Us Versus Them – Why Do We Always Get Here?
April 29th, 2009 • Communities
Phew! It’s been a busy week, but I wanted to make sure that I got this post out – it’s been in the works for days now.
Last week, we had some great thoughts and conversations through Twitter, within the blogosphere, and face to face on communities and how they are built. For me, this spurred out of two separate “events” – research for the Ignite presentation I did last week (and a desire to expand on the ideas), and a personal examining of the role that I play in my communities, and where my time is best spent. (There’s an awkwardly worded sentence.) More on what I see my role later this week; for now, let’s continue to discuss some of the issues facing communities.
One of the common threads in any community (or crowd) that I’ve been a part of has been this phenomena of “us versus them” – either to those outside of the community, or within factions of the community itself. Be it when I was growing up, during my time in school, or in various communities that I’ve found myself is as an adult, this conflicts pervades, almost ahead of everything else. The context seems to be irrelevant as well – the conflicts have been as present at my private golf course as they were between different parts of the student union volunteer base.
This means that there has to be some other deeper cause that exists here. I think there are a few factors come into play:
- Too many leaders – or “leaders” – with differing visions
As the old, offensive analogy goes, the “too many chiefs, not enough indians” situation is a pretty obvious factor in the creation of conflict within communities. If you get leaders stepping up to contribute and their ideas aren’t on the same page, pretty soon, if these are charasmatic people, you end up with factions forming, each working towards their own goals. These people most often are working towards what it is they think is best for the community, and are able to mobilize others – but there’s an inherent conflict in what those visions may be. Of course, this also comes from… - A community actually formed of smaller communities
Sometimes, what we perceive to be a community – or one big happy family – is actually a group of a few differing communities looped together under a “common goal.” This was certainly the case during my student union days at Laurier – each department of volunteers had different goals and different presences, yet because they were all under the WLUSU banner, the tendency was to always try and make everyone this big community working towards “providing for the needs of students.” Problem was, the personality types and jobs completed within the 1300 volunteers were all varied, and should’ve never meshed together in the first place. This created factioning, as well as resentment towards the most publicly present department – resentment which still exists to this day. That’s the danger we face in trying to create communities, or to help others do so – we may end up creating this “common goal” that doesn’t actually exist. - Human nature – specifically, the basic principle of natural selection
I know, I know; we’ve gotten to where we are in this world because we’ve worked together, right? You’re right, by and large. However, we still have this inherent survival of the fittest mentality that exists, and because of that, we have to prove our constant fitness. This breeds competition, which is by definition contrary to the stated purpose of a community working together for a common goal.
As you can see, many of the previous factors are personality-based, and centre on competition. In some ways, this is a problem that should be a given when dealing with a community, and tactics need to be developed – consciously or not – in order to ensure that these aspects don’t lead to the detriment of the community.
In fact, competition can be a useful tool for community success, when it is inter-community rather than intra-community. Many major innovations have become because of races between communities – take a look around you; the odds are that you’ll see something that was invented due to one of these races. I’m not saying that competition is inherently bad; just that it does lead to community problems.
What’s important here, though, is what you think. Have you experienced the us versus them situation in a community before? How did you, or the community, deal with it? Do you agree/disagree with some of the factors I’ve identified? Am I off my rocker? Please, respond in the comments below.
