Making sense of division

In the weeks since the UK riots, the Oasis ticketing fiasco has come along. What do they have in common? More than you think. Here’s a hint: if you don’t have a voice, you will scream to be heard.

Watching, and reflecting, as a founder, and a foreigner, is a double edged sword for me. The state of the world, frankly, makes me not want to live in it anymore.

But calling myself a human connection specialist, means speaking up in a time of extreme division, it’s not enough to be ‘anti-this and that’. We have to be ‘pro-human’ if we wanna work out how to coexist in a hyper-connected, hyper-diverse world.

Sense-making can help us shift our perspective and open us up to new ways of seeing.

The riots were inexcusable, and incondonable in their violent methods and their hatred. But if we look through that, and the clumsy soundbites that made the internet rounds – if we listen deeply, what can we discern? And are the command & control ways of dealing with civil unrest still effective?

The riots didn’t come out of nowhere. They’re the result of many forces, and feelings that have been bubbling away under the surface. Society is a pressure cooker with no way to relieve the pressure.

Beneath the misdirected hatred, I heard people angry at the depletion of public services and institutions, the cost of living, even themselves.

Ella Baron on Banksy's animals appearing across London

This is a global phenomenon felt by people worldwide. In London, my 4th (and current) home, I’ve witnessed historic areas being sacrificed to ‘progress’, to become sanitised, homogenised places.

The desire for profit consistently overrides preservation of culture and tradition - things often seen as unimportant compared to making money.

Instead of being angry, is there a way to harness the energy as fuel for change?

Society is a pressure cooker with no way to relieve the pressure. Which brings me to the Oasis comeback. A lot of people attribute their rise in the 90s to their ability to give voice to the British working class. Oasis biographer says Liam Gallagher’s aim was to “create the sound of a council estate singing its heart out.”

But today, even Liam says that the working class is priced out of making music. And, as we’ve seen with the ticketing fiasco, they’re also priced out of enjoying it.

If you can’t voice your experience and concerns through art, and you’re no longer represented in the media – where does the angst and frustration go?

The reality is, we are diverse but we are not integrated. So how do we get people to play nice?

My professional experience taught me that a business is a micro version of society. But it’s dialogue and facilitation that eases tensions – not brute force. Mass arrests send a signal, but are they effective? Courts have a huge backlog of cases, and prisons are overcrowded.

Whether it’s different personalities, backgrounds, or socioeconomic statuses, the solution is the same: hearing each other out to find shared pain points. What we should be asking is, why haven’t those in power prioritised ways of creating common ground?

The world is more connected and inter-dependent than ever, yet it lacks the necessary social rituals to make it a great place to live. Meanwhile, billionaire-owned media outlets shove divisive narratives down the mainstream’s throat. But it’s with those who are most different to us that we must make the effort in order to break down division and create bridges.

Take any rioter and put them in a room with those they “hate”, and they’d find so much in common: Being human. Feeling hungry. The ups and downs of life. Extreme sadness and unimaginable joy.

If you’ve been to our RAW listening nights, you’ve seen firsthand how you’re actually more alike than you thought with people from opposite walks of life.

So many people in the UK live 20 miles from where they were born. Even in London, 2 in 10 people have never crossed the Thames.

People aren’t born racist, or classist. Many factors contribute to our development, and as fully formed adults, it’s easy to crack under the social and economic strains that come with the siloed way we’ve built our modern world.

If we found ways to address things like lack of exposure and belonging that result in the creation of divides and incorrect views, we could heal so many rifts in our society.

In a divided society, exposure to ‘the other’ happens only through constructed narratives, and not lived experience. Who benefits from peddling hatred and fear, instead of allowing the real causes of inequality to be known?

Is anyone concerned that 8 billionaires own half of the entire world’s wealth? Or are we all too distracted by the world burning on social media?

Anger has many forms and multiple root causes. Distraction and redirection of anger is the only way for the powerful to survive. When the working class fights against itself, there’s no time to ask the question “how the f*ck did we get here?”

What precedents are we setting when someone gets arrested for posting emojis on FB? Do we feel glee, or alarm that the law can so easily infringe on civil liberties?

Everything that’s happened underscores our failure to figure out how to coexist in a hyper-connected, hyper-diverse reality. How do we move forward so people no longer feel the solution is to grab a knife?

The world is pluralistic, and we can’t just impose beliefs or ways of being. The iron fist approach is a relic of the old world. We need spaces to foster dialogue across and between all of society.

The number one cause of anger is NOT being heard. Have you ever met a baby?

Preserving and evolving culture are not mutually exclusive. Being hyper-local, and being a global citizen actually play really well together.

Before we fix the world, however, we have to fix ourselves, and I believe that a lot of what happened stems from a refusal to look at oneself to get to the bottom of why we’re here.

I live and work by this: we have more in common with people we thought we had nothing in common with.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. Peace & love✌️

-Christine, founder of What Does Not