{"id":273,"date":"2014-09-30T09:54:22","date_gmt":"2014-09-30T08:54:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hilarymoriarty.com\/blog\/?p=273"},"modified":"2014-09-30T09:54:22","modified_gmt":"2014-09-30T08:54:22","slug":"only-connect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/?p=273","title":{"rendered":"Only Connect?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Making connections is all important, but so too is knowing exactly when to make them, says Hilary Moriarty
\n
\nI was a sucker for the very idea of \u201cOnly connect\u201d when I first came across it in E. M. Forster\u2019s \u2018Howard\u2019s End\u2019. I was an undergrad studying English at Trinity College Dublin and I thought the instruction magical. Profound. Yes! The answer \u2013 though to quite what question I am not sure I knew even then. But it was so quotable, usually in deeply mysterious tones brooking no argument. And so thrilling when you did, and someone recognised it \u2013 \u201cAh Forster!\u201d they would say. \u201cSo true!\u201d And you felt as if you had found a kindred spirit in a hostile world. You shared a moment, felt superior for a second \u2013 in fact, what you did was connect. Go, Forster.
\nThe irony is that, in the late 60s, to leave university was to become immediately disconnected from many of the friends you had made: they went to the Forces and got sent far away; they joined VSO and went to South America for a year, but then never came back; they even scattered in the British mainland, but who was great at letter-writing then? And grotty flats may have had no phones and flights cost the earth. Ours is the generation that reconnected via Friends Reunited and Facebook, but there was much dislocation and disconnection in between.
\nThe trouble is that when everyone was enabled to adopt our literary mantra, \u201cOnly connect\u201d, in a later age, see where it got us.
\nLast month I attended a conference with a fine array of speakers. Eight years in a job in which organising five or six conferences a year was part of what I did has taught me a lot about speakers. Like a good man, a good speaker is hard to find, and his price can come close to diamonds. I actually attended many conferences for which I was not responsible just to find speakers for the ones I did \u2013 experience taught me the dangers of trusting anyone else\u2019s judgement. Things might still go wrong on the day \u2013 a different day, a different audience, a different alignment of the stars \u2013 and sometimes what you got was not as good as the first time you heard them. C\u2019est la vie of a conference organiser. But at least you could say how wonderful he was (and it\u2019s usually a he \u2013 women are thin on the public-speaking ground) when you heard him in Wigan or wherever, an answer to \u201cWhat possessed you?\u201d
\nSo I have a lot of respect for conference organisers: I know how hard they try to match audience to speaker; I know how much they really believe that Bloggs will be worth hearing \u2013 trust me!
\nAnd on their behalf, as well as that of Bloggs himself and all his willing colleagues on platforms, my blood boils when \u2013 visibly \u2013 no one in the audience is listening. And why? Because they are sitting in the audience actually connected to their outer world, wherever it may be, and in whatever time zone. From the stage, from the speaker\u2019s podium, it certainly looks as if they are only connecting \u2013 but not with Bloggs. With everyone else \u2013 as in a Tweet. With anyone else \u2013 as in a personal communication with the boss or the underling or the wife or the mistress (do they still exist or am I just showing my age?) or the child about to go into an exam room a hundred miles away \u2013 bless!
\nI want to shout: \u201cI don\u2019t care \u2013 pay attention!\u201d
\nNow we connect with the world, but not necessarily with the person in front of us. Speakers on stage are \u2013 maybe \u2013 a special case. They grab us or they don\u2019t, and if they don\u2019t the \u201cSod \u2019em\u201d seems to be fairly universal. You turned up, didn\u2019t you? Probably paid for the privilege. And you haven\u2019t left, have you? You\u2019re still there, grabbable if what they say is suddenly, surprisingly more interesting than what Fred in marketing thinks you ought to know even if you are a hundred miles away. I mean, it would be really rude if you just got up and left, wouldn\u2019t it?
\nBut it\u2019s rude not to pay attention! I am realistic enough not to be surprised people do it, but when did it actually become perfectly acceptable for whole audiences to blatantly do something other than listen?
\nThe notion of an audience having some responsibility for its own engagement seems to have gone for a ball of chalk. \u201cGrab me!\u201d says today\u2019s audience, already flipping open phones, and poking devices various, when perhaps \u2013 sorry, nostalgia talking \u2013 it used to say, collectively, \u201cI will give you my attention \u2013 it\u2019s part of the deal, I hope I will enjoy what you have to say\u201d? Nowadays even theatre audiences, faced (usually) with great actors and excellent texts and paying (certainly) a fortune for their seats, give attention grudgingly and with phones on silent, but not actually turned off for real. The instinct to connect is too demanding.
\nActually, it is foolish perhaps to lament the lack of attention in audiences, whatever is on stage. For the most part, your life is not going to depend upon that attention being paid. But it may well depend upon paying attention when you are driving, and look at the horrifying statistics for road accidents occurring when a driver has been talking or texting on the phone. Pedestrians also, of course \u2013 in a busy part of London, I have seen too many dozy commuters unable to cross a road without their eyes fixed on their phones, apparently oblivious to traffic or lights.
\nIn the rush hour, progress on London streets is seriously impeded by the number of people making their way through the crowds but on the phone, usually with the breathtaking information that they are on their way to the station. When did we become so needy, so desperate for the sound of a known voice that we cannot disconnect \u2013 literally \u2013 to save our lives?
\nAnd if I may briefly pursue two other thoughts springing from this wonderfully versatile quotation: if students were not able to manage it for themselves, schools are now instructed to enable students to connect \u2013 it is a skill to be overtly taught. \u201cLook at how successful people are connected,\u201d we say. \u201cAnd look how the upper and sharp-elbowed middle classes make use of their connections to get where they would like to be! It\u2019s a vital skill, and if you don\u2019t have it, we must teach it, because never mind education, connecting is the ladder for social mobility. Capitalise on whom you know. Get work experience. Get an internship. Get a job. The son-in-law also rises.\u201d
\nBoarding schools have always been great for introducing children from all over the world to each other \u2013 building friendships and establishing real connections to people whose homes are in Hong Kong or China or anywhere in Europe. What the schools actually taught in class was only half the boon of being a boarder. In a shrinking world, with job opportunities in multinational companies stretched across it, to have friends in far places has become as important as having them in high places, perhaps more so. And they may of course be both.
\nHilary Moriarty is Founding Partner \u2013 Education for Greenings International
\nThis article first appeared at http:\/\/ie-today.co.uk\/Featured-Content\/only_connect<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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