psyche. In these times of great change and incredible diversity we all know that when adversity strikes, whether in the form of bushfires, floods or international conflict, there’ll be a fellow Aussie there to help out. It’s the tradition of the digger, the character of mateship, and the enduring power of good.
This book was written and compiled by Mark McCrindle with Emily Wolfinger of McCrindle Research.
Mark McCrindle is a social researcher with an international reputation for tracking the emerging trends and analysing the diverse generations. He is the Director of not-for-profit organisation, the Australian Leadership Foundation, as well as McCrindle Research whose clients include over 100 multinational organisations. His highly valued research and reports have developed his renown as a futurist, demographer and social commentator.
Emily Wolfinger is a published writer and has freelanced for a variety of publications. As a freelancer, Emily enjoyed writing about some of the big issues of our times. At McCrindle Research Emily translates social and generational research into publishable form both for internal and external clients.
Mark and Emily are the authors of the generational tome, The ABC of XYZ: Understanding the Global Generations (UNSW Press – www.theABCofXYZ.com).
McCrindle Research
McCrindle Research exists to conduct world-class research and to communicate its insights in innovative ways.
You will find out more about our research agency at: www.mccrindle.com.au
Supporting Charity You have already done good just by holding this book in your hand! One dollar from every book published goes to the work of the Australian charity, Hope Street (www.hopestreet.org.au), who look after some of our cities’ most marginalised people. Daily the team at Hope Street dedicate themselves to supporting and empowering those in need, and in doing so they show the power of good.
Acknowledgments
Our heartfelt thanks to all of our generous contributors: without your stories, there would be no book! A special “thank you” to Tim Fischer, who contributed not only a story but also wrote the foreword to this book.
Thank you also to Josephine Brouard, Sue Carney, Louise Waterson and the team from Reader’s Digest for helping to make this book happen. Your support and input have made the difference to this important work.
Thanks to Louis de Vries and Anna Rosner Blay at Hybrid Publishers for believing in the book and working so hard to make it happen in such a short timeframe.
Thanks to that young “tradie” from Adelaide, whose act of kindness inspired this book. Finally, thanks to our 6,715,082 fellow Australians who, according to our research, engage in acts of kindness to strangers regularly.
On behalf of all of these strangers, thank you!
Foreword
Trappist Trend or Good Constructive Engagement: Which Way Forward?
There is a certain joy in life in helping out, in helping good causes, as George Bernard Shaw once famously remarked. Further, there is a longer life for those who do so, as medical research has revealed time and time again. This book provides many examples of the power of doing good works, the betterment conferred in so many different ways and, on occasions, leading to the saving of lives.
I salute my fellow contributors and I urge this troubled world to recall the example of the good Samaritan, to recall kinder and more generous times and look out for others. Otherwise, the individual self-centric society will dominate all, dominate to a greater extent than even now and so make for a more brittle and acidic society.
Mighty author Mark Twain, of Mississippi fame and Mary MacKillop, Australia’s first saint, travelled the world in the last five decades of the 19th century and much of the first decade of the 20th century - different people with different purposes who caught many trains and had to take many voyages. In fact, in 1895 Mark Twain caught sixteen trains in Australia alone and, who knows, may have even travelled on the same train as Mary MacKillop. Both encountered much adversity in life but both bounced back. Interestingly enough, both wrote of much kindness willingly extended to them in their travels, be it in Adelaide, London or Rome. Imagine how less productive their lives might have been if all that travel and worldly experience was undertaken with headphones jammed firmly in each ear!
In considering the mantra of extending a helping hand, of doing good because it is not only the right thing to do but ultimately in your broad community interest, it is time to reflect on very recent trends that have swung the world away from the useful friendly casual conversation. In the process, it has resulted in the creation of barriers of hesitation, higher thresholds before people intervene to help or just converse.
The world is a global village in many ways; life is increasingly hectic for so many - east and west, rich and poor, with family and friend network support or without. The crunch is that the opportunity for the unexpected good conversation from outside your circle, sparking a laugh or an increase in useful knowledge or a creative idea or two, has been sharply curtailed.
Why is this so in the so-called “social networking” world of Twitter, Facebook, email, iPod and all? Perhaps this is because free time and downtime when commuting or travelling or even just shopping locally has sharply reduced. The more communication, cellular phones and game gadgets, the more self-absorbed people are becoming and the less opportunities then exist for new interface with those outside the existing social circle.
Take the grand conference circuits of today with every subject covered every which way, in locations large and small, exotic or sub-exotic, but even then it is often a case of smart speaker or lecturer in, then speak, then dash out without mixing. Or delegates in a controlled introductory mix on opening night followed by an overloaded agenda with subset fringe meetings, all resulting in little true “free wheeling” time.
In short, today’s a world increasingly lacks the good conversation factor, with a paucity of motivation to break down natural barriers. This makes it harder to build good community fabric with an altruistic or “helping hand” culture to the fore. The extension of this may be a greater reluctance for people to feel involved in their community as they find it harder to make the personal contact required. This culture can create higher and higher thresholds of reluctance or hesitation that must be broached before people act, whether on a planned basis or in a suddenly arising situation.
If we converse less, if we communicate less and less in a genuine way by whatever means, then we await further breakdown in family and community, and that is not good. Do I exaggerate? Maybe, but there is good news, too, as people start to find ways to fight back and adjust to the new communication world we live in. This is what you will discover in soaking up the flavour of these writings, many which are counter-intuitive to the drift in the activities and affairs of humanity.
This is particularly uplifting in a world where, too often, bile and spite dominate good cheer and thoughtful conversation. Maybe it should be called the “Trappist trend” after the contemplative order of monks who take an oath of silence.
Lamartine wrote in 1840: “Civilisation is a battlefield, where many succumb in the cause of the advancement of all.” I would observe that civilisation is a battlefield in the 21st century and many will succumb, indeed many more will succumb if the “Power of Good” is not to the fore in every way. Unless you are a monk or committed to the worthy aim of a life of contemplation and prayer, the “Trappist trend” of non-communication can be destructive and deadly.
The late and colourful Cardinal Jaime Sin, in a famous installation speech as Archbishop of Manila, said in 1974: “Everywhere walls are rising. When we wall somebody out, we also wall ourselves in. All of us are living in our separate worlds, enclosed in selfishness by our bigotry. The change must start in ourselves.” Amen, shalom and salaam to this farsighted statement.
To