My small, hometown community recently sponsored an event called “What Unites Us.” The event started with free sundaes in the park and concluded with a drum dance on the beach. People in the community made signs indicating what they believed unified us, and we used those signs to make a pathway from the park to the beach. Drums (green buckets) and drumsticks were placed in a circle with hula hoops in the middle. Everyone was invited to participate – old and young, conservatives and liberals, Christians and Jews. A professional drummer provided the beat, and we all joined in with our own rhythm. People in the middle swayed their hips in joy as the hula hoops circled their bodies. It. was powerful and pleasurable – uplifting and unifying.
I was particularly struck by the signs created by my fellow “Uniters”:
- Water Unites Us
- Sunshine Unites Us
- We are all Beloved
- Sports Unites Us
- Food Unites Us
- Music Unites Us
- The Beach Unites Us
- We all breathe and we all die
Yes, the last one was mine. I realize it was a little jarring and out of tune with the other chords being struck. To me, however, it’s the essence of our common humanity. Nearly all eight billion people on this planet share these two realities. If that doesn’t unite us, I’m not sure what will.
And yet we are terribly divided. Republicans and Democrats are rigidly polarized; Jews and Muslims fight in the streets of Israel; human rights protesters are locked in battle with authoritarian governments around the world; corporate titans and union leaders fight constantly about different images of what’s fair and equitable. We are even seeing hostile divides between the vaccinated and unvaccinated.
The question is, what is keeping us from finding common ground and living in harmony? Here are three thoughts. 1) We are engaged in a war of narratives instead of a war of facts; 2) we are acting out of smallness vs. largeness; and 3) we are more focused on competing than collaborating
Narratives vs. Facts. Our history is littered by narratives designed to manipulate, control and divide people. For example, all religions are based on stories that were created by committees of people in power who had much to gain by getting people to buy into magical myths. In Christianity, there are stories about virgin births, resurrections, raising the dead, walking on water etc. In Islam, Muslims believe that Allah revealed his words through prophets, everything in life is predetermined, angels will intervene in our lives etc. Jews believe that God creates everything and can see everything, that God gave Moses the Torah, that one day a Jewish King called Moshiach will come and gather all Jews to live in Israel, that God will bring the dead back to life, etc. There is no way to prove the truth of any of these statements, but people are willing to give their lives to advance those beliefs and kill people who don’t happen to subscribe to them.
Narratives have not disappeared over time. In spite of major advances in science and historical research over the past century, we are still bombarded by factually-naked narratives designed to manipulate, control and divide us. Indeed, social media has amplified those narratives to a decibel level we can barely tolerate. For example, political platforms are full of narratives on both sides but, it seems to me, the radical right makes little attempt to ground their stories in fact. Some of the most common narratives are: all liberals want to defund the police and open up the borders; progressives are really socialists who want to take away our freedoms; elections are insecure and rigged; liberals want to take away our guns to promote urban chaos and take away our money to promote welfare queens. To top it off, some on the right still proclaim that liberals are Satan-worshipping pedophiles. Finally, in spite of over 14,000 scientific studies concluding that human-caused climate change is real, over 30% of Americans still deny it. WTF! What’s really sad is that these narratives are working with over 70 million voters.
When narratives are used to avoid facts they are even more damaging and divisive than those based on a lack of understanding. For example, CRT critics claim that liberals are indoctrinating children to hate America. The proclaimed purpose of this narrative is to protect our children from uncomfortable facts. Yes, there is a difference between fact-empty narratives – some are born out of ignorance and others are created by intention to manipulate, deceive, distract, deny, and divide. It seems to me that ignorance is a result of laziness while intention feels evil.
In politics, religion and economics, we are fighting wars based on narratives – not on facts. Those wars are fueled by both ignorance AND intention.
Smallness vs. largeness. Smallness manifests as selfishness, greed, intolerance, being unforgiving or unwelcoming, and seeing the world as unfair. Largeness can be seen in acts of generosity and compassion, feelings of gratitude and acceptance, and missions beyond ourselves,
In Sue Monk Kidd’s brilliant novel, The Book of Longings,” she makes the point that crafting meaningful lives requires us to embrace what’s large inside us and pursue that larger purpose with passion in spite of whatever fears may get in the way. In her book, Kidd creates a fictional account of the life of Jesus from ages 12 to 30 when he was a poor carpenter in Nazareth. She weaves a captivating story of how Jesus married Ana, and how their lives were entwined until he went off with his disciples to spread his message of love and compassion. The main narrative, however, revolves around Ana’s quest to have a voice in spite of the stifling cultural expectations of the times. The book raises questions about how women’s passions have been crushed for thousands of years and how many women risked their lives to be seen and heard. The story also suggests the powerful role women played in the life of Jesus. The debates about the size and centrality of women’s roles in religion and life are still playing out today.
Even having a small view of who are family is can be divisive – particularly in an environment of scarce resources. Our primal instincts are to protect ourselves and our immediate families. The larger we draw our circle of who we consider family, the more we will take into consideration how our actions affect others.
Retreating into our smallness keeps us from enlarging our possibilities and uniting with others for the common good of our communities.
Competition vs. collaboration. The recent Olympics reveal the extreme nature of competition in our lives. The “winning at any cost” philosophy has produced performance enhancing drugs, sports factories that remove promising kids from their families and train them 12 hours a day, one-dimensional lives required to compete at elite levels, and mental breakdowns from excessive stress. In fairness, the Olympics also provide a venue for top-tier athletes to test their skills against people around the world resulting in a continuous elevation of what’s possible.
On a more mundane level, corporations compete for customer’s loyalty through product development and marketing strategies. Not-for-profit organizations compete for funding from a limited supply of funders. All of us compete for jobs in the ever-changing labor market. I’m not suggesting that all competition is bad – to the contrary, the competitive spirit continues to produce tools, technologies, and templates that improve our quality of life. I’m saying that competition taken to extremes can have negative consequences and that the over-emphasis on competition can distract us from the possibilities of collaboration. For example: How might athletes collaborate to improve performance? How might corporations collaborate to improve results – a phenomenon known as coopetition? How might NGOs engage in regional collaboration to improve efficiency and effectiveness? How might communities collaborate to improve their positioning for the future?
In my experience, most organizations are not realizing the potential benefits of collaborative thinking and interdependent relating. Clearly, competition, by definition, creates more divisiveness (one against another), whereas collaboration unites people in collective creativity.
These three causes of divisiveness (narratives vs. facts, smallness vs. largeness, and competition vs. collaboration) have also undermined efforts in my small, rural town to create more unity. For example, in an attempt to undermine a community-wide effort to expand our library, narratives have been floated accusing people of financial fraud and witch-hunts. During the COVID crisis, creative ideas for helping businesses survive were stymied because some people were worried about how the changes might affect them personally. And now we are trapped in competing priorities around protecting an individualistic, anachronistic way of life vs. working collaboratively to create collective, futuristic possibilities.
I’m hoping, in my little community and around the world, we will ground our narratives with science and facts; we will embrace what’s large in ourselves and others; we will pursue our purpose and possibilities with passionate spirits and loving hearts in spite of our fears. I’m hoping we can let go off the narratives that limit growth, open up to the wisdom of sages past and present; and develop a collaborative and interdependent spirit that will lead to collective success. Finally, I’m. hoping we can benefit from the power of unity in our community and experience the joy of dancing on the beach to the beat of many drums. I’m hoping we will start looking for what unifies us instead of hanging on to what divides us – even if that’ as basic as acknowledging that we all breathe and we all die. May it be so.
Also published on Medium.
May it be so indeed my friend!