It is common to find some urgent problem out there. It seems that everyone has a very important problem that needs to be solved, preferably now. But this “very important problem” is mostly a one-person issue. If you ever went to a condo meeting you know what I’m talking about.
As a result of this self-focused attention, we are often blind (and deaf) to anything that happens outside our backyard. There is simply no space for other people’s side of the story. And just like that, we fell into a vicious circle: we only fight for our cause, demanding respect and attention from everyone, but we don’t respect or pay attention to anyone.
It is precisely because of this “everyone is busy fighting for something” feeling that Zygmunt Bauman, a Polish sociologist, said that societies have become individualized. As he explains, it is hard for most people to see beyond the near future, leading to disproportional concern with their immediate problems.
But this individualization hasn’t come naturally. For the urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg, our social spaces (both physical and digital), despite their initial intent, do not promote socialization, what he called an inconvenient society. From our urban planning (with “convenience stores”) to our apps that help organize our messy daily lives, “we gain a false reputation for convenience by trying to compensate in little matters”.
Because of individualization, work became a safe place when it came to convenience. In his words:
“Work has a coherence and a simplicity about it and, at work, what one needs on a regular basis is close at hand. The world of work remains intact amid the spread, sprawl, and scatterization that plague the off-work hours. Correspondingly, many find that work is easy, but life is hard” (p.267).
I explained elsewhere about the Autonomy X Dependence relation we have within our social systems. It is impossible to do everything by yourself, so it is of paramount importance to know how to communicate with each other and, above all, to know how to join forces for the greater good. We indiscriminately point out other people’s mistakes but when it comes to presenting a solution all we hear is silence.
“Consensus, if we are to call it that, follows interaction and involvement more often than it precedes it,” explains Oldenburg. “When people are thrown together, they discover much to like, to get attached to, to add to their lives, and to change their minds about. When they are kept apart what does their level of consensus matter?”
In other words, we are shouting and no one hears us because they are shouting too. So, let’s listen more, work on solutions together, and be more patient and socially aware.
Let’s be more “us” and less “me”.