time, though, that you change.  That’s when you accept it – that you live in a place where it floods.  That’s when you say Yes to the modifications – the plug sockets high on the walls, the special flood-proof doors, the air-bricks.

Something else happened, too, she added after a reflective pause.  When we had the first flood, everyone got involved.  We didn’t wait for the people from the council or the agency, and even when they did arrive we didn’t really rely on them.  Yes, they helped with pumps and rescue equipment but, to be honest, the whole community really pulled together.

And we were even quicker off the mark the second time.  In fact, all sorts of good things happened when I think about it.  We met all the other people that lived nearby, some of them for the first time, and the atmosphere of the entire neighbourhood changed.  People would knock on your door to see how you were doing, or to ask if you needed anything from the shop, that kind of thing.  I was really sad to leave.

Why did you leave? I asked.

She told me her grandchildren were growing up in Birmingham and she wanted to be nearer to them.  Then she told me how pleased she was to have moved into this part of town – a part of town that had for decades been almost a ‘no go’ zone.  It’s got the same sort of feel as it did in Worcester, she explained.  The atmosphere in the shops, at the bus stop, as you’re walking about.  People here really seem to care about each other and about the place, she said.  When people chat, it’s like they tell the same kind of stories that we had back in Worcester.  It makes you feel at home.
Notes and references


[i] Material in this section derived from ‘Capacity Building: An Evaluation of the Sparkbrook, Sparkhill & Tyseley Area Regeneration Initiative’, EDAW, 1999

[ii] See “Urban Renaissance: A Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal and the Welfare Society”, Dr Dick Atkinson, 2000, for more background.

[iii] This section draws on a range of sources on myth, notably “A Short History of Myth”, Karen Armstrong, 2005; “The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony”, Roberto Calasso (trans. Tim Parks), 1988; “The Language of Sustainability”, David Fell, 2009; “The Myths We Live By”, Mary Midgley, 1990; and “Metaphors We Live By”, Georges Lakoff and Mark Johnson, 1980

[iv] “Liquid Modernity”, Zygmunt Bauman, 1999

[v] “The Road to Somewhere”, David Goodhart, 2017

[vi] “Wherever you go, there you are”, Jon Kabat-Zinn, 1994

[vii] See “The Mind’s I: Fantasies and Reflections on Mind and Soul”, Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett, 1981

[viii] This line taken from “Snow”, Louis MacNeice, 1967

[ix] See “Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics & Biases”, Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky and Paul Slovic, eds., 1982

[x] “The Self as a Centre of Narrative Gravity”, Daniel Dennett, 1992.  See also “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea”, Dennett, 1995

[xi] “Crowds and Power”, Elias Canetti, 1960

[xii] See, for example, the OUPblog discussion “Our habitat: one more etymology brought ‘home’” https://blog.oup.com/2015/02/home-word-origin-etymology/ accessed 16/01/19

[xiii] The reference here is obviously to Homer’s “The Odyssey” (I rely on the Stephen Mitchell translation, 2011) but see – importantly – “The Penelopiad” by Margaret Atwood, 2005

[xiv] Generally reckoned to have begun with the publication of “Silent Spring”, Rachel Carson, 1961

[xv] There is an extensive literature here – the World Resources Institute provides a particularly useful and accessible guide - https://www.wri.org/ accessed 16/01/19

[xvi] “Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5oC” IPCC, 2018

[xvii] “The Diffusion of Innovations”, Everett Rogers, 1962

[xviii] “The diffusion of environmental behaviours: the role of influential individuals in social networks”, Brook Lyndhurst, 2009

[xix] “The Engineering of Consent”, Edward Bernays, 1955

[xx] There is a large literature here, but of particular relevance are “Micromotives and Macrobehaviour”, Thomas Schelling, 1978; “Nudge”, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, 2008; “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, Daniel Kahneman, 2011; and “On Choosing the Right Pond”, Robert H Frank, 1985

[xxi] See Brook Lyndhurst, ibid.

[xxii] See, for example, “Engaging Hairdressers in Pro-Environmental Behaviours”, Dr Denise Baden/ESRC, 2013, which not only summarises the literature but also sets out results from an experiment to test the role of influential individuals in the diffusion of environmental ideas and behaviours.

[xxiii] “The Tipping Point”, Malcolm Gladwell, 2000

[xxiv] This section on flooding significantly informed by “Flooding: A Social Science Evidence Synthesis”, Brook Lyndhurst/Defra, 2014






























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