Being Out of the Box, Part 2

Choices, choices, choices. Paper or plastic? Left or right? Chocolate or vanilla? Cash or credit? Every day we are confronted with hundreds, if not thousands of choices. Many of them are as inconsequential as choosing to cross our legs when we sit down. Yet others can move us from simply existing to transcending. As Albert Camus once said, "We are the sum of our choices." How true!

As I wrote in the first part of this series, according to the Arbinger Institute's fantastic books The Anatomy of Peace and Leadership and Self Deception, we are "in the box" toward others when we see them as objects in the way of our goals or plans. When we fail to see the humanity in others, we dehumanize (objectify) them, elevating ourselves in importance. In the process, consequently, we dehumanize ourselves as well.

We move into the box when we make a choice that goes against our sense of what is right, just or decent. This is called "Self betrayal." Imagine this scenario for example: you are walking down a busy street in a large city. On the corner ahead, you see a homeless pan handler and feel a momentary twang of pity. Immediately following that twang, however, you think of ways to ignore him, perhaps quickening your pace. As you walk by, you avoid eye contact. You pretend to be busy doing something on your smart phone, or simply look the other way.

How are you seeing that man? As a down and out person who may have had a recently rough life and could use a smile or a hand? No. He has been objectified as something to ignore. This is where the box comes into play. In order for us to feel OK with ignoring the homeless in this example, we betray our natural prediliction to help and begin to justify our behavior... "I'm in a hurry." "I don't have any money to spare." "I don't want to be seen as a soft touch." "Maybe he would attack me." "He would only buy drugs or alcohol with the money!" You see my point.

All of a sudden, though, we have dehumanized him in order to be comfortable with our choice. We had an opportunity to respond to our natural sense of decency, but chose to deny it. In justifying our behavior, we are "in the box" toward him.

To draw a parallel with another book, in Stephen Covey's "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" he relates the following story:

"One day on the subway, while quietly reading a book, I was interrupted by two wild children that got on with their father at a subway stop.

"The children were out of control, jumping up and down, running loudly through the subway car.

"The father seemed not to notice or care that his children were misbehaving and disturbing commuters…

"I approached the father and wanted to scold him for not controlling his children and teaching them respect for others…

The father agreed, and sighed sullenly, saying “yeah, I just don’t know what to do or say to them. We just came from the hospital where their mother died from a random assault….”

Hearing this story immediately changed Stephen’s paradigm of the children and the situation. He went on to explore this and counsel the man who had lost his wife.

When relating to peers in the workplace, students at school, or family members at home, it is important to our effectiveness that we do what we can to avoid seeing others as objects.

How will we be able to do this? Part three in this series will address the suggestions that the Arbinger Institute makes to pull us out of our boxes (and keep us out!)

 

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