Residents of the inner south ... don’t be alarmed if you get stopped by a dapper, grey-headed gentleman for a chat in your local cafe, or if one smiles at you while you’re out walking your dog … it’s probably just Hugh Mackay, Australia’s preeminent social researcher.
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The 80-year-old, who’s been recording the way we live for the past 50 years, has recently moved to Canberra.
“And I’m absolutely surprised by how much I love it,” he says, ironically from Melbourne where he’s on tour promoting his latest book Australia Reimagined: Towards a more compassionate, less anxious society.
His wife Sheila took up a teaching position at the ANU Medical School about a year ago and the pair moved to Canberra. Sheila’s very impressed by the ANU, he’s joined a choir, and they love discovering little corners of the city.
“We’ve found a community we can belong to,” he says.
And that’s the clincher. Community. For all our problems, personally, nationally, globally, “the better world you dream of starts in your street”, he writes in the new book.
“We are all very accomplished at wringing our hands about ‘the state of the nation’ or, more broadly, ‘the state of the world’. It’s not always so easy to acknowledge that the state of the nation actually starts in our street, in the sense that how we choose to live will help to determine the kind of neighbourhood ours will become, and the composite character of all our neighbourhoods determines the kind of society we will become.”
Could it really be that simple?
“There's no magic wand, there's no charismatic leader who’s somehow going to transform everything,” he says.
“It it would be nice if politicians would talk a bit more about our quality of life rather than just the quality of the economy and a bit more about the kind of society we want, but really it is up to us.
“That’s what I'm hoping, with this new book, that people will gradually get the idea that we can all wring our hands and grumble about the state of the nation and what’s happening to society but we can actually address it, do something about it, exert an influence in the places where we live and work.”
I tell him that my grandmother used to say all good things start at the back door.
“She was a wise woman,” he says.
“Social revolutions always start small. It’s always just a few people who are possessed by the idea that we have to do something about the state of the neighbourhood or the state of the world but it always begins with a handful of people taking action.”
He mentions a study he found, “unfortunately only after I’d written the book”, which looked at the Compassionate Frome Project, where a town in Somerset, England, embarked on a campaign where “basically the gist of it was ‘look out for each other’,” he says.
Initiated in 2013 by a local GP, Helen Kingston, the town rallied together to connect individuals with the help they needed, to connect with each other.
“She realised that many of her patients with illnesses were also suffering from social isolation,” he says.
“It was all about creating a more compassionate community.”
He says social fragmentation is one of the biggest problems facing society today.
“Thanks to our rate of relationship breakdown, our shrinking households, our busy lives, our increasing income inequality and our ever-increasing reliance on information technology, we are a more fragmented society than ever before,” he writes.
“It’s an issue that has really taken me by surprise,” he says, “in the past 10 years I’ve had to analyse it much more closely whereas I didn't really think of it as an emerging big issue 25 years ago.”
He says the epidemic of anxiety is closely linked. More than 2 million Australians suffer from an anxiety disorder.
“We're social animals, when we become more socially fragmented, we become anxious.
“When more people in our history than ever before are living alone, when relationships are failing, 35-40 per cent of marriages are ending and we're more mobile than we used to be … all of these things tend to isolate us from each other and we end up paying a very high price for that.”
How much has changed in 25 years?
It’s been 25 years since he wrote Reinventing Australia: The mind and mood of Australia in the 90s, the book which first brought him into the public eye.
“Monumental changes in the Australian way of life are making the present into one of the most challenging periods in our history,” the blurb read.
“Such issues as the ‘new woman’, a record divorce rate, multiculturalism, the highest level of unemployment in 60 years, the onrush of technology, the rise of the swinging voter, a rapidly shrinking middle class, all contribute. Because we are all living through an age of redefinition, many of us are suffering from anxiety, stress and insecurity that are the inevitable consequences of having to adjust to such radical social, cultural and economical upheaval. How will we cope?”
Are things really that different in 2018?
“There have been some huge changes,” he says.
While recognising there is still a long way to go, he says the gender wars have “undergone a huge development” and we’re learning to focus on the person, not the gender.
He says information technology has transformed our way of life to an extent he could never have predicted 25 years ago.
“That our lives would be dominated by personal computers and smartphones is something we weren't even fantasising about.”
Mackay says one thing that does worry him is a dramatic loss of trust.
“Trust in the major institutions, politics, the church, the banks, big business, the media, trade unions, professional sport … we are more cynical and more sceptical than we were 25 years ago, there's a lot of disillusionment, a lot of disappointment about that.”
Mackay left school at 16. His father lined him up a lowly paid clerkship with a public opinion research company.
“We’re talking 1955 when research of this kind barely existed, this was pre computers, pre television … but as soon as I got into it I realised it could be a dream job.”
'I've always been a curious person'
He says he was an introspective, rather introverted, child, an enthusiastic reader but one who enjoyed playing with his friends in the street and just mucking about.
“And I think I've always enjoyed observing, trying to figure out what was going on. I've always been a curious person.
“When I look back at my life, I think that’s what my career has been about: trying to explain why we do the things we do.”
Has he figured that out yet?
“I think I have but with the proviso that I think of humans as essentially non-rational beings and so when I'm explaining what we do it doesn't always mean giving a rational explanation.
“A lot of the things we do seem to be wildly irrational and we're driven by all sorts of things.
“I wrote a book a few years ago, What Makes Us Tick?, in which I made the point there are lots of competing desires, the desire to be taken seriously, the desire to belong, the desire to be loved, the desire for something to happen … all these sorts of things which, taken all together, I can use to explain most of our behaviour but always with the proviso it’s never neat or simple or rational.
“When I read some other research reports, I've occasionally thought I can't believe this because it’s too neat and tidy.
“Where are the loose ends, where are the contradictions, because there always are.
“Life is an intriguing puzzle and we know that, if we're lucky, we'll feel as though we've understood it before we're dead but probably most of us won't.”
Australia Reimagined: Towards a more compassionate, less anxious society, by Hugh Mackay. Macmillan, $34.99.
Hugh Mackay will be talking at Muse Canberra, Kingston, on June 17 at 3pm. Tickets $12 includes a complimentary class of house wine or soft drink. Bookings at muse.canberra.com.au
