The World

“You’ve met too many people like you”

As far as I can see, this world is populated by more than 6.6 billion species of humans, each species with only one member.  While scientists would like to clump us all together under one name - Homo Sapiens - it seems like there is more difference, than similarities between us.  This diversity is wonderful but it can cause real problems if we don’t recognise its extent.  During the film Ocean’s 11, you might remember Tess telling Danny “You know your problem?….You’ve met too many people like you”.  This is her way of saying that his view of reality isn’t the same as everyone else’s.  He may assume that every one will think, speak, and act like him, but he will usually be wrong.  More often than not, our way of thinking is very different to others that we meet, and this is testing our ability to interact effectively with these people. 

Try reading these 6 paragraphs printed below and consider whether you think these statements are common to all people:

• Each individual has a set of characteristic, distinctive attributes.  Moreover, people want to be distinctive - different from other individuals in important ways.
• People are largely in control of their own behaviour; they feel better when they are in situations in which choice and personal preference determine outcomes.
• People are oriented towards personal goals of success and achievement; they find that relationships and group memberships sometimes get in the way of attaining these goals.
• People strive to feel good about themselves; personal successes and assurances that they have positive qualities are important to their sense of well-being.
• People prefer equality in personal relations or, when relationships are hierarchical, they prefer a superior position.
• People believe that the same rules should apply to everyone - individuals should not be singled out for special treatment because of their personal attributes or connections to important people.  Justice should be blind.

These statements are extracted from a book by Richard E Nisbett called The Geography of Thought.  He claims that if we are from Europe, or from past and current British Commonwealth countries that we will probably agree with what we just read.  Apparently these are generalizations that apply to pretty much all people from these countries.  However if you are not from these countries you may well find that you see things very differently.  Nisbett tells us that our ways of thinking developed from either Eastern or Western Heritage and that even today we see the effects of these 2 historic streams of development.  Someone from Asia will see the world, think, and therefore act, very differently to someone from the West.

This is just one example of how all people don’t think in the same ways.  Someone from America thinks differently to someone from Japan.  The old may well perceive a situation differently to the young.  A husband is exasperated at a wife’s way of reasoning and of course the Famous are on a different planet to the normal person.

Diversity like this is healthy for people.  It brings all sorts of opportunities and excitement to our world but it also makes living a perilously complex activity.  These issues are only becoming more important as our world becomes more and more interconnected.  When the only people you ever met lived in your village then diversity was a relatively small issue.  When your “village” includes all sorts of people from all over the globe then diversity demands your attention.

We have to admit that we are not like everyone.  Then we have little choice but to try and understand people who are not like us, if we want to survive in modern society.  This is even more important if we want to be really effective in what we do.  Understanding people - trying to see the world as they do - will radically alter your ability to cooperate, help and be helped by any person that you meet.  But how can we hope to do it?

1. Broaden your circle - As humans it is natural that we can occupy only a limited amount of geographic, social, intellectual and experiential space.  I view this space as a kind of circle hovering over my part of the world.  Some people are very compact in the size of their circle - the space that they occupy.  They limit their lives to few and fixed influences.  They do the same things, meet the same people, watch, listen and eat the same things.  Overall, their experiences one day to the next are relatively constant.  This kind of behaviour tends to build the belief that the world is just like them.  On the other hand we all have the choice to deliberately enlarge the circle of our lives.  We can hover our lives over different terrain, expanding it in any direction.  Each time we cover some new territory, we begin to see another way of viewing reality.  If we were to spend a lifetime changing and increasing the circle of our lives, we would be in a much better position to see the world from other people’s perspective.
2. Study your own circle - The problem with knowing too many people like us is that it is very difficult to understand what is universal and what is not.  If you study your own situation and the influences in it, then you will begin to see the factors that change your thinking.  Then there is a better opportunity for seeing things from other perspectives.  Studying your own circle will help you to understand what makes it different from someone else’s circle.
3. Read sociology, history and even biographies from outside your circle - From the comfort of your own office, you can experience a taste of much of the rest of the world.  Reading about the world that is out of your reach gives you the chance to build a more realistic image of what influences people who live in other situations.  At least this will help you to see, if not understand the differences.
4. Engage others with your eyes closed - Whenever we meet someone, we automatically judge with our eyes, what they are like.  Within an instant we will have made an image of the type of person they are and how they think.  Very often we will be wrong.  This is where the Internet is valuable for forming relationships.  Without the visual cues, we have a better chance of forming an unbiased view of other people.  Of course you could still jump to false conclusions based on their misleading avatar or personal bio.
5. Get to know yourself and fight your instincts - If you want to understand people then  you should probably start with yourself.  Understanding how you work is the key to understanding how others work.  Not that you will be the same as others, but that understanding how your brain turns reality into thought will help you filter out your own perception when you try to understand others.  If you find that you instinctively jump to conclusions about how others think or act, then you may have to fight or suspend those instincts until you can actually see how things pan out.  Prejudgement is usually bad judgement and so it is important to suspend our thoughts sometimes until reality has actually taken place. 

If you try these methods and still don’t really understand other people, don’t be surprised.  They will not work over night.  The best we can do is spend a life time gradually edging towards the ability to think like other people when we need to.  Don’t, for a minute, assume that you have ever really made it, because you will always be far from truly understanding yourself, let alone someone else.  The best you can do is patiently practice, and over time you will gradually find that other people are less and less mysterious and more and more accessible, as you slowly learn to see the world from their perspective.

I’d love to hear some different perspectives on how people think, so please leave your comment below.

Thanks

Tom