What Makes Us Tick? The Ten Desires That Drive Us
By Hugh Mackay
Hachette, $35, pp 319
ISBN 9780733625077
Hugh Mackay has been studying Australian society for more than three decades, and has a number of interesting books and reports under his belt. What Makes Us Tick? is presented as a distillation of what he has learned from his research and observations, but anyone expecting insights about shifting political allegiances, the generational confusion of ideologies and the broader social landscape of the country will not find it here. Mackay’s focus, instead, is on the internal drivers of personality, not in Australians in particular, but in Westerners in general. The result is a piece of work which is not uninteresting but certainly on the vague side.
Much of this has to do with Mackay’s methodology, if it can be called that. In the past, his technique has been to gather people — not a statistically random selection, but just people he happens to know or has run across — and get them to talk about a general theme. This can work very well, giving the participants the freedom and time to interact and explore issues, instead of looking for whatever glib comments the clock seems to demand.
But Mackay did not assemble a group for this project. Instead, he looked back over his past excursions, and revisited some of his personal experiences as well. As a result, there is a recurring problem of knowing when Mackay is citing trends and patterns from his groups and when he is just, well, thinking out loud.
He has come up with a list of ten desires, which he sees as unchanging and common to everyone. He rates the first, the desire to be taken seriously, as the primary driver (although its key role is something he asserts rather than proves), with the rest — a personal place, something to believe in, connection, to be useful, to belong, for more, for control, for something to happen and to love — in a non- hierarchical pile.
As a list, it’s fair enough. Certainly, everyone wants their achievements, problems and interests to be recognised, and having them dismissed can be uniquely painful. Some people who are denied respect in their childhood become criminals, others develop a permanent cringe. (Some enter parliament, but that is another story.)
The lack of personal space can likewise be a raw psychological wound. Just as a woman needs a room of her own, a bloke must have a shed, as a refuge and a site of reflection. For many people, their car is a particularly important place, generating a sense of control not found elsewhere.
Mackay is on less firm ground when he talks about the need for something to believe in. While there is an ingrained human need for religious faith of some type, it is not at all clear whether belief in whacko conspiracy theories qualifies. Yes, everyone’s faith can look odd to nonbelievers, but there is no reason to not call a spade a spade and say straight out that the things some people believe are merely silly.
One of his other categories, the desire for more, is equally problematic. He comes very close to the trap of seeing liberal societies in purely economic terms, driven by an escalating but pointless desire for affluence. This is the sort of thing one hears from undergraduate Marxists, who somehow manage to miss the point that liberalism is the balance between community and individualism, as much about the freedom to think for oneself as about material prosperity. Has Mackay never heard of Edmund Burke? How about Peter Drucker? Surely Milton Friedman has crossed his path. A bit of deep reading would have added some depth to Mackay’s superficial musings.
He readily acknowledges that there are contradictions within the list. The desire for control and stability does not sit comfortably with the desire for something exciting to happen, for example. On the other side of the ledger, there is substantial overlap between the categories of love, belonging and being useful. This sort of confusion undercuts the idea of a definitive list, but Mackay seems to think that throwing in a warm-hearted story will make everything right.
The central problem, however, is that most of the desires that Mackay examines can have a dark side. The desire to belong to a group can easily generate conflict as to the ‘true nature’ of the group (Mackay cites a story about a gardening club that descended into factional conflict and breakaway splinters). The need for faith can turn into obsession and xenophobia. The desire for living space becomes rabid territorialism. Stalking is but a step away from the need for love.
Mackay recognises this, but accepting the problem does not do much to solve it. When is the porridge just right? When it is neither too hot nor too cold, apparently.
The Goldilocks strategy means that parts of the book (especially the chapters about love and belonging) read more like a hackneyed self-help manual than social analysis. Instead of information, we get fuzzy anecdotes, and platitudes instead of useful ideas.
When Mackay does put forward a prescription, such as suggesting that planners and governments should try to create places and spaces that encourage human interaction, it usually has a distinctly motherly feel. Hard to argue with the assertion that love is a pretty good thing, but it doesn’t actually help us much in understanding what makes us tick.
Perhaps a summarising chapter would have given the book more focus. Instead, it seems to stop rather than conclude. Or maybe if Mackay had been willing to offer some hard findings, even at the risk of offending someone or other, there would not be a lingering sense of mushiness.
Despite all this, What Makes Us Tick? is an enjoyable enough read, if you don’t expect to be told anything you don’t already know. There are some snippets that might strike some chords, but if you rap your knuckles on the cover, you can hear, just faintly, a tinny echo.
Derek Parker is a Melbourne writer who tries not to tick too loudly.
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