Bridging Differences

Have you ever noticed the natural tendency we have to spend time with people who are more like us than not? Much of the diversity work done in the late 20th Century was a focused effort to break this sort of dominance in the work place. Team development also requires that we hire people with styles and skills that different from each other for the sake of increased productivity. Work places though are controlled environments in which the issue can be addressed through regulation or in some cases legislation.

In our personal lives or in social settings we are guided by preference. This is where we seek out those who share our beliefs and behaviors preferring to spend time with those who think like us, look like us and act like us. We do this because it makes us feel safe and it makes us feel comfortable. It is somewhat effortless and natural but it can be limiting and may have significant consequences.

Conflict is often created by the differences between values and beliefs held by one group or individual and the next. When we choose to spend time with those more like us we reinforce what we believe as being right while those who disagree are judged as being wrong. In its extreme this sense of “rightness” and “wrongness” begins the process of dehumanizing those with whom we disagree. This is the process by which we turn people into “the other”.

In social science the concept of “the other” or “otherness” is used to describe the way that societies and groups exclude or exile those who do not fit societal models. “The other” is also a philosophical and psychological term used to describe a process of self-awareness through which we learn who “we” are by comparing ourselves to those who are different than we are.

This is the process of discrimination, the ability to tell the differences between things. Right or wrong is a judgment. When we make judgments about the differences between others and ourselves without questioning them without reflection we are headed down a path that history has taught us, may result in murder, war, and genocide.

Our tendency to create “the other” and make it “wrong” or “right” is rooted in our evolutionary need to survive. The old brain, that part of our primal selves that is tribal in nature, keeps reminding us that our survival is what matter most. In the societal sense of early human life the appearance of “the other” became an immediate threat to survival. Destruction of “the other” was essential if we were to have enough food for our existing tribe. Right or wrong decision-making was pretty clear-cut. After eons of evolution it should not then be surprising that we as humans are quick to judge right or wrong with a default belief that survival depends upon destroying those who are different.

We need to break this cycle, and I believe that begins with each of us. Speaking with younger people I have learned that they hold a much greater capacity for cultural differences than those of us in our later years ever did. This is where the diversity programs paid off. The Millennials are far more prepared to live in a “connected” world, far better equipped to bridge the differences between values and beliefs. They appear to hold a much larger view of the world, without a need to judge what they see. The need for judgment may come in time, and perhaps the idealism of youth will wane but for now it gives me great hope.