And what a healing miracle it was that I accepted the invitation. The author was Robert Muensch, who had written many edgy, humorous and very un-childlike stories, ranging from a tale about a Fart that would not depart a respectable family (“Good Families Don’t”) to the courageous princess who needed no prince to protect her (or marry her). The highlight of Muensch’s presentation, however, was the reciting of his most famous poetic story: “I Love You Forever”. It concerned a mother who sang her child to sleep:
I’ll love you forever,
I’ll like you for always,
As long as I’m living
My baby you’ll be.
Later in life, it was she who was held in the arms of her now grown-up child. He was now the one holding and cherishing his now elderly and declining mother. The remarkable thing is that members of the audience—both children and adults—began to chant the key lines “I love you forever . . . “along with Robert Muensch. Out of childhood love and the reflective love of adulthood, there was a shared, contagious, binding delivery of enduring and exchanged nurturance. I left the auditorium after Muensch shared his stories, feeling much less depressed and certainly less discouraged about my school. Here was one of my students “gifting” me with just what I needed: some uplifting, storytelling that connected people (including me) together.
Another incident recently occurred outside the United States. A colleague of mine who lives in Paris attended a rare event in front of his home. It was a partial eclipse of the Sun. On a very hot day, these Parisians came together to view and celebrate this wonderous, natural phenomenon. They collectively gazed up at the retreating Sun and shared words of appreciation for this awe-filled solar occurrence.
Fear and Security
I’m sure there was no fear exhibited among the Parisians watching the Sun, though there have been public shootings in France, as their has been throughout the world during this troubled century. What about events in the United States. As parents, my wife and I seemed to have deep-seated sense that this was going to be a safe experience for our daughter at the Oakland Colosseum. A similar sense of security would probably be found among the parents who had children on the fields at Woodstock. While parents might have been troubled by the naked dancing and drug use captured in news releases from Woodstock, they probably were not worried about their mature child being harmed. I also have no doubts that the parents of the child in Edmonton had no fears about their child’s experience at the story-telling event. They trusted their dear friends who escorted the child to hear Robert Muensch. And they knew that the stories would be anything but threatening or violent. They would be funny, warm and perhaps a bit naughty. Just what every kid needs!!
Would the massive commitment to Hitler at Nuremburg have led parents to assume safety? As a curious participant in the Philbrick rally, I did assume safety but soon found out that this was not a safe environment and that aggression could easily shift from outside the LA Sports Arena to those participating in the rally. The bonds within the arena were broken. I left this rally feeling unsafe and was not humming any of the patriotic songs presented at this “American” rally.
Collective Binding and Connecting: Growing and Intensifying Interpersonal Contagion
We get high together in a crowd, get closer together, and bind together when we are together with other people. Some of these bindings yield positive outcomes while other bindings in different settings yield quite negative outcomes. Regardless of the outcomes, there are several common features found in all forms of collective bonding – they range from the chemicals we receive in our nose, to the regressive dynamics operating in a large crowd. These features produce a form of Contagion that intensifies the bonding and leads to the emergence of a powerful force of Ligato.
