Looking beyond personal borders

Recently I attended TedxLondon the purpose of which was to stimulate discussion on a variety of topics that could ultimately make the world a better place to live. No easy feat. Central to every talk, delivered by change makers to scientists, was the idea that to truly open our minds to positive social change, greater inclusion and new ways of thinking, we must look beyond our own personal borders.

We all create borders in our lives every day. Both physical and mental. Between ourselves and other people. Between our work and home life. Between ideas and thoughts, we do or don’t want to associate with. However, how many of us are aware of these borders and why we created them in the first place? I suspect not many because often, these borders are intangible and sometimes even subconscious – so deeply part of our being we fail to see them ourselves. Whether we are aware of them or not, these borders are alive in all of us and are often preventing us from achieving our full potential – both individually and collectively in our local communities and wider society.

Whilst it is easy to overlook our personal borders in our frantic day-to-day lives, I believe it is our individual responsibility to manage and challenge our borders and others. Especially when the consequences of them can be so huge on the world around us. So as part of making a more conscious effort to monitor and look beyond my own personal borders, I want to start by sharing some of the inspiring stories I heard at TedxLondon that put the importance of this into perspective for me and hopefully you too. 

Autism – seeing difference as a source of diversity

Tashi Baiguerra, one of the many speakers at TedxLondon, is an actor, singer and musician who is affected by has autism disorder. Approximately 700,000 people in the UK are affected by have autism and it demonstrates itself in various ways along a spectrum. Some people find it hard to communicate whilst others struggle understanding what other people are thinking or feeling. Despite autism being relatively well known among the general public, Tashi believes society is letting autistic people down in the most basic of ways. One of the simplest being our use of language.

You probably haven’t thought about it before but people with autism are often referred to as being on a “spectrum” which can suggest the positioning of something between two extreme points. However, the reality is that people with autism simply possess different traits that add up to them experiencing autism differently. Rather than it being mild or extreme, good or bad, right or wrong, at one end of a scale or the other. And so, Tashi prefers to think of autism as more of a “colour wheel” as part of which people have a blend of different traits that make them truly unique (or perhaps I should say colourful!). Similarly, labelling autism as a “disorder” can provide a sense of something being broken and needing to be fixed, even though autism is a lifelong condition set of individual character traits people possess. As you can see from the amends consciously applied in the paragraphs above, paying more attention to the language we choose to use in relation to how it might make other people feel can help us to choose our words more carefully.

Key takeaway: To create a future where people who are different from us are treated with respect, we must be willing to challenge our own preconceptions and stereotypes we have formed about certain people. Choosing to see difference as a strength (a source of diversity) rather than a weakness (a barrier to success).

Inequality – opening our eyes and minds beyond meritocracy

Some people hold the belief that your ability and talent dictate how successful you are in life. Whilst others, believe it is dictated by your ethnicity, gender or social class. Dr Jonathan Mijs, a sociologist at London School of Economics, researches just that - the beliefs people hold about economic inequality and the causes. In his recent research, Jonathan has found that as our countries become less equal, our social empathy and concern towards inequality seems to be decreasing. Increasingly it seems that people believe more strongly that their country is a meritocracy where hard work and talent are enough to get you to the top. Not only that but the research suggests that as countries become less equal, people live in greater isolation from one another. Making friends with people with a similar income or living in neighbourhoods with people from a similar social class.

Whilst this is clearly concerning, what’s interesting about the research is the reason for the meritocracy belief. Essentially it is driven by both the rich and poor underestimating the scale of inequality that truly exists between them. As an example, a 2016 Stanford University study relieved that a typical American believes a CEO earns $1.0 million in pay whereas reported compensation for CEOs was approximately $10.3 million. So why is the public perception of inequality so distorted? Well, Jonathan argues that as we continue to create spacial and cognitive borders between the rich and the poor, we continue to distort our view of the world as we fail to see past the borders. You only have to look at Johnny Miller’s ‘Unequal Scenes’ drone photography capturing the stark divisions globally between the rich and poor to see this in practice. Even when spacial distance isn’t large you can still see clear physical boundaries between the rich and the poor.

Key takeaway: To create more equal communities in which we live and work we must be willing to break down and cross borders we have created in order to see the disparity that truly exists. Finding ways to open our eyes and minds up to uncomfortable realities beyond our own social circles at home, work or school is necessary to develop greater understanding and empathy for those worse off than us.

Malaria – interrogating the problem to find the solution

Over 1 million people die from Malaria every year yet progress towards stopping the spread of the disease has stalled in recent years. One of the reasons Malaria is often hard to diagnose is because people with the disease don’t always show symptoms. It’s why scientists like Professor James Logan are fascinated by exploring and developing novel methods to detect and control the global spread of diseases like Malaria. But where to start? Well it was quite simple really, with those who know Malaria best. Mosquitoes.

Whilst it has been known for a long time that people with malaria are more attractive to mosquitoes than those without the disease, it wasn’t clear why. After undertaking extensive research with children effected by malaria it has now been proven that attractiveness is largely driven by body odours. Something we as human are oblivious to but not mosquitoes. Whilst it might sound basic on the face of it, understanding the ‘smell of malaria’ has played a hugely significant role in developing preventative measures to stop the spread of the disease. For example, armed with this new insight, medical dogs are now being trained to diagnose people with malaria in developing countries, technology-based devices are being developed to help people self-diagnose and chemical lures are being created to more effectively trap mosquitoes. Regardless of the solutions being tested, the key to successfully preventing the spread of malaria has been understanding the root cause of the problem. By first interrogating what made mosquitoes attractive to humans and then using this cause to derive effective solutions.

Key takeaway: By focusing on the root cause of the problems we face in society today – not just understanding what is happening but also why something is happening – we can uncover the simplest of solutions to the world’s biggest and most complex problems. We just need to remember that often the answer to the problems we face can be found in the problem itself if we are willing to interrogate it hard enough.

Rational decision making – a matter of perspective rather than self-justification

If you think about it, for most of the ideas we believe today there was a time we didn’t believe them. So, what is it that makes us believe? Well accordingly to Dr Kris De Meyer, a neuroscientist at King’s College London, our actions change our beliefs and often through a process of self-persuasion and justification. By our very design as humans, we are wired to be bias - using our intuitive brain as a fast and sometimes unconscious way of jumping to conclusions and making decisions (also known as System 1 thinking). This means that what we believe to be rational decision making is often irrational – a process by which we have an initial response to something and then take the necessary steps to convince ourselves we are making the right decision. Rather than analysing large amounts of evidence and engaging in constructive conversations with other people to make a rational and informed decision, a much slower and controlled way of thinking (known as System 2 thinking).

If by our very nature we are guilty of adjusting information to suit our own narratives, then it begs the question – what would more critical decision-making look like? It’s not something I believe we give enough attention to in the workplace – especially in high pressure and fast paced environments – but it is something we all have a duty to acknowledge and challenge. If we do nothing else, we should all at least acknowledge and accept that our way of seeing the world is another way of not seeing the world. In order to do this we must engage in conversations in which we demonstrate we are aware of our own filters (e.g. this could be demonstrated verbally by saying things “in my experience” or “based on what I have observed”) and show willingness to learn from others around us rather than enforcing our perspective on others. Whilst this requires us to be resilient and vulnerable enough to hear things we don’t like or agree with; finding new and constructive ways to positively disagree with one another is essential for more balanced and effective decision making. 

Key takeaway: To make more rational decisions in our day-to-day lives, we must find ways to help each other break a cycle of decision making based on self-justification. This requires each of us to be open and vulnerable enough to see the world from other people’s perspectives, even when we don’t agree.

Holding all these stories together is a single idea. The idea that when we are willing to make ourselves vulnerable – whether that’s being open to challenging ideas and other people or seeing things from a different perspective even when we don’t agree - we are able to go beyond the borders of our mind. Having difficult and uncomfortable conversations are essential to enable change. Spending time reflecting and challenging the stories we tell ourselves about the world enable personal growth. Sharing inspiring thoughts, ideas and solutions is a first step towards solving the world’s most complex problems by changing hearts and minds. Or put more simply, sometimes all it takes to go beyond the borders of our own mind is remembering to look in the first place.