It’s the most polarised era ever. Can we fix that?
Ok, I have enough self-awareness to know that if I knock back a couple of ouzo’s and whip up some b.s on the laptop, I’m probably not going to come up with gold every time.
That said, I think I’ve really nailed it this time. THIS IS IT. This is my roadmap to global peace. If you’re looking for an address to use in the Nobel Peace Price nomination, just use the Ivanhoe one at the bottom.
(Obviously I’m still ironing out some of the bugs, so hit me up. How can I make my grand solution for world peace more workable?)
Ok, where do we start?
The problem I’m rolling around my mind is about how polarised we’ve become. You hear people say it all the time: politics has never been more polarised.
But I also think that we all agree that we need to come together somehow, and that the great challenges of our age are going to have the better of us unless we can figure out how to all pull in the same direction.
So how do we bring these polarities together?
I have the answer.
First up, I think it’s worth recognising that our polarities are a result of a polarising system. At some point, probably around the time of Darwin, we decided that competition created good outcomes (competition between cheetahs and gazelles created faster cheetahs and faster gazelles), and so we should have competition in politics, competition in legal courts (prosecutors vs defence) etc.
So we created a system that is purpose built to host polarities.
The polarities that came to dominate the framework initially were Left vs Right. Social vs individual markets. Communism vs Capitalism.
However, no one really thinks this is the game anymore. Trump supports aren’t calling for free-market globalism, no more than Clinton supporters were calling for more state ownership of the factors of production.
At some point the polarity evolved into something connected, but different.
I was reading something interesting the other day that the polarity is now based around values. For the old Right, the dominant value is the “law of the harvest” – if you put in the work, you get to reap the reward. You get nothing for nothing and if we don’t keep working hard as a society, we’ll get swallowed up.
Its hero is the can-do cowboy. The rugged individualist, asking nothing from no one. (Think me, in suede pants.)
For the old Left, the dominant value is now ‘acceptance’. Everyone has a place, no matter how they started off in life, or how they decide to live their life. There is room for everybody. As a society we are ‘stronger together’.
Its hero is the ever-loving mother, who loves her children no matter what they do.
So I was looking at this and thinking, in what sense are these two values “poles”. They’re not necessarily incompatible. You can believe in hard work and practice acceptance can’t you?
But then I realised that these two values are always in competition.
Where?
Within the individual.
I see this conflict time and time again with the people I mentor.
The law of the harvest shapes our work ethic, and pushes us on. We believe that if we’re not slaving away, then we don’t deserve anything. At the same time your ‘acceptance’ says that’s rubbish. You’re ok. You’re perfect just the way you are.
I see people swing between these poles all time. If they’re not doing much then their work ethic starts beating them up. Why aren’t you working hard? If you don’t work hard you’ll get nothing!
This gives them the momentum to launch into a few projects. But then it starts to get hard, they have a couple of rough nights, and their acceptance gets the upper hand. Hey, it’s ok. You’ve been working hard. Take a break. We haven’t achieved anything, but that’s ok. Things are actually pretty good already.
And round and round they go.
So I feel like it’s true. The law of the harvest (think Abbott’s ‘leaners vs lifters’) and acceptance (think the progressive fixation on gay marriage) have become the dominant poles in our polarised political system.
So how do we heal these polarities in society? I think that is really the same as asking, how do we heal these polarities within the individual?
And I think this a challenge we all have to face. How do we practice self-compassion without giving ourselves permission to be a sloth? How do we inspire ourselves and drive ourselves forward, without becoming our own tyrant?
Balance, grasshopper, balance.
And to achieve balance, I think it is worth recognising the beautiful and ugly side of each pole.
For example, the beautiful side or our work ethic is that we get to live in a constantly new and exciting world, where we get to express our creativity, by reshaping ourselves and the world, over and over. Yes, this is hard work, but it is also fun, and it fills our lives with meaning. At it’s most beautiful it is pure service.
The ugly side is that work for work’s sake is boring, and too often we’ve attached our sense of self-worth to how ‘hard’ we’re working and how much we’re ‘achieving’, keeping our noses senselessly to the grindstone – too busy to smell the roses.
The beautiful side of acceptance is that we have an opportunity to find peace with ourselves. We can embrace our strengths and our faults, and just stop beating ourselves up all the time. We can banish the demons of judgement.
The ugly side is that it actually is a vicious kind of world, and you do have to fight for who you are and what you stand for. If you can’t be strong with yourself, the world will walk all over you.
So, I guess I have a vision for a world where we help each other keep these drives in check and in balance. A beautiful work ethic can be applied to acceptance when it starts tipping into its ugly side. A beautiful acceptance can be applied to our work ethic when it starts tipping towards tyranny.
If we can all be honest with this (and yes, that’s a big if) then I think we can see these drives not in competition, but as vital pillars of support for each other. One needs the other.
If we can do that, then, perhaps, we can move away from the competitive paradigm we’ve inherited, to something more supportive – something more unified.
Where we have complementary strengths rather than conflicting weaknesses.
If we can do this within ourselves, then perhaps the world will naturally follow.
And a golden age of ever-lasting peace will be born.
…
That’s it. Boo-ya. What do you think?
(I’m going to start booking my flights to Sweden.)
Seriously though, just playing with some ideas here. What do you think?
ron goddard says
hi jonno,
it won’t work!
going to sweden? are you kidding? it is a hotbed of islamic rapists and the chief honcho is gonna open the floodgates to more illegal islamic maniacs under instructions from ms. merkel of germany. and this is what we get from leaders in other countries. potus trump has issued a grave warning to american travellers to stay away from europe.from NOW..the reason? french elections which, either way, is gonna spill over into bloodshed. 10,000 german troops have been moved to paris as we read to ‘control’ the expected out of control crowds. general mayhem! but you are right about competition. we have been drilled since the year dot to compete to survive. we really should ..’cooperate’ to survive. but greedy buggers and power hungry lunatics control the turf. the 99.99999 (recurring) rest of us want peace but the old and tested formula of ‘divide and rule’ will never be assuaged jonno.
it is time for reflection. what has each of us done to enable the utopia of dreams to come true? you, jonno have raped and pillaged the financial and real estate markets to your advantage. will you lead by example and share your goodies with billy bloggs under the princes bridge in melbourne to enable him some honour and dignity in his life? will others follow follow your benevolence? is that a risk or a flight of passion? for as you once wrote jonno, that in 5,000 years from now the archiologists will unearth artefacts from 2017 and say ‘my, they were rather primitive, what?’ cheers, ron
Paul Miles says
And in the entry above, Jon and fellow readers, you have a picture of one of the major problems facing the world today – the distortion of truth.
There is the usual blather about regular earworms: Islamic rapists, Sweden, Trump, Merkel, bloodshed, mayhem, blah, blah, blah.
But hold on! “10,000 german troops have been moved to paris as we read”!!!! ????
Has anyone else bothered to check today’s “ronno fact” ? Not for whether it’s true, but for whether it is at all conceivable that even he could actually think it’s true?
Can you imagine the effect of stationing uniformed German troops openly on the streets of Paris? No European leader except perhaps Putin would think that would be a great idea. Even in a largely reconciled Europe, it would bring up too many bad memories of World War II. And for any French government of any colour, it would be unthinkable – political suicide.
I did consult Mr Google over many, many pages and it showed no hint of such a significant event. So even what I assume is ron’s standard ‘suppository of all wisdom’ did not back up his story.
So where could he have conjured up the various components of today’s tall tale? The number 10,000 could refer to the number of French troops President Hollande deployed ACROSS FRANCE after the November 2015 attacks in Paris under Opération Sentinelle, of which only 6,500 ended up in Paris. But none of them were German.
And all entries in Google about Opération Sentinelle are at least a year old! Not exactly “as we read”, is it?
The very next Google entry is a Wikipedia page on the Battle of France, referring to World War II, when German troops occupied Paris.
Perhaps it was consulting the 7th item on that first page of Google from The Star.com? Its
description item is headlined “GERMANS CLAIM TO HAVE TAKEN 10,000 MEN, 150 GUNS
… CONCENTRIC MOVE ON PARIS IS LIKELY”.
Aha! Adolf Merkel strikes again! Well, no. This article cites contemporary Canadian newspaper reporting of German propaganda from World War I.
Further entries down the page discuss the possible sending of some Bundeswehr troops to Mali – in Africa – to police against terrorism. But none of them are going to Paris.
And feel free to go from Google page to the next Google page as long as you want. There are no corroborating fairy tales.
After his post-truth pinnacle ron concludes by writing that “the 99.99999 (recurring) rest of us want peace but the old and tested formula of ‘divide and rule’ will never be assuaged”.
Pot, kettle, black!
In this troubled world today, ladies and gentlemen, we have an unusually large number of narcissistic, Machiavellian psychopaths happening to be in charge of too many countries at this point in time.
And I completely agree with you, Jon, that we all “need to come together somehow, and that the great challenges of our age are going to have the better of us unless we can figure out how to all pull in the same direction”.
That is made all the more difficult when some in our midst are indulging post-truth agendas for whatever reasons. The right to free speech is important, definitely. But even more important when faced with untruths (whether deliberate or through negligence) is the right – and obligation – to challenge them too, don’t you think?
A return to a commitment to truth (or at least to doing your due diligence in fact-checking) is first among many steps necessary for real peace and understanding.
And Jon, book your ticket to Sweden. It’s well worth a visit!
Roger says
Good morning Jonno,
Thought provoking post yet again. I reckon good ole Confucius nailed it in a few words as he usually does.
” If there is righteousness in the heart, there will be beauty in the character.
If there is beauty in the character, there will be harmony in the home.
When there is harmony in the home, there will order in the nation.
When there is order in the nation , there will be peace in the world. ”
Basically it all starts with the individual developing a righteous heart. We all have to take responsibility for the state of the world. Don`t say “it`s all too hard and I am only one person, what difference can little me make?”
Yes definitely work hard. As the saying goes.” The only place that success comes before work is in the dictionary.” But now, more than ever, compassion is needed.
ZEITGEIST; The intellectual, moral and cultural climate of an era. When you look around the world today you have to think that whilst we live in era of abundance, as Ron says ” my, they were rather primitive, what?”
Sally says
Interesting concepts. Agree it starts with applying them to ourselves as individuals. The majority of the conflicts in this world are ego driven (MY opionion is the RIGHT one and screw you mofos who disagree, and varying degrees of the same narrow mindedness) and could be solved through acceptance that not everyone holds the same beliefs as we do.
My question is this- how do you instill that value of acceptance and compassion within big coorporations who are completely money driven? Big pharma, big agri, big chemical, big industrial (who interestingly-worryingly- often have interlinked and overlapping interests) might talk the talk about solving world hunger and illness and peace, but their practices are clearly driving the opposite effect (sicker first world nations than ever, bigger gaps between the haves and have nots, soils and food which are so chemical and gmo affected that residues are being found in our oceans and animals and even humans at a DNA level now). How do you change a competitive culture that is so ingrained and driven by greed and profit and the bottom line that it promotes a blatant lack of respect for other humans, our earth and its sustainability and compromises people’s integrity?
It has to start with a shift within each individual, an awareness and a growing sense of how much “stuff” we don’t know, a preparedness to push our comfort zones and delve into some areas that may be a bit confronting and ugly, and a move towards less ego driven behaviour and more acceptance driven behaviour and attitudes. The good news is that thanks to our advanced technology and internet, almost every person on the planet (with the exception of those in truly third world countries) can access great information if they choose to go looking for it. The bad news is that some people are so driven by their “rightness” and ego because their whole self-worth is attached to it that they may never see the need to go looking for evidence that opposes their own beliefs.
Not sure if that all makes sense, I’m still working out how to articulate this stuff (and clearly can’t do it in a succinct way yet- I’ll keep working on it!!) Anyway, love your view, Jon for PM in my book, looking forward to reading how others see the possibility of implementing these two polarities (which are essentially a paternalistic driven set of values- strong work ethic- and a materialistic set of love and acceptance)
By the way- there’s a really interesting 5 episode documentary series called The Pyramid Code which explores and challenges a lot of the underlying beliefs we hold as societies on the whole these days and looks at where we have come from historically, it’s available on Netflix or you can find it on YouTube, i found it fascinating and it got me thinking in a whole new way which has opened me up to exploring a lot of this stuff in greater depth. So much great “stuff” out there to learn in so many different areas… wealth, health, environment, relationships, personal growth and the overriding important question of why the hell are we all here experiencing life from Jon Gian’s point of view…. !!!
Daniel Trevino says
Hi Jon,
I think one term that has been used before for this concept is “Coopetition”, which is a combination of Cooperation and Competition.
There is a lot of literature behind it… I particularly remember works from Paul Hawken, and there was another thing I once read in a Business Harvard Review. If you have the time and interest look it up. Interesting stuff!
The basic idea is similar to what you described: creating an economic system based on cooperation, where the waste or surplus from one can be the raw matter or fuel for another, closing loops and using new rules to grow businesses and the economy. Capital is then redirected in a more positive way for society and the environment in a still growing economy. It is not one vs the other. There are many examples of businesses big and small who have achieved this (if only partially) as the concepts develop. There are also a few community groups who have given it a go in many places.
Another fascinating concept is the “Blue Economy”, which has many exemplary and materialised projects across the world. One key representative of the Blue Economy is Australia is a woman by the name of Many Anne McInnerny (sorry if I misspelled it), based in Melbourne with the organisation MOSS (Models for Success in Sustainability). She would be a lovely person for you to meet and have a good chat to discuss these ideas you have. I´m pretty sure some good stuff could come out of that!
Have a great weekend!
Cheers.
Rudolf Ruyter says
Hi Jon.
Yes that utopia can be reached, but not within oneself, but maybe within society.
Some time ago I was exposed to an idea abhorrent to me and my work ethic lifestyle…
It was “Pay everyone a wage from birth”…..
I immediately thought about a society of lazy couch potatoes blugging on all us heavy lifters.
Even the thought of it made my stomach turn…..Getting paid to not work???? Ughhhh.
However, thinking about the idea for a long long time, I started to see some sense in it,
maybe some daylight in it……
We now pay for girls having babies, parental leave, unemployment benefits, disability benefits, family allowances, school fee help, plus a myriads of other subsidies, assistance & charity handouts.
The hand out list just does on & on & on.
OK so let’s group all these, and call all these a social wage….we pay it anyway.
Let’s get rid of the compulsory work ethic which feeds the “reward to live on” stresses.
Lets provide everyone enough $$ “to live on” from birth.
However….If someone wants a better life…then get a job and earn extra to fund more than a minimum lifestyle….
This would take the stigma out of being on a Govt. handout, and allow society to be more at peace, as everyone can then live without any financial stress.
And for those who wish for more, their employer would not need to pay as much to fund the basics of living…..or something along these lines
Not really so abhorrent is it….
Simon Andrew Richard Long says
If we had our birthright of living in a society where technology multiplies our efficiency, and woman have joined the workforce, we would only have to work 15 hours / week to have our needs met,
even the most determined dole bludgers could prob find 15 hours / week that they could part with, or even less if they didn’t want a nice car.
We have been ‘diluted down’ with the govt. inventing fake jobs, and the people working them want a share of what the workers create.
KatM says
Justice has to prevail before peace starts to reign.
Distorted secular values that gave rise to tax havens, slave traders, islamic extremists and assorted psychopaths, including N.Korea don’t believe in “love thy neighbour”.
Education and forgiveness are keys to enlightenment.
Obedience and work should still be rewarded.
Colin says
Thank you Paul for the tearing apart of the fake news. I have been reading titbits of Jon’s mind for a number years and been amazed at his insights and courage in putting it out there for us to soil or grow flowers in as we see fit. At the same time I have been waiting for the real “Ron” to stand up. And now he’s done it. Thanks Ron or is it Don. Ego is one of the main reasons why it will be very challenging to move passed the competition aspect. Look at the Don.
Jules Esdaile says
Well, Jon – I can’t let this one go without comment. I find your blog to be insightful and informative, and tend to read most things you post, given time, but this article has shown a misunderstanding of the left perspective that is common among those who lean to the right, which I’d really like to clarify. That will, however take a bit of writing and I have a frantic week ahead. I hope this is still open for comment next week!