July 28th, 2009
Part I The Final Frontier
Social beings. We share many types of interactions with others, especially today. We talk on the phone, some still actually write letters to one another, we have myriad “in person” exchanges, formal and informal, functional and dysfunctional. For many of us, e-mailing for personal and professional reasons is a standard, daily activity. We have more and more social tools at our disposal all the time, with social networking applications apparently growing on trees and other types of applications becoming more and more “social networkish” all the time.
Despite the fact that we are constantly interacting with others in a variety of different ways, despite the fact that our interactions with other human beings can have a profound impact on our lives, the lives of others and the well-being of the world in general, it seems that the nature of these interactions often remains largely unexamined. Right in front of our eyes, the human interaction may be the real ‘final frontier.”
“Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. We have to stop pretending we are individuals who can go it alone.
-Margaret Wheatley
Being that there are so many things influenced by the nature of our relationships, it seems worthy of further examination. So let’s start with the essential elements, the basic ingredients…
There are two important and powerful forces present in every single interaction between human beings; difference and commonality. You can grab at random any two human beings from anywhere on the planet and put them in a room together, and between them there will be a great deal of difference (more than they can in their lifetimes explore) and a great deal of commonality (more than they can in their lifetimes explore). Difference and commonality are the primary materials of all human interaction, and they both have great value.
Unfortunately we have convinced ourselves that difference (or diversity) is some exotic thing to be discussed with our neighbor that moved here from another country or the lone racial minority in our office…preferably only on or around Martin Luther King Day. It is equally unfortunate that we act as if we can only have anything of substance in common with the people that are really close to us; our family, close friends…but not the random person we sit next to on the bus, people from cultures very different from us and certainly not people from the other political party!
“One cannot be human by oneself. There is no selfhood where there is no community. We do not relate to others as the person we are; we are who we are in relating to others.”
-James Carse
How we realize or do not realize these two ingredients in our relationships and interactions is a huge determinant in what comes out of these relationships and interactions. Whether a relationship/conversation/interaction/exchange between 2 people or 200 people is functional or dysfunctional has a lot to do with what we do with our two basic ingredients.
We talk today a great deal about being connected, getting connected and things related to social capital without, I think, understanding the fundamental forces involved. This is the first in a series of posts aspiring to explore these forces.
For today consider this…
In the relationships that you have with people that you like and agree with, do you explore your differences…or ignore them?
In the relationships that you have with people you dislike and do not agree with, do you explore your commonalities…or ignore them?
Do you tend to seek out relationships with people that seem to be like you or different from you? What might the impact (if any) of that be?
Be good to each other.