If you’ve been on an internet forum or read through the comments to a blog post, news item or YouTube video of late, you’ve probably noticed the remarkable range of viewpoints expressed on topics about which there is general agreement. The spectrum typically goes from complete agreement to profane, sarcastic and even caustic opposition.
If you dig a little further into the disagreements, however, you find that more often than not the central arguments are hammered out on the anvil of small differences. More specifically, the disagreements tend to center around the small details of application, not on the general principles behind the issue.
We see this in my company’s educational events, where doctors of all stripes are brought together in one room to consider new approaches to medicine. We usually find that doctors are hellbent on emphasizing the small differences between them, such as their preferred way to look at the body and its component parts or their preferred therapeutic interventions and our first order of business is to remind them that they all share a common underlying concern in principle: to heal their patients.
Great breakthroughs tend to be scuppered by quibbling over minor details. My father-in-law likes to refer to this as “majoring in the minors” and notes that this tendency is usually at the root of most human failure. Psychologically, this approach is based in a desire to define one’s individuality in a largely homogenous world. The heightened focus on and therefore perception of small differences provides, like MSG on food, an artificial sense of texture or otherness that masks the underlying sameness.
The narcissism of small differences explains why so much has been lost over the ages. Close examination of the spiritual record afforded by the Bible and the Koran reveals how the tensions between the West and the Middle East, for example, likely stems back to the narcissism of small difference between Isaac and Ishmael. Those brothers were replaying a family feud purported to have begun early in human history between Cain and Abel.
The same pattern is the genesis of the longstanding division between East and West globally, North and South nationally and male and female individually. The narcissism of small differences is the best example I can think of to define the idiom: “cut off your nose to spite your face.” No one wins when it is put into play and any so-called victories are Pyrrhic.
There is another way. Small differences can be kept in perspective. The lines of individuality need not be drawn by conflict over the minor differences which naturally and rightfully exist between people.
My company, Energetix Corporation, has unearthed a way to do this in the educational setting (I say “unearthed” because it is not new, but rediscovered). We regularly achieve greater consensus on how to tackle the problems we face with doctors who enter the room with arms crossed and guns loaded with strongly held opinions. It’s not a cakewalk, but it is eminently doable.
To my mind, this is one of the central blockages to human progress. If we fail to meet this squarely in every aspect of human activity, we will be doomed to repeat the less glorious failures in recent and ancient history. Surely we’re better than that!?!
Gregory Hake 
Many of the Internet “arguments” are quibbling just to quibble, or feeling a sense of satisfaction for calling someone out on a technicality. Much less frequently people put away their differences and come together with something they do believe in. That is one of the reasons I respect this blog so much.
There is no lasting victory in being right in the small details as long as you are wrong in the big ones. What the Internet gives is small, frequent doses of self righteousness every time you win a meaningless argument. If you pack the worthless victories close enough together, they can almost fool you into feeling like you’ve done something worthwhile.
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I find that perspective is one of the key components to every aspect of life, whether it’s intimately personal or with global implications. To assume that we have the knowledge of the entire picture is folly and the results are most often conflict. It’s better to assume that we don’t know everything and keep an open mind and appreciate the perspectives of other people.
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What is right, balanced or symmetrical about something needs to be given at least equal weight to what one sees as wrong, strange or unfamiliar, just to give the mind a chance to think without bias. It’s unfair really at that point, and nothing ‘whole’ can really be expected to come out of it. These are unfortunate tendencies indeed that we carry and glad to see someone who is willing to address this in such a critical venue as is healthcare.
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I certainly appreciate you writing about your observation on this subject. My dad used to call this ” splitting hairs”. When the details distract us from a shared result the question has to be asked did I “look upon the heart”. The heart in question is my own. I’ve realized if there is a blockage that is the first place I can work to bring a more peaceful climate. If the climate is not charged with a self-righteous attitude there are less reactionary sparks flying around looking to ingnite a conflict. Meeting this in myself first often changes a situation before it can become formed. Wonderful post Gregg!
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I believe that the trap that we humans often fall into is the desire to be “right”, and to therefore prove the other individual “wrong”. Self importance becomes the key. We become so entangled in this meaningless battle that we can no longer see the larger and more important issues of Life itself. I have recently come to realize that we go through so many of the same things in Life, only at different times. And these time differences confuse us to the point that we can not see the larger similiarities between us all. It is often only the stages in Life that one is going through, and nothing more. Does this same principle not apply to individuals, businesses, and even countries?
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I would think so. We are all part of a whole, just as our bodies are composed of trillions of smaller components organized in increasingly large and complex structures.
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