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Being cautious when you hear the word resilience or……Pulling a fast one

By Mark Furlong.

Certain words have a powerful up-beat vibe. The word community has this cachet. Like others with a bright symbolism, this term can be used to affirm and inspire, but it can also be said with a manipulative effect. For example, commentators can invoke the ideal of community as a ‘spray on solution’ to problems that are deep and complex (Bryson and Mowbray, 1981). Right now, an often heard word is ‘resilience.’ Similar to community, might this term also warrant sceptical attention?

We are repeatedly being told: Hang-in there. In the long run everything will be fine if you remain resilient. Be tough. Bounce back. Do not let yourself be discouraged. Public health and pop psychology spokespersons reiterate this trope. Stories of recovery and rehabilitation, of disaster survival and sporting success, reiterate the same message. In all these accounts resilience is put forward as the punchline, as the motherlode.

The terms might have changed, but there is something familiar in this account. In Victorian era England the notion of ‘character’ held a particularly positive charge. Associated with heroes and aristocrats, with explorers and the high office-bearers of empire, this quality was popularized in Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem If. An evocative ode to the man of character – yes, the image of the brave and indomitable was highly gendered – the poem taught a moral lesson: you are someone of character ‘If you can keep your head when all around are losing theirs’s.’ In this male-stream valorisation of detachment, readers are instructed to perform to a mythic, impossible standard.

There is a shadow side to this narrative. In the event you or I fall over, well, each of us has been shown-up as someone who does not measure up. In not making it, everyone can see we do not have what it takes. This outcome does not mean one is judged to be physically inadequate. Rather, the lack of character / resilience points to a moral failure. One has failed to be responsible. Like blaming the cabin boys for the sinking of the titanic, in this account culpability has been delegated to the lowest level entity.

Re-locating culpability from a fault in the system to the moral failure of individuals is to pull a fast one. Such a sleight of hand, such a grand example of legerdemain, adds an unfair burden onto those who are trying to manage problems that are contextual in their origins, operations and consequences. Such problems – inequality, housing precarity, climate change – are not resolvable if the individual is resilient.

A campaign to have individuals feel they have a moral duty to be unsinkable can be seen as part of a larger platform. Critics claim this campaign aims to govern subjectivity and construct a certain consciousness – a mindset that self-blames rather than is mindful of the bigger picture (Rose and Lentos, 2017). There is also a simpler, and perhaps more radical, criticism. Soraya Chemaly argues in The Resilience Myth (2024) that the valorisation of grit and determination as inherently private attributes not only misses the point, this idea is a misleading and dangerous fallacy.

That all one needs to do is‘be resilient in these tough times’ invites, nay commands, the individual to aspire to be a military entity – a being who is fortified and emotionally cauterized. More, eulogizing resilience as a private attribute furthers a regressive ideal – that one should be self-reliant, an independent being who has no need for others. Rather than seek private solutions based on the false god of autonomy, at Bouverie the commitment is to practices that build local solidarity and the quality of inter-dependence. Bruce Daisley, the ex-Twitter VP, said it well.

True resilience lies in a feeling of togetherness, that we’re united with those around us in a shared endeavour.

At the very least, let’s be cautious when resilience is cited as a wellspring value that promises stand-alone survival. Aligned with the Bouverie Centre’s reason d’etre, I suggest we instead look to the relational spaces that create resilient outcomes and take up our part of those collective spaces.

References

Bryson, L. and Mowbray, M., 1981. ‘Community’: The Spray‐on Solution. Australian journal of social issues,16(4), pp.255-267.

Chemaly, S., 2024. The Resilience Myth: New Thinking on Grit, Strength, and Growth After Trauma. Simon and Schuster.

Rose, N. and Lentzos, F., 2017. Making us resilient: Responsible citizens for uncertain times. In: Trnka, S. and Trundle,C. eds., 2017. Competing responsibilities: the ethics and politics of contemporary life. Duke University Press, pp.27-48.