Humans, Part of a Community

I remember a bumper sticker I saw many years ago. It said "I may be slow, but I'm ahead of you." It struck me as funny, but I was also frustrated to be behind someone going slower than the posted speed limit in a place where I was unable to pass.

Thinking of this, I'm reminded of another situation where I was often the one slowing the traffic behind me. Driving out the rural rode to the home we lived in at the time, I developed a habit of sticking to the speed limit, even though the minimal amount of traffic and the general lack of traffic enforcement on that road meant that most people went significantly faster. My son, a teenager at the time, would complain about how slow I was going, as he was anxious to get home and do something else.

I, on the other hand, enjoyed the time to decompress after work while driving home. One of the benefits of moving out of town was living at the slower pace of the countryside. Besides that, driving with plenty of empty road ahead of me was much more relaxing than following another vehicle at what I judged to be a minimum safe following distance.

I wasn't driving at that speed to slow down traffic behind me, or to take pleasure in being in front of them. I had no issues with people passing me when it was safe to do so. I was just enjoying life, savoring the choice to move out of town. It was only when their need to get in front of me endangered my life that I got annoyed.

As long as we all get where we need to go, the whole community seems well-served. Yet it seems important to some people that they are ahead of others. This highlights a very common "us versus them" dynamic that splits communities. I often see people espousing a "I may not be rich, but I'm richer than you" point of view that feeds class distinctions between groups of people. At finer levels of granularity, where the actual income or total worth overlaps between groups, this distinction may devolve into racial, country of origin, or other perceived difference "between Us and Them."

Some people argue that this tendency to divide into Us and Them is inherent to being a human. Other researchers have found evidence that the tendency to help others and cooperate with those who are different is just as inherent to humans. The difference between prosocial and antisocial behavior and attitudes seems to situationally dependent. It's possible to craft situations that encourage people to choose one or the other, either temporarily or sometimes more permanently. The book Belonging - The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides by Geoffrey L. Cohen does a marvelous job of exploring this in depth.

It makes me wonder how often I feel part of a group because of what I am not, rather than what I am. It also makes me think about how sometimes I feel part of an out-group because the group seems to reject what I have to offer. I remember my friend Dale Emery giving a keynote speech about helping people through organizational change where he pointed out that one of the big worries is that employees don't know how their skills will be valued after the change. He made the comment that "WIIFM" doesn't only mean "What's in it for me?" but also "What's in it FROM me?"

In the book, Community - The Structure of Belonging by Peter Block describes how community is built by welcoming and appreciating the gifts that each person brings to the community. Communities are built on their possibilities, not their problems. Exploring those possibilities together allows us to experience that sense of community in the act of creating it. When the individuals take personal responsibility for the well-being of the whole, then community is achieved.

I think it's worth thinking about groups that welcomed you to contribute your skills, passions, knowledge, and experience. What was it like when that happened? How was it different from other groups?

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