Tag: Differences

Us Versus Them

A Decline in Us Versus Them Thinking?

Posted on by jabittan
“Homo sapiens evolved to think of people as divided into us and them. Us was the group immediately around you, whoever you were, and them was everyone else,” writes Yuval Noah Harari in his book Sapiens. Humans evolved in small tribes, and if you have ever been part of a small club, you know that your small group can adopt a number of distinguishing quirks. Whether it is the name your group adopts, where your group chooses to meet up, or what tv show everyone in your group happens to like, small and random factors can become important distinguishing markers of your group. Larger factors can also become dominant distinguishing factors. Say you are part of a small running team whose goal is to win a big race. Your group is going to have a different culture, attitude, and expectation on individuals compared to a group that just wants to finish the race. Or imagine you are part of a quilting group in the Midwest. Your quilting group may be more interested in very different style than a quilting group meeting in south central Los Angeles. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine (or perhaps stereotype is more accurate) the Midwest group including country song lines on their quilts while the group from LA wrote, “sí se puede” on their quilts.
 
 
The small tribes our ancestors evolved within probably varied as much as the running teams and quilting groups I imagined above. With so many small differences and large differences possible, each tribe became unique, especially if they didn’t have a large amount of interaction with other tribes. Slowly, over time, groups grew, multiplied, and had more opportunities to interact. Initially, their differences would have been incredibly obvious, and the us versus them mindset would have been front and center. Two ancient tribes meeting would have been like our competitive and participatory running teams meeting each other on race day. Or like our Midwest and South Central LA quilting groups sitting next to each other at a restaurant before a quilting convention. They would have recognized their similarities, but their differences would have stood out as much or even more than their similarities. It would have been easy to fall into in-group and out-group thinking, considering the in-group to be the correct way to approach running or quilting (or being human) and the out-group to be erroneous, dangerous, or just strange. Luckily for us, humans have adapted beyond us versus them thinking (to some extent) to enable us to have cooperative and relatively peaceful modern cities, countries, and even global governance and development organizations.
 
 
Harari continues, “Merchants, conquerors, and prophets were the first people who managed to transcend the binary evolutionary division, us vs them, and to foresee the potential unity of humankind.” At the end of the day, the quilting groups can trade materials, ideas, and techniques. They can engage in economic transactions and become united, and slightly less in-group versus out-group oriented through trade. The fast running team could recruit a couple of the strong runners from the non-competitive team, effectively conquering the slow team and leaving the slowest of the slow without a team to continue running with, uniting the two teams through conquest (and eliminating some from the sport which isn’t necessarily great). Both groups, our runners and quilters, could also find themselves motivated by prophets.  Our quilter groups could find that they both read the same quilting magazine or follow the same quilters on Instagram. Our running groups could be equally inspired by the Olympics and could find that they all participate on the same running message boards on letsrun.com. Even beyond intra-group unification, the quilters and runners could be connected on a larger scale by all using the same social media channel to coordinate their events and activities or all traveling to the same place for events. Throughout human history, all of these examples, Harari argues, have occurred, bringing people closer together and slowly but surely reducing our us versus them mindset and creating more space for us to be similar even if we are still unique. We seem to default to seeing the differences in others and closing in around the groups we identify with, but other factors continue to unite us with other groups, expanding the circle of who is us and reducing who is them.

On Tolerance

Posted on by jabittan
In the book United, Senator Cory Booker shares his views of the American political culture and society, and how he has come to understand the decisions, thoughts, and views of our nation. Throughout the book he shares stories and lessons that he learned from other people growing up in New Jersey and serving as a city council member and as mayor. Frank Hutchins was one of the people who shaped Booker’s thoughts and understandings, and Frank’s views, along with Booker’s Christian views, influenced the way in which Booker thinks about tolerance and unity in our society.

Booker writes, “I came to see Frank as someone who was fighting against the common notion of tolerance. For most of us, tolerance demands only that we acknowledge another’s right to exist. Tolerance says that if they cease to be, if  they succumb to injustice or disappear from the face of the earth, then we are no worse off.” In this view of tolerance, Booker references the way in which we grudgingly accept people who are different from us, who we somehow don’t like, and who we think are morally or socially wrong for being who they are. This view of tolerance says that we will accept people when legally obliged to do so, and we will outwardly smile at them while inside of us a storm of negativity brews. This view of tolerance may allow the other to be safe from violence within our society, but it will never accept the other and will never bring the other into our world to share a full life. Rather, the other will always be marginalized and pushed to the edges of society and hopefully to a place where we have minimal interactions with them.

Booker counters this idea of tolerance in his book with the idea of love. He is deeply Christian and his views of love are shaped from his spiritual beliefs. His focus on love is very much in the fashion of Lincoln, to whom the quote is often attributed, “do I not destroy my enemies when I make them a friend?” Booker writes, “Tolerance is becoming accustomed to injustice; love is becoming disturbed and activated by another’s adverse condition. Tolerance crosses the street; love confronts. Tolerance builds fences; love opens doors. Tolerance breeds indifference; love demands engagement. Tolerance couldn’t care less; love always cares more.” For Booker, what is important is our shared humanity and being able to come together as an accepting community to share purpose and value. When we begin to fracture society by limiting participation and full inclusion and criticize differences or shortcomings, we drive isolation and prevent people from growing and improving not just their life, but society as a whole. Approaching people with more love, empathy, and compassion helps us build a community while simply tolerating those who are different pushes people away and denounces those who are different.

Can We Change the Thoughts of Others?

Posted on by jabittan
A topic that has come up again and again for me since the November 2016 election is the idea that we may not be able to change anyones thinking through discussion, debate, or argument. People become so entrenched in beliefs, and are so reluctant to hearing information that does not support their opinion that we are not able to change anyone’s thought patterns besides our own. Author Ryan Holiday addresses this idea in his book, The Obstacle is the Way, by writing,

“You don’t convince people by challenging their longest and most firmly held opinions. You find common ground and work from there. Or you look for leverage to make them listen. Or you create an alternative with so much support from other people that the opposition voluntarily abandons its views and joins your camp.”

I think that Holiday is correct, but I think the real message from his quote above is the idea that you must find common ground with another before you look to change the way they think. People will discredit those who think differently from them and ignore information, even an Everest sized mountain of information indicating their views are incorrect. Speaking with people, listening to their views, understanding why they think a certain way, and offering our perspective are the only ways to honest communicate with others.

I recently listened to episode 174 of the podcast, Decode DC, and they brought on a guest to discuss this exact problem. The show features an interview with Canadian professor Jeremy Frimer from the University of Winnipeg who did a study of American’s and beliefs. He offered participants 10 dollars to read 8 statements disagreeing with their views, or 7 dollars to read 8 statements that were in line with their views. About 60 percent of people chose less money and read the statements that reinforced their views. In the episode, Dr. Frimer offers the same advice as Holiday, you must listen to the other person, understand their views, and identify your commonality before you can begin to discuss differences.

I believe we have begun to attach politics to our identify in a new way, and our social media infused world tells us that we should have a voice and opinion for any given situation. With political ideology being incorporated with our identity, political views seem to be coupled with who we are in a dangerous entrenched manner. We feel compelled to be resolute in our identity, and any information that does not align is a threat to our fundamental being. I don’t have fully developed thoughts and ideas on how social media and a pressure to build political ideology have become infused with our ideology, but if my ideas are correct, then the only way to have a civil discussion with someone is to follow the advice of Holiday and Frimer and disarm first ourselves when discussing our differences (especially political) with another person.