The Promised Land of AND
Friends!
This week I am writing my newsletter as a blog post. I am still trying to prototype the best way to both produce and consume content. For both the producer (me) and the consumer (you).
Please bear with me. We all have different digital behaviors. And I so much appreciate many of you who have reached out to me with all forms of feedback. It’s incredibly valuable. By writing my blog I now accumulate an archive which is good for future references. To you, if you prefer reading this on your phone or tablet you can still do so. But for others, you might prefer clicking on "open in browser.” There you could open and play content I attach in one place instead of switching between apps. Via the browser version of the newsletter, you might also help spread it easier to your own channels. All much appreciated! And as always, please give me feedback on your preferences.
Last week was such a heavy week. I am still dragging. Emotionally and spiritually. Still trying to process. And I am probably at the same place I was last week. Not much has changed. Still feel worried AND excited. Happy AND sad. Optimistic AND pessimistic.
AND is an important word to work on. But our times are much more characterized by OR. We need to work on AND-ness. You can be right AND wrong. You can be supportive AND critical. Every human being is capable of good AND evil, right AND wrong. But we behave as if all choices are choices between one position OR the other.
Again, social media isn’t helpful. Our instant culture and its hungry appetite for immediate clicks and attention, for some reason, generates much bigger audiences when we traffic in the land of OR instead of the more human and truthful land of AND.
We certainly have incredibly difficult challenges to tackle ahead. Climate, systemic racism and poverty, expensive and ineffective health care and education systems, a divisive and sclerotic political system. The list is long. And all these challenges have been revealed and amplified by our recent pandemic. However, I feel it is also true, that it is our lack of civil dialogue, our inability to reasonably and decently process information and resist from making false choices between 2 equally wrong and opposing narratives that make our problems so much more challenging to solve.
I don’t know what the answer is. Again, it certainly is NOT a choice between this OR that. All I know is that I don’t feel “at home” in how our two dominating ideological narratives are representing neither the problems nor the solutions.
Below you can read (if you are curious) more from Mary Parker Follett, most of it written 100 years ago. I find her work particularly relevant to the importance of resisting our binary tendencies and pushing ourselves and our conversations towards each other and not to the ends of any spectrum.
“We shouldn’t split ourselves up like this. It is the activity in the middle, the space between our differences, physical, intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and political, where our mutualistic “germinating center” and life are created.”
- Mary Parker Follett
I will leave it right there. Below are, as usual, some things I read this week that provoked me, inspired me, or at least made me think or feel.
I will end with 2 questions for you
Who have you talked to lately (or read) that had a different point of view than yours on something you care deeply about?
How did that conversation feel to you? Do you want more of them and if so why? Less of them and if so why?
Let’s together walk to the land of AND!
Mats
2 recent posts and 1 old that are well worth your time:
First is from my friend Martin's FB post. Really well articulated. I share much of his sentiment.
Second from Bret Stephens in NYT on the "ferocious intellectual intolerance" of the moment
Third a great TED talk that inspired me last year. What happens when you talk to strangers that have a completely different view than yours!
Last week many of us would have gathered in Boston for our 10th installment of On Cue. Since that couldn’t happen we sent out some of our old favorites that we felt were the most relevant to our times PLUS a special contribution by our very dear friend Regie Gibson. Click here to watch and enjoy!
Mary Parker Follett, was an American thinker, philosopher, management consultant who lived 1868 - 1933 and whose work I have many times read and reflected upon. I have been inspired by her work for a long time. She has written much about the need for “integrative thinking.” Click here to learn more about her work.
Much was written last week about what America was going through. I shared some in last week’s newsletter. Many companies, writers, and leaders have written eloquently and beautifully. And words do matter. But I am also here sharing what LRN wrote. As many know I am proud to be an investor and director of this special group of people all deeply committed to the mission of “Inspiring Principled Performance.” I found their words here particularly strong and inspiring.
Ending with our dear friend Shantell Martin’s recent TED talk here. It’s a beautiful example of the persistence and resilience it takes to reject the choices OTHERS give you but also the beautiful reminders of the importance of true artistry. The celebration of real “throughlines” (pun intended) and expressions of genuine beauty and creativity. Love Shantell’s work.
