We seem to be fixated on being adversarial and it seems to permeate every aspect of our life and work.
From the macro geopolitical world of the great powers of the World (the G7 – as they call themselves) to the micro world of the small local organisation, the tendency to be adversarial is evident – and particularly in our working environment.
Even if we consider the conquest of the rest of the world by Europeans, one would think that a lot more would have been achieved, long term, if the European explorers had befriended and traded fairly rather than conquered (and made enemies of) the native peoples that they met on their travels.
Exploitation happened because we wanted get-rich-quick short term gain. (Of course, it was only a small minority of Europeans who really got-rich-quick. The exploitation of native populations by Europeans was an extension of the exploitation of the poor and powerless in Europe that had been going on for centuries anyway).
As I said at the star, I love watching nature programmes.
By chance, I happened to watch a very interesting programme one night about bonobos and chimpanzees, who are very closely related but are separate species. They are very alike and their intellectual ability seems about the same.
They both live in social groups and they have developed the capacity to use very basic tools. Evolutionary theory posits that we (humans) have a common ancestor with bonobos and chimpanzees and we separated from them a few million years ago.
One of the principal differences between bonobos and chimpanzees is that bonobos use close contact, (touching, grooming, sharing food, sexual intercourse) to resolve conflict and maintain social cohesion. They are also a very egalitarian, non-hierarchical species where males and females have equal status. They present with an engaging timidity and shyness. They are a kind of make-love-not-war hippie chimpanzees.
Chimpanzees, on the other hand, are very hierarchical, and use aggression and even violence promoted by a strong alpha-male to maintain order in the group and the level of social cohesion required to prosper. However, chimpanzees are also capable of empathy, helping each other out, and being very pro-social!
Now in terms of success, I thought that it was interesting that chimpanzees spread extensively throughout large areas of sub-Saharan Africa – everywhere where the climate was favourable, really, whereas bonobos did not – they were (and are) confined to a small area around the Congo River.
So I formed the opinion, rightly or wrongly, that in order to increase and multiply, we need to be aggressive and hierarchical, and make more war than love. And, more than any species on earth, we humans certainly are good at increasing and multiplying.
(But it is also interesting that bonobos survived at all – and didn’t become extinct).
I asked myself, which of our cousins is closest to us? Which of our cousins do we model ourselves on? And which of our cousins is more likely to cause trauma to their fellow members?
I am not an expert on animal behaviour – I can’t even figure out what our cat wants when she frowns at me, and frowning back doesn’t seem to get me anywhere.
But I don’t believe that animals (even chimpanzees) have the capacity to be cruel to each other in a sustained and deliberate way to the extent that they cause severe trauma to other animals – including those of their own species. They generally get angry, lash out or have a fight, and then, when the goal has been reached (whether it is protecting oneself, one’s young, finding a mate, or claiming food or territory) they do not continue to be cruel.
But humans do!
We have capacity to make our own species (and other species – of course) suffer and this has prevailed throughout our entire history. (In fact, most written history is all about people suffering). It happens in one-to-one relationships, families, communities, all levels of society, and (in written history) international conflicts.
Even when, patently, an objective has been reached in a battle or war, people seem to be able to do horrific things to other people that they have decided are the ones that they will take revenge on, or punish for some other reason.
Also, as we noted in the Chapter on Media, we are entertained by reading about or watching people suffering and the more they suffer the more we are entertained. Since suffering brings pain, I am intrigued by this, but I do not have a ready explanation why it is so.
I sometimes wonder if trauma is very deeply rooted in our psyche and most of us have buried it under a thin veneer of civility. When permission is given by some superior authority, the behaviours that result from our buried trauma are unleashed and we dissociate from being the normal civilised citizen to being a cruel monster.
I don’t really know……..
It might be interesting to look up this link describing the Milgram Experiment – 1961, in Yale University – which found that if we, ordinary people, perceive someone else to take responsibility, we can do terrible things to other humans. A similar experiment known as the Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971 found much the same.
What I do know is that in virtually every war of any consequence that has ever been fought soldiers on all sides carried out acts of cruelty far beyond what was needed to win the war.
So from all the above I am going to assume that sustained, deliberate cruelty that causes suffering and pain to, and traumatises other living beings over a long time is unique to humans.
This presents us with a big conundrum.
If trauma has been a part of human experience since the dawn of humanity (and it must have been; since trauma is handed down from generation to generation – and we are not the first generation to try and do something about it), then what’s the point in trying to do anything about it at all. Perhaps we are, (like another legendary Greek, Sisyphus), rolling a boulder up a mountain destined never to reach the top.
(Just as an aside here – I will argue in the Chapter on Anthropology that many of society’s problems have their root in or around the time humans became farmers and began owning property and accumulating wealth – but that is another story).
But I don’t believe that we should give up.
If we really scrutinise the evidence, the Pillars (despite their best efforts) often appear to get stuck resolving social type problems that have their root in trauma. This blog argues that, perhaps, they don’t really know how to do it – i.e. they are barking up the wrong tree – so to speak. This, in particular, applies to the problems that involve our Focus Group.
While I will revisit this topic again in Section Five, (in the Chapter on Research and Evaluation), for now it is enough for me to propose that one reason that the Pillars find it so difficult is that the vast majority of decision makers within them struggle with the translation of the theories of attachment, dissociation and related topics (nowadays so widely known), into practical solutions that can be applied in the field.
It’s not that decision makers don’t understand the theories, or that they don’t make sense – it’s that they don’t know how, or are unwilling to transform the theories into good practice!
This is important, and that is why I have repeated it.
The entire of Section Five, (Practical Applications), will focus on this project.