Fragmentation leads to a pervasive type of blindness that is now getting in the way of the next social evolution.
We have advanced much in the West by designing our education and culture around specialization. However, we have reached a point where the fragmentation of industries, tasks, issues, concepts and lives is no longer serving us.
We are at turning points in areas like health and the environment, and this is driven by the inertia of fragmentation. We assume that if it worked until now, it should continue working. One could argue that it never truly ‘worked.’ Instead, it merely redirected resources, allowing for rapid improvements where investment and focus were greatest. However, this is not the argument I want to make today.
The world is becoming increasingly complex. Fast. And it is changing, also fast, much faster than many of us manage to follow, let alone integrate in our lives and, more important, in our minds and in our hearts. How do you jump on a speeding train without risking serious injury? Most of us wouldn’t attempt it, and yet this is what is implicitly asked of us every day, almost nonchalantly – alongside companies that sell us perfect solutions to play our roles successfully, whichever those may be.
How does someone feel when they can’t jump on that speeding train, knowing full well this train is the world they live in?
To manage this, we break these complex systems down into small, digestible parts. It’s the logical thing to do. We construct a life in roles: child, student, professional, sibling, friend, parent, and so on. We live our lives in roles, each with their own code and context. This makes it more manageable. The problem is we often forget that this fragmentation was always meant to be an artificial construct to deal with complexity and that, at some point, we need to integrate these parts into the whole, because we are a whole person and, because like any proper puzzle, the whole is more than the sum of its parts.
Admitting this means acknowledging our limits. It means acknowledging that we might be more vulnerable, and that we will go through a period of turmoil, and that people around us won’t really understand what is happening. It will mean that we are raw and tired and discovering and testing things about ourselves, and our ego will not accept it easily. If we lay down our masks and roles, integrating all parts of ourselves into all aspects of our lives, the energy that is freed can be overwhelming.
It also means facing the fear of being limitless. The synergies between the different parts of ourselves will start activating, and a world of previously unforeseen possibilities might open up. This is wonderful, and elating – and scary. It will make the world more colorful, relationships richer, and ourselves more authentic and, in the long run, stronger and more resilient.
It is not a path for the faint of heart. It will require us to not only step out of our comfort zone, but to step into discomfort, and to look through a window – not to fall in love with our own reflection in the glass, but to see the way that there is still to go. And be better, and grateful, for it.
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