The Direction of Intention

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As luck would have it (isn’t that an interesting phrase! Luck personified and with an intention!) this morning I began reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. It is lucky or serendipitous or coincidental, depending upon your belief about such matters, because last night I was working on the sequence for my upcoming class and needed a good story or example that clearly illustrated the power of community and connectivity. The introduction to Outliers is about a little town in Pennsylvania, Roseto.

In the 1950’s heart disease was an epidemic in the United States. Heart attacks were the leading cause of death among men under the age of 65 – except among the residents of Roseto. Heart disease was virtually non-existent there in people 55 or younger. Among people 65 or older the rate of death from heart disease was half that of the rest of the United States. Why?

Multiple studies were done to investigate this abnormality. Diet was considered and ruled out; the people of Roseto ate foods high in cholesterol, higher than most parts of the nation. Exercise, genetics, geography were each considered and ruled out. What was the difference?

As Gladwell writes, “The Rosetans had created a powerful, protective, social structure capable of insolating them from the pressures of the modern world. The Rosetans were healthy because of where they were from, because of the world that they created for themselves in their tiny little town in the hills.”

This little town had virtually no crime, no homelessness, no suicide, no drug addiction or alcoholism, no one was on welfare, no one was dying of stress related conditions. In short, they were actively supportive, concerned and engaged with each other. They created a communal culture in which all members matter, all member care for the wellbeing of the others – no one was racing to be some other place.

Gladwell continues: the researchers “…had to convince the medical community to think about health and heart attacks in an entirely new way: they had to get them to realize that they wouldn’t be able to understand why someone was healthy if all they did was think about an individual’s personal choices or actions in isolation. They had to look beyond the individual. They had to understand the culture he or she was a part of,….”

No one lives in a vacuum. No one creates in a vacuum. No one develops in a vacuum. The health of the community expresses as the health experienced in the individuals. Power follows the same channels: if only the few dominate through power-over others then none are powerful, all are powerful when all the members are supported and supporting each other to realize their true power.

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