Tag: politics

Be the one who moves and turns

FabrizioLeave a comment

Had an interesting conversation with a colleague today, that quickly turned into a topic that I consider very important nowadays. For our personal life, for our professional life, for our life as human beings walking on the World.

I feel the public discourse is flattening to a very dangerous extent.

It’s not only a matter of polarization, it’s mainly a continuous repetition of the flaws of the other side. It might seem, on the surface, that there is a desire to change the other’s opinion or behaviour. But what I find appalling is that actually there is more of a desire to just repeat what was said yesterday, in an endless loop that leaves everybody in the same place they where before. There is no progress. Because the target of what is said is increasingly the people that have our own same opinion.

We have stopped trying to understand what led us here. We are just repeating mantras (“fake news” vs “racist”, “America first” vs “globalism”, “tremendous economy” vs “devastating inequalities”) that resonate with the people that are already on our side. Be it because we need to sell more, because we need to keep the votes, or because we need to constantly re-affirm our self and group identity.

So, the question is: do we care?

If we don’t, that’s fine, we are on the right path.

If we do, I have an idea to share. It’s not mine, I believe it is a Buddhist idea, and I have heard it narrated by Pema Chödrön.

She tells the story of two people that meet, and start talking. They talk about what they see, the World they know. One is facing the ocean, and tells about the greatness of it, the beauty of its blue, the smell of the water. One is facing a forest, and tells of how dense it is, how tall the trees are, how incredible it would be to venture there. They soon end up arguing, as they cannot find a common perspective. Until the one facing the ocean moves to the side of the other and turns. And then, they start describing the forest together.

If you do care. If you seek change. If you want to move past the terrible impasse that is sucking up our future. Be the one who moves and turns. Find the other’s perspective.

P.S.: I am sorry I could not find the exact quote and link from Pema Chodron. I might have changed the characterization a bit, but I am confident the one I shared has the same underlying meaning. Should I find it, I will make sure to update this post.

 

 

Putting into boxes

Fabrizio3 Comments

There’s a lot of power in categories. They help us make sense of the World around us, understand each other, feel safe in situations in which we normally would not, as well as feel unrest when we step into something that is listed in one category we are not comfortable with.

Yet we should never forget that categories are made up. They are not real, in the sense that they do not exist before we attach a meaning (both literal and figurative) to them.

This means mainly two things.

In approaching others, we should maintain our categories flexible. Both the ones in which we think we fit and the ones in which we think the other fits. We must be careful in taking all the background of a category with us when we enter a new situation. It might greatly limit our experience and not do the other justice.

And if we do not like the category in which we have been put, we should be aware that it  is possible to shift its meaning. Perhaps initially it will change for us only, and that would already be a great achievement. But if we are consistent enough with the new narrative and how we present it, if we gather a following, and if it sticks, in the long term, little by little, we might actually be successful at a much larger scale.

Nothing is fixed and forever, so let’s put categories back to their rightful place. Categories should work for us, they should not get us all worked up.

 

Emotions and rationality

Fabrizio1 Comment

If you are using emotional tools to address a rational problem, chances are you are going to struggle in the medium/long-term.

Say you are at a meeting discussing how many new hires you need for the next project. Since you know that hiring people, onboarding and training them is a lot of work, and you’d rather focus on something different, you leverage the fear of taking risks of your boss, throw some numbers in the air to make your point, and end up scoring a point. In the medium term, your team will be understaffed.

This is the same mechanism we are seeing at work with Brexit and most of the populism around the World. A real, concrete, rational problem (i.e. an increasing part of the population is being left behind) is addressed leveraging emotions (fear, anger, hatred). Good results in the short-term (Brexit was voted, many populists are being elected), but when it comes to putting together concrete acts to move past the feelings, not much can be done.

Something similar happens with the opposite. If one of your team members is struggling to share ideas and participate in team meetings (an emotional problem), and you decide that from now on meetings will feature a “let’s go around the table” moment (a rational tool), you will force the team member to speak, yet not necessarily get the best ideas out of them.

Facebook is in the process of understanding this very thing. In trying to cope with the spread of hate speech and inappropriate content on their platform (emotional problem), they have decided to ramp up the number of moderators and feed them 14,000 pages of instructions on what is acceptable and what is not (rational tool). Clearly, it is not working.

Beyond malice and opportunism, make sure you know on which level your problem is, and come up with a solution that speaks the same language. Your chances to make an impact and be trusted (forever?) will increase dramatically.

“Does it get me votes?”

FabrizioLeave a comment

Politics, politicians and political parties should lead us towards the future.

They should see what we can’t see, as we are caught up in our day-to-day routines and problems. And they should make sure that our struggles, efforts and work have a purpose. Be it a better lifestyle, an healthier country, a more communal World.

What is happening across the border, instead, is that we are the ones calling the shots. The only thing that matters is our vote, and so instead of asking “does it make sense?”, the only question politics, politicians and political parties want answered is “does it get me votes?”.

I spoke to a very plugged-in House Republican. And he told me, listen, most House Republicans do not have federal workers in their district. So, he point-blank said, it’s not in our interest to end the shutdown.

Lisa Desjardins (full story on PBS)

It sounds crazy, considering the amount of discontent in the World today, yet we have an incredible power. It is up to us to force the political entities to stop acting as managers, carefully allocating resources to do more with less, and embracing once again the leading role that perhaps they once had.