INsight/ What You Assume

Manila, 31 March 2021 — What do you assume about other people?

Story

It happened in 2020, during the first lockdowns of the Coronavirus pandemic. Humankind - A Hopeful History was published, written by Rutger Bregman, a historian, writer, and mapmaker. It’s a book full of stories, woven into a map that shows how your evolutionary direction as a human on this planet may be (much) more positive than you had imagined from watching the news on your social media.

Mapmaker: I self-identify with that term. Mapmaking is a role in which you make sense of what’s happening around you now, and what has happened before, and then extrapolate your observations into creating new possibilities for what you can do today and tomorrow. You become a meaning-maker who creates the future of work and the future of life: for you, for us, and for our planet. A future in which the Sustainable Development Goals can hopefully be realized in ways beyond those you and I can imagine today. 

So what’s Bregman’s thesis about in this book? He contrasts the two ways that influential philosophers have guided us to see other people: as either selfish and untrustworthy (or worse), or as basically decent with a potential for kindness. Which one should you go with and why? Watch as Bregman explains that what he has done during the five years it took him to write the book is to connect the dots he saw from his extensive research into a new shape. He then scales that down to you and what you can assume about other people. That’s the key, he says. And why is that important?

Challenge

Here’s Bregman’s response to that: because “what you assume about other people is what you get out of them.” That’s deep, so let that sink in for a moment. He explains that what you do with this analysis will apply to your workplace, to organizations, and to the society and democracy you want to see. When you’re able to assume better things about other people, you are more able to bring out the best in others, and less dependent on ‘executives’ — like presidents, directors, CEOs, generals, and also religious leaders — to keep you and everyone else in check.

He’s not the first to raise this, of course. What you and I can assume about others has been a perennial discussion. To my knowledge, it was first written about in Asia, by Chinese philosophers, more than two millennia ago. They argued among themselves if human nature was healthy and edifying, or the opposite and therefore not to be trusted. Advocates for both positions emerged among the leading Chinese philosophers of that time. The Dao philosophy made sense of this by explaining that distinctions like these can help you navigate between opposites and take the best from both and their YinYang energies.

For me, that makes sense, and I applaud that Bregman with his new book Humankind has stepped into the footsteps of mapmakers like Ken Wilber, a philosopher who has helped me make better sense of the world on the way to becoming a meaning maker and dot connector myself.

Question

So what’s the question for you this week? Simply this: What do you assume about other people? And, taking that a step further, if you are prone to operating as a perfectionist and you are often critical about yourself and your own performance, do you assume that critical state of mind in others too? Or are you ready to try on a different perspective: that you get better at bringing out the best in yourself when you assume that others are friendly and helpful and that you can improve yourself and your performance by collaborating with them and (un)learning together?

To explore that further, you will certainly get new ideas from reading Bregman’s book that will help you connect dots for yourself based on his stories. Playing with new perspectives like these is also what we do in April in Grow3Leaders, the community of leaders who pursue new perspectives for influencing changes in our 21st-century workplaces, communities, and world at large. There’s mapmaking involved in that too.

If you have grown up thinking that your fellow humans are by nature selfish, and nasty when given the opportunity, then you will probably see that scenario play out time after time in the situations you’re in. It’s only one perspective, though, and I’m inviting you to ask yourself Bregman’s question and try on another perspective. Prepare to be delighted, and as you act on your new experience, let me know what you discover!