Swing dancing is about collaboration, as is resilience and community

The nimble feet of a group of swing dancers stole my attention and the uninhibited joy and co-operation of the dancers helped me understand that success for the human project should be relatively simple.

Swing dancing has
much to teach us
about
 the human condition.

Rather than bruise the other by adhering to ways that suggest we are not only cautious about demonstrating care for our fellows, but virtually paralysed by the fear of leaking any emotion that might hint at love, we should bond with others just as swing dancers do.
The swing dancing “craze” dates from the 1920s, but it was just recently I watched as a diverse group brought the fad of last century into this with an overt public demonstration of the beauty and success that arises from collaboration.
Communities, and individuals, everywhere could learn from the enabling spirit of swing dancing and so realise the wonderful solidarity and harmony groups experience when they work as one, rather than individuals.
Swing dancing comes in many variations that are complex and varied reflecting, in a sense, the life of a community and the dance’s adherents demonstrate, clearly, that working for an agreed to and understood goal, can produce beautiful results.
Watching the swing dancers gave me a warm felling, one that I always experience when I see a group of people combining their physical and emotional resources to produce something grander than the individual.
The way ahead is clearly not about the isolation and aggrandizement of the individual, rather it is about the consolidation of the community and so collaboration of all those among its number.
Communities need to elevate their aims as they embrace collaboration and like swing dancers heighten their timing ensuring they remain in step with compatriots
Interestingly it was only July 15 that Tim Dixon and Matt Browne wrote in the Melbourne Age under the heading: “Mature debate on our future needed, not Tea Party-style militancy” in which they said Australia’s present mining boom was the most favourable outside economic event in the nation's history …… “also, probably the last great boom Australia's fossil fuels will bring”, they noted.
Considering that, we, like the swing dancers, need to collaborate to combine our physical and psychological assets to ensure the benefits of “the last great boom Australia's fossil fuels will bring” are invested in a resilient and sustainable communities, rather than squandered answering immediate wants.
The nimbleness of the swing dancers led me to think about similar athletic thinking and swift strategic social and political manoeuvering demanded as we step into a future underwritten by a wholly different energy diet.
The next step in our dance of life will be quite beyond existing human experience and only possible if, like the swing dancers, we collaborate and combine our resources, both intellectual and psychological.