We are Too Used to Acrimony, and it is Impeding Our Better Future

You Can't Ask Questions

When you don't know something, you need to know it, you ask someone, and you get a longer than necessary response, which does not quite answer your question, and the tone of the respondent, carries a hint that it is less than amicable. And this is becoming common with a lot of people around you, because asking a question these days lead to sentiments in people such as the following:

1. You are questioning me
2. I hate having to answer to you
3. Why should I answer to your questions?

And you actually want, is a simple, straightforward answer, to know something, that you don't already, but need to. And without asking, you won't know. Yet when you ask, they have a problem,

You listen to a presentation for an hour. The presenter asks if you have a question. You do. And suddenly you get the vibe that the presenter is feeling; You are testing me.

Politics, It's Everywhere

I am talking about the democratic process where you cast your votes to elect your leaders, if you have a choice in that, where you have it. The very people who agree with you with a smile today, will be smiling in sudden, abrupt concurrence with each other, against you, the very next day, next week, next month or next year and you won't know what hit. They won't tell you now if they have a problem with agreeing you or with you yourself today. They will just gossip, talk, find agreement, conspire and corner you in, in an ambush.

And that they will do that after having asked you how your wife is, how your kids are and so on, creates that market for the sick bag. With the widest smiles anatomically possible, at all ends. You may even believe that they must have emptied a canister of white spray paint onto their visible teeth just an hour ago.

It happens in your workplace. It happens in your social circles. It happens in that volunteer group you are a part of. It happens in your religious congregation. And folks will do that unashamed at knowing, that you know. And it is your fault. You should have known better, and spent more effort in doing it to others, than others did, in doing it to you. You are stupid. That is how some will make it out to be.

Hidden Agendas

There are somethings that just don't come to you in writing. Not in email. Not in text. Not in a Messenger window. Comes verbally. There also often straightforward responses that don't come immediately. People buy time. People avoid putting themselves in a situation where they can be quoted. People don't like documentation. The reason is rather simple most often when that is all so; they don't want transparency. That is because they have something to hide. Either they don't know what they are supposed to, they haven't done or have been doing what they are supposed to, they need to cover up for something, or they are pushing an agenda they should not be pushing.

Everybody is a Critic

When you have a team meeting or a work plan session, everybody is vocal about what is wrong, what has been wrong, what won't work, how things should be or what people should do, but when it comes to taking responsibility or ownership, there is a lot of pushing, shoving, hesitance, reluctance and tons of excuses or reasons why they can't take charge of it, lead it, be accountable for it and so on. Let someone else be held to account, even if you think it should be done in a certain way, and that someone should act to your thinking. Amazing isn't it?

Why?

Human Beings, have been for sometime, wrongly programmed. Wrongly programmed through education, societal norms, upbringings and various miscellaneous conditions. Human Beings for a long time now, have been programmed to compete. To think in winning and losing. They have programmed to think of themselves. To think for themselves. To look out for themselves. To fight for themselves. To gain for themselves. And you may wonder what is wrong with all of that.

The problem begins when Human Beings realize, that in competition, someone losses. The problem begins when Human Beings realize that they are not alone, in thinking for themselves and in the want for gathering for themselves. Not wanting to be on the losing end, they accept all kinds of means. Right ones. Wrong ones. Ugly, disgusting, repulsive ones. And then they justify it with romantic logic like all is fair in love and war. They see life, the world and their involvements in everything, as war. Whether in social space or professional space. They are fighting for everything, everywhere, all the time, even when it does not remotely look or feel like it. Imagine, every human being doing that. Will you stop and think about what that can mean? Will you?

If you want to fight at everything, that is your concern, but if there are enough people like you, you draw in everyone else who do not want to be fighting either. So it isn't just your problem, if you think "competitively" to so put it if you do, it becomes everyone else's. This "competitive" behavior, is driving a dominant culture of acrimony in the Human Society.

The Future

The culture of acrimony has already allowed hatred between human and human to grow to such an extent, that it threatens to spiral out in to all out anarchic violent chaos with a generation or two, to drive humanity into extinction. Don't be fooled by the ISIS' loss of territory in the middle east. The likes of them are far from being defeated. And we are all to blame, to some extent, unless we are hermits in the mountain somewhere, in which case, we shouldn't be on the internet reading this.

Then because of our living habits on this planet, we have been killing it. If the planet dies, so do our children and their children. We need to fix a lot of things. That requires collaboration, cooperation and co-creation. What is getting the way is, individual desires for looking good, for power, for position, for leadership, for dominance, for credit, for wealth, for influence, for legacy and so on. And if someone does not want any of these, he or she, will be told to pick up that ball and go home to wait for the planet's end, instead of being heard. Yes, it is a mockery, of ourselves.

We Need Evolution

Human Evolution. The next one, is in order. And it is about the erosion of evil. Through the prevalence of good human values. The good human values that prevent people from becoming criminals or terrorists, but does not stop there. The good human values, that allow us to embrace the principles and practices of Holacracy, the next level of democracy, everywhere, where each of us can trust each other, to regulate ourselves, without being unfair to another. The good human values, that would allow us to happily see each other as our equals and equivalents, as well as allow us to see other attain that equality and equivalence. The good human values, that would then allow us to work together in open, transparent, trustworthy, collaborative co-creation, in peaceful and amicable cooperation.

This whole idea, for the next human evolution as such sounds ideal and Utopian, but consider where we are heading, with sufficient intellectual horsepower and you realize, it is absolute idiocy, to think it any less or anything other, than a pressing urgent absolute necessity for humanity.

The Need for Organizations as Drivers

Most people who are able to hold an opinion, or able to make an impact upon another, spend most of their daily life, as employees or as parts of their organisations from which they draw an income. And most of the acrimonious behaviors of people, play out, even if invisibly, in the context of organizational life. And if thinking about the whole of humanity is too noble, the biggest losers to the culture of acrimony are organisations of commerce and their stakeholders. Even if they are immune to acrimony within, they operate within a wider world, where people are competing against them unfairly, out to shortchange them or where people are just out to shoot people, even for no apparent reasons perhaps. It therefore definitely is very much in the interest of organisations, to drive the next human evolution, and to erode evil.

If organisations across industries and markets, all over the world, can come together in resolve, to drive and support cultures, where evil in individuals is eroded, the world stands a chance, of being transformed into a better place for every child born, in future generations. To begin with, future generations stand a chance, at being born, if humanity is brought together in the end of acrimony, so that solutions to existential threats can adequately come to be.

Harish Shah is Singapore's first local born Professional Futurist and a Management Strategy Consultant. He runs Stratserv Consultancy. His areas of consulting and Keynote Topics include EmTech, Industry 4.0, HR, Digital Transformation, Marketing, Strategic Foresight, Systems Thinking and Organisational Future Proofing.