The Hip and the Olympics – bringing togetherness to a Nation
It is a rare day when an entire nation gathers around the same event together. And it is magical.
It is so magical because it elevates us all together and unites us; A powerful feeling of belongingness.
A sense of belongingness is so important to human kind that it is the absolute TOP human need of all time.1 Belongingness is followed by only two other universal human needs; a sense of competence and feelings of relative autonomy.
In Canada we got a double-whammy of “belongingness” this past weekend.
First, I would like to thank all of the Canadian Olympic team members for drawing us together to rally around the athletes. It was magical to feel a part of your efforts in Rio.
However, I think the true draw of Canadian togetherness was most strongly evidenced in CBC’s 12 million viewers of the Tragically Hip concert in Kingston on Saturday night. That would be almost half of our nation watching at the same time!
My 10 year old daughter and I watched the Hip concert together. It was more than magical. It was a powerful sense of Canadian togetherness – like digging each others’ cars out of the snowbank after a bad winter storm. It was a powerful sense of harmony and shared culture.
My daughter kind-of paid attention to the show - - somewhere between Jenga games and practicing her hand-stands in the living room. She kept saying that Gord Downie danced all twitchy and she thought it was weird – I remember saying to her that he was a better poet than a dancer. I also recall pointing out that the Hip concert was bigger than New Years Eve (to explain the magnitude to her). I think I even told her it was bigger than Elvis, haha.
At the very least my daughter and I shared the most splendid evening in our own connectedness (and popcorn) with just the two of us.
All across Canada, the Hip show brought people together! From one or two people in a living room, all the way to the thousands that showed up in City Hall squares across the country.
I think we all felt the magic of the Hip show. We all felt the humanity. We all felt like we all shared something really special. I for one, felt like a different person when I woke up Sunday morning (and, no, it was not the nasty remnants of draft beer; I drank wine). I am writing this article tonight with fond memories and new perspectives.
What was your favourite moment? What will you share at the water cooler today?
My favourite memory of the Hip concert was that intimate moment between Gord Downie on stage and Justin Trudeau, our Prime Minister, in the audience. There were tears and there was an earnestness in that serious exchange that I’ll never forget. It was my proudest moment of bearing witness to democracy.
It is not too often that everyone bandies around the same maypole.
Some might say that Hockey Night in Canada gets people together – but, I think even that “belongingness” is waning a bit (given the “tragically Leafs”).
It is true; that people don’t gather around the same event like they used to. Having shared experiences (en masse) seems like a relic from the past; A tragedy unto itself (and likely why it is so treasured when it does happen).
Back in my day people didn’t have PVRs or internet and we all watched the popular shows at the exact time when they were aired.
I recall Seinfeld episodes that had people talking for days.
Those old shows brought a feeling of shared experience. If you didn’t “catch” the episode – you never saw it again; it was that important. I felt that sense of belongingness during an episode knowing that others were watching it too (and that we would kibitz with the jokes around the water cooler for the next week).
I still shout “serenity now” from time to time (I did mention my 10 year old daughter, right?) and I still laugh when I think about the phrase, “I’m out!” or the time when Kramer treated his Japanese visitors to a ‘hot tub’ and they ended up sleeping in a Karl Farbman chest of drawers that had to be ‘axed’ open the next morning due to the hot tub steam that made the wood swell.
Popular shows can generate belongingness for lots of people, to be sure. But even the “belongingness” generated by shows like Seinfeld in the 1990’s pales in comparison to the days in the 1960’s when people had only one or two channels to watch. Think about shows like Ed Sullivan, or I Love Lucy; maybe your grand-parents still reminisce about certain episodes?
What is it about common events that people love?
Researchers would say1 it is about the sense of belongingness that we get from the event. That sense of togetherness; “that we’re all in it together;” and which makes our little lives feel like we are doing something good with them; participating in greatness; and feeling the love of a kindred spirit.
What the Olympics in Rio accomplished, what Seinfeld and Lucille Ball accomplished in their day, and what the Hip accomplished this past Saturday was, in essence, bandying us together around a common cause – providing us with a sense of togetherness and belongingness.
It felt good for a reason.
It is because people need to feel like they belong to something bigger and more powerful than them self.
This is psychology, man.
It is the only science that explores why people do what they do.
Why do people watch the Olympics? Why did everyone tune into the Hip concert on Saturday? Why do we like talking about shared events around the water cooler?
Because it helps us feel like we belong.
(and, dammit, we all need it.)1
So, thank you Canadian Olympians,
Thank you Hip
We needed that!
Dr. Cindy Ward is a native of Kitchener, Ontario, Canada and has a PhD in social and behavioural psychology from Wilfrid Laurier University. Cindy is a Sr. Associate at BEworks and studies human motivation. She really likes Self-Determination Theory and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as good theories for “why people do what they do.” She also dabbles in ‘death’ (ahem . . . I mean terror management theory). Most of all, though, Cindy likes to argue. So, if you disagree or have any comments, please email her at drcindywardphd@gmail.com
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: Classic definitions and new directions. Contemporary educational psychology, 25(1), 54-67.
