I was born in London and raised in a thin 3-storey house in the East End and spoke with Cockney accent. One of the things I remember is that people in street were often familiar to each other and they didn’t move much. After immigrating to New Zealand in 1970 I spent the rest of my youth growing up in Wellington. Once we finally settled in our own home I found the same to be true: my parents knew most of their neighbours and people didn’t move much. How things have changed.
Hospitality was once an act of generosity between people who were wholly unconnected to each other. They weren’t family or necessarily friends, they were just those living next door, or maybe down the road. Hospitality has now become an industry. It’s something that many people do together somewhere else – a café or restaurant. We pay and strangers serve. Hospitality is time spent with those we like and the avoidance of those we don’t. In many parts of New Zealand people have no idea who lives next door, yet alone have them in their home.
This ‘industrialisation’ of hospitality has had the effect of increasing social hostility. It’s not that we see strangers as enemy’s perse, but there is a social distance that wasn’t part of our culture in recent history – it’s a stance of mistrust or wariness.
The upshot of this move from hospitality to hostility is the ever-increasing alienation of social groups from one another. It means that as individuals our lives grow narrower and not wider, our perceptions of different people are clouded and less clear. The end result is fear.
A few years ago my wife and I backpacked through Egypt. While we were in Cairo we saw this social dissonance in full colour. People with ‘means’ would hop off an air-conditioned plane, transfer to an air-conditioned bus, walk into the air-conditioned hotel, tour on an air-conditioned river boat, meet pre-conditioned ‘safe’ locals, and then leave as they arrived. The plane, the bus, the hotel and the boat were all owned and operated by western franchises. Was it an experience of Egyptian hospitality? Probably not. It was just the safety of home - away from home.
Fear is a subtle but powerful anti-social tool. The problem we face is that too many of us have been infected and hostility is the end result. We might tell ourselves that most strangers are probably ok, but we act as if it’s safer not to find out.
I wish to recommend a reversal. Spend a week moving from hostility to hospitality. Talk to a neighbour and have a coffee with an unknown colleague at work. Make the effort to visit or phone a child or parent you’re estranged from. It might change your life. It’s worth remembering that hostility ultimately destroys people. Hospitality might be a little risky but it’s stuff of real living - for me and everyone else.