I’ve been thinking recently about the importance of making connections. I admit this started with a bit of idle Googling on the name of a certain quiz show, and I disappeared down a rabbit hole for a while.
Only Connect is a TV quiz show which requires contestants to spot esoteric and cryptic connections between clues. As a viewer there is a certain amount of pride in even occasionally being able to keep up with the teams and spot a connection or two, but also there is an appreciation for a well-constructed question, even if you don’t get it initially and have to have it explained to you (and even if none of the contestants get it either!). I guess that as humans we find something satisfying in finding patterns or making connections.
The title of the show comes from the epigraph of Howards End; it seems E.M. Forster was a big fan of connection, and emphasised the value of personal connections in much of his work. The epigraph for Howards End is a little cryptic in isolation, but it is suggested that the novel is basically about human connection. And human connection is something of which we are all becoming more and more intensely aware.
Forster meant connection amongst humans, but also connection within the individual: “Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted… Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.” I think he means connecting the different natures of each of us “the beast and the monk” recognising that neither is our true self, but that somewhere in-between we find a balance. So maybe making that connection, finding that balance, is how we find our humanity, we’re not savage beasts, but we are also not cold machines, we’re something of each and that’s what makes us interesting.
This got me thinking about the samurai from Japan, who were famously fearsome warriors, but would also practice some form of expressive art, they would write haiku, practice calligraphy, or origami or ikebana (flower arranging). This is the concept of the warrior-poet, the idea that you can be two things that are, apparently, in opposition to one another and that the apparent conflict can actually be a strength. And I think this is similar to Forster’s “beast and monk”.
In an article I read a while ago I came across an idea that I liked, the idea that humans are curiosity machines, and learning things is what our brains are meant to do. But what do we do with the things we learn? Maybe making connections is really what humans do? The example given in the article was Claude Shannon, a mathematician and engineer, who also wrote poetry and juggled, and was adamant that these practices (and generally being open to other things) drove his creative thinking.
So interesting things happen where there are connections, at the nodes or junctions, in the borders where things overlap, or in the times and the places when things change or transition from one thing to another. Interdisciplinary research often yields the most interesting results, and cross-disciplinary thinking is often required to address the big problems.
By now I’m quite deep in the rabbit hole and I’m reflecting that this rabbit hole is itself about connections (I know, #SoMeta right?). I’ve actually been reading about a lot of this on Wikipedia and I remembered about the WikiGame. The game is about finding ways to connect two articles in an efficient manner using only the links on Wikipedia. It relies on the concept of ‘six degrees of separation’ that often complex networks are closely linked enough that you can get from more-or-less anywhere to more-or-less anywhere else with just six degrees of separation (see ‘Five Clicks to Jesus’ or ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’).
So it’s a ‘small world’ and everything is connected; great right? But not all connections are equal, and especially connections between people. I think at the moment we’re all feeling some degree of isolation and we’re trying our best to bridge those gaps. Social media platforms are great, because they allow us to make lots of connections with lots of people, but is the quality of each connection diminished? Zoom is great, because it allows us to see people we wouldn’t ordinarily be able to see, but it’s not the same because it robs us of some of those vital human clues we get when interacting with someone else in person.
So where am I going with this? This post is mostly a way of collecting (and connecting) my own thoughts in some sort of ordered fashion. But coming full-circle on this, the E. M. Forster quote “Only Connect” is about connection of ideas, but also connection of people. So having a thought, an idea, or pretty much creating anything is fine, but sharing it with others is even better. So I thought I would start sharing some of my random ramblings and a blog seemed like a good way to do this.
To be honest this is probably going to be a sort of commonplace book where I store stuff I’ve read, and things I’ve been thinking about, and reflections on how they connect and overlap; so I’m hoping it will be a useful ‘exo-brain’ for me, but if anyone else wants to comment, then wonderful!