Moving past stereotypes...embracing curiosity

 How do we escape from the self-portraits and the stereotypes that reduce our complexity to one or two dimensional carboard cut-outs?. I just read an essay by an acknowledged “three-quarter-lifer” who was reflecting on her experience in Shopper’s Drug Mart, waiting in line, eschewing the four self-check-out machines standing idle.

Her concern was trying to avoid a ‘destined mood’ of the last years of her life. She references James Hillman’s The Force of Character’s warning that “‘one’s final character could be a bully and blowhard as easily as a generous and compassionate person.”’ And while this dichotomy, another binary choice, is valid and worthy of reflection, so is the more obvious missing notion that, not only either-or but also many other ‘traits’ none of which can be ‘reduced’ to ‘good’ or ‘not so good’ are all playing a part in whatever quarter of our life is being considered.

It is our deeply embedded, child-like simplification of ‘labels’ that pigeon-hole us into nice or not-nice, as a way of glibly sorting out whom we like and whom we don’t like that has a way of entrapping not only us, as perceivers-judges, but as replicas and imitators of a perspective that enables a ‘skills-based’ stick-portrait tohat pervade our lives.

We are ‘good students’ or good team-players or good employees, or good doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers, singers, dancers, etc…or we are ‘struggling’ or have fallen on hard times. We are successful or not. We have a title or, for some time, we are ‘between jobs’ now a designation that has morphed into several ‘gig’s’ as if we are all entertainers. 

Who we are is too often, if not always, defined by our role(s), as if roles were all we need to know about another.

I am noticing something that I have not given words to among many situations. It is a kind of reverse snobbery among those who identify themselves as “bottom-line” people. A recent visit with a newly elected politician unearthed his comment that whatever is accomplished in his term is “an effect”….pointing to the singular rifle-shot metaphor in his vision of ‘listing the ‘effects’ of his term. Implicit in his description is that he sees himself and other elected officials as “cause” to and for those potential “effects” as if the universe is and can be defined in such simple terms.

His ‘cause-effect’ equation is not wrong, in a literal sense. Literally, all political actors are in office to make or create an ‘effect’… and the ‘effect’ would be measureable, visible, transparent and those people would be ‘accountable’. Programming our language and then our persons into such an equation, however, is most likely, not merely potentially, a recipe for, on the one hand, perceived literal success and also a blindness to many situations which are unplanned, votes that cannot be predicted, actions from other levels of government that impact various jurisdictions, public sentiment. And the last element in the messy, chaotic and uncontrollable reality, public sentiment, is so fickle, so mercurial, so elemental that it can and often does constrict the possibilities, in order to ‘fit’ within what can and will be tolerated.

Simplistic slogans, such as lower taxes, debt reduction, reducing spending, on the surface, seem eminently noble and worthy. And a public that demands such reductionisms is not only ignoring new ideas for bringing people together, for example, or for the pooling of new energies and ideas, as a community goal, not only for the purpose of achieving a specific goal (effect) but for the larger purpose of enhancing the imagination of a community. Of course, change can and will happen with the consent of the people, whose capacity to see their own collective potential is a public ‘demographic’ rarely if ever mentioned or researched.

Is the ’enhancement of community imagination and aspiration’ an ‘effect’? Perhaps. However, given a kind of literal and somewhat patronizing attitude about how a community is ‘blue-collar’ for a century, sends chills down one’s spine about another ‘classification’ for the purpose of command and control. And there is a wide gap between ‘command and control’ for ‘effect’ and leadership.

Those differences start with a difference between seeking to make an ‘effect’ and seeking to embrace and to comprehend and to learn about the subtle nuances of both the history and the potential in any community. Labels, just like the ones used to ‘categorize’ people, based often on gossip, or a glib rendering of an incident or two, contribute much to the stereotypes that inhabit our community and our imaginations.

Public opinion itself is a snap-shot in time of attitudes and perceptions of individuals who may or may not be in touch with more than their own inherited vocabulary, attitude and belief that is the compilation of a community’s ethos or culture. And that vocabulary has been grafted onto the business and community leaders’ perceptions as a first step in even beginning to think about business success in the community. New technologies, new vehicles, and the occasional new business venture seem to be integrated into the community acceptance ‘imagination’ as symbols of those previous new features to which the community has adjusted. So long as the ‘new’ is concrete, empirical and thereby substantial, it is accepted and respected. However, should the ‘new’ be a more abstract concept, such as a community program initiated by the community, that has been tried and proven in other communities, there is an instant, nevertheless polite resistance to that possibility.

Pictures, images of people and ideas that, like those cardboard cut-outs of prominent figures, are another form of ghosting any community. There is an appearance of something being done as an ‘effect’ as if that ‘effect’ is adequate for a successful resume, and next campaign. However, we all know that “how” things are done is as important as ‘what’ is done. And how things are conducted is and must be considered as so abstract and fluid and requiring an imaginative flexibility, adaptability, creativity and even intuition that bears far more notice and respect than the ‘effect’ of some change.

Nuance, complexity, adaptability, intuition, creativity are not merely nouns to describe job performance, or student profiles, or even career objectives. And the issue of whether or not they can be taught, for the moment, is outside the scope of this piece. The question of how they are perceived, valued, respected and even included in the dialogue of a family, a school and a community, is, however, needing to be highlighted. Each of these words, whether applied to individuals or organizations or communities, implies and infers resilience, strength, flexibility and an embrace of constant learning. Linking them is something many call ‘curiosity’….that impelling energy that keeps asking questions and that resists any and all attempts to dismiss hard and provocative questions.

Curiosity has application and relevance not only among scholars and artists, scientists and researchers. Curiosity especially among the adult population, while more unsettling than comforting, is a quality that cannot be contained by a static noun. Curiosity is more verb/action/searching/exploring/risking than it is adherence to the status quo. It resists stereotyping, it resists familiarity and stability, and embraces the central activity of nature, change.

Curiosity, too, seeks to get to know another person, and that process takes both time and patience. Artists, for example, are more than their canvas. Musicians, too, are more than their performance. Both are certainly more than the price of their art, or the price of their concert ticket. And one of the most virulent, insidious and prevalent stereotypes is the commodification and commercialization of each person and organization. Naturally, for the purpose of ‘attracting’ and earning wealth, income, there are numbers of dollars implicit in the pursuit. However, the reduction of both people and communities to ‘what is affordable’ or what wealth has been ‘attained’ is both a reduction and an insult to everyone.

Curiosity asks:

·        Who is the person behind the rumour or the cut-out?

·        Who is the community behind the ‘go-slow’ mandate, as if it were a sacred idol?

·        Who is the confluence of images/voices/advocates/guardian angels/subverters that comprise the community?

·        Who is the face of the future of the community…not the name of a public figure but the vision of the kind of personage the community aspires to become?

·        Whose voices, writing, pictures, stories businesses are in the ‘historic garden’ of the community and what kind of ‘growth’ did they see and seek on the horizon of their time?

·        Who are the names and the stories give a ‘life’ to the residences, the businesses and the land and the rivers of the community?

·        Who is asking the questions? And who is eager to listen to the questions?

Research points out that humans orient ourselves around inanimate things. We seem to prefer ‘things’ rather than people or images as our path to identity and definition. Perhaps, reducing a person to a cardboard cut-out, now photo-shopped, we do not have to engage in the more messy process of listening to them, asking them questions, and sharing answers to their questions. And, more importantly, we are observing the classic moral and social code “mind your own business”.

As a caution against gossip, that epithet is appropriate. As a community-building guideline, it sucks. Learning and observing the ‘space’ (not merely physical but personal and confidential) that respects the other, is a skill that, while employers are engaged in training for the purpose of preventing conflict and harassment, is requiring some sophisticated and formal workshopping.

Stereotypes, like other walls between and among people, arouse raised fists in protest and the potential of hopeful “colouring in”, getting to know, and to enrich the experience of individuals and by extension communities. Raised fists may be good photo-ops; they accomplish little. Colouring in the stereotypes we all carry in our heads, through conscious and deliberate courageous initiative, while challenging and time consuming, offers new insight not only into who the other is, but also into who we are becoming.