What Divides Us?

We live in interesting times, and that’s putting it nicely. 

In Hong Kong these days, it’s nearly impossible to have an otherwise pleasant dinner gathering with family, friends or colleagues without the conversation quickly escalating into an intense, emotionally charged debate between the pro-this and pro-that, the anti-this and anti-that. You can just tell that the dialogue is bound to hit the fan at some point, and everyone goes home angry and frothing at the mouth.

Never in my entire life have I seen my beloved Hong Kong this divided. While I try my best to keep out of the crossfire and stay rational and objective about the whole thing, I can't help but ask myself...

What is it that makes us so divided?

There are more questions than answers. Perhaps...

What divides us is our own deep-seated beliefs about what the world is and what it should be. I grew up in a colonial Hong Kong that was on the cusps of becoming one of Asia's "Tiger Economies". Ours was a generation that was largely non-political in our views, not because we didn't care, but because we were not given a choice, given that Hong Kong had been seized, annexed, leased and colonised. We had no national identity and we were too busy coping with the practical demands of daily life and contributing our share to the economic miracle-in-the-making that was Hong Kong. Ours was a realpolitik view of the world, a pragmatic approach that acknowledged the world for what it was and what it gave us. As a colony, our identity and destiny were shaped by the different purposes that served the many factions in the population.

I understand why many young people today, including young recruiters I work with, hold a more idealistic view of the world, wanting to shape it to how they think it should be. Perhaps no matter what the cost. 

What divides us are not so much our differences, but more so our lack of tolerance for these differences in our values, morals, principles, and ideals. It is not always the absolutes or the ends that divide us; sometimes, the means to achieving our desired ends are more divisive. It is much harder to reason with one another about the different means and paths we take, and much easier to agree on the end goal, a common purpose that can become our slogan or battlecry when emotions heat up.

What divides us are the stories we tell ourselves, especially when emotions run high and reason is brushed aside, and we confine ourselves to our own echo chambers -- seeing, hearing and believing only those stories we want to hear and which confirm our individual biases.

What divides us inside a company are increasingly the same issues that divide society. The lines are getting more blurry even as most companies have a policy to separate personal opinion with that of the company.

Perhaps, what really divides us is not knowing what unites us. If we understand what divides us, are we able to see better the ties that bind us together? In a company, vision and purpose have the power to unite. How do we scale this to the society at large?

Perhaps, the first step to really understanding what divides us and what unites us is to get rid of all the “labels” we attach to one another: black, white, yellow, grey. In a world where there's too much opinion and not enough empathy, few things can be braver.