Community

I'm going to begin this post with a quote that will seem to have nothing to do with the accompanying video. Maybe it doesn't. In any case:

For years mental health professionals taught people that they could be psychologically healthy without social support, that 'unless you love yourself, no one else will love you.' Women were told that they didn't need men, and vice versa. People without any relationships were believed to be as healthy as those who had many. These ideas contradict the fundamental biology of human species: we are social mammals and could never have survived without deeply interconnected and interdependent human contact. The truth is, you cannot love yourself unless you have been loved and are loved. The capacity to love cannot be built in isolation.

The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook, Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. and Maia Szalavitz

I've lost count of the number of times I've heard this song. For the longest time, it struck me as nothing more than a divinely-daffy slice of 1960s British psychedelia.

Then, one day, I listened again, and this quote came to me.

If they're related at all, both the quote and the song say something urgent about communal living. Maybe what comes off as childhood fantasy in the video is really a light-bulb moment about an ingredient that's been missing in Western society for far too long.

This is Manfred Mann with "My Name Is Jack".