It’s not climate change. Understanding and dealing with climate change is important but there’s something that’s even more urgent. It’s not finding alternatives to fossil fuels. Discovering ways to meet our growing energy demands is vital but there’s something that’s more critical than that. Our greatest global challenge is not even ensuring that all of our citizens have access to clean water. While this is a clear priority there is something that is ahead of it on the list.
Our greatest global challenge is to understand and deal with our own controlling natures. Learning to get along together without violence, bloodshed, and other interpersonal strife is the singularly most important task for humanity. From this perspective, getting along together means figuring out how individuals can live the life they want without preventing others from doing the same thing.
If we don’t figure out this most basic of tasks there will be no humans left to monitor and experience the effects of a changing climate. There won’t be anyone around to use the energy sources we’ve developed and no-one will be here to enjoy the taste of clean, fresh water.
We are designed to control. Our controlling nature means that we are supremely skilled at making things be the way we want them to be and keeping them in that wanted state for as long as we want the want to be that way. We can keep our cars where we want them to be on the road for as long as we want them to stay there. We can keep our bodies moving upright along busy city sidewalks until we get to where we want to go. Sometimes accidents happen to be sure but they only occur a tiny fraction of the time that they would otherwise occur if there weren’t such skilful controllers producing the events.
Occasionally, however, our expertness is its own worst enemy. From time to time the thing we want to control is another controller. Now, controlling the cruise control system in a car is an uncomplicated way of controlling another controller. When I’m in my car it is me who turns the cruise control system on and me who sets the speed I want the system to control. No problem.
Controlling another living controller, however, is not so straightforward. When I want my son to tell me about his day at school I can’t just switch him on (he’s already on) and I can’t lift the lid and adjust his settings so I get the conversation I want. When I want my neighbor to care about her front lawn as much I care about mine, I can’t reach in and shift her priorities around until they match the order that I think is right.
We are all controllers which means we all want things to be particular ways. Sometimes those other “things” that we want to be particular ways are other living controllers. The trouble is, other controllers want things to be particular ways too. When the particular way I want a thing to be is different from the particular way another living controller wants that thing to be there is the potential for trouble. If the other controllers are different kinds of animals we can solve this problem in acceptable ways.
It’s important to keep Molly the pet canary in a cage because, if you don’t, Molly’s idea about the location she would like to be in might be different from yours and by the time you discover that difference it will be too late to persuade her to stay. Many people keep their dogs on leads when they take them for walks. The tugging and straining of the lead is clear evidence that the dog controllers frequently have ideas about where they would like to walk that are different from where the people controllers on the other end of the lead want to walk.
While these strategies are effective enough with animals that are not humans, it’s an entirely different matter if we try to keep another human in a cage or on a lead. And yet this still happens on a far too frequent basis. Even when the cage or the restraint is invisible to others there are many different ways that controllers have learned to try to make other controllers be the way they want them to be. Tragically, sometimes this ends in death or serious physical injury.
We have to get to know our own controlling natures better and we have to appreciate the controlling nature of others. I want things, you want things, we all want things.
How can we create a world where you and I can both get what we want? Answering that question is the most important quest for humanity if humanity is to endure.
These ideas, along with some ways to think about generating solutions, are explored in detail in my recent book with Rick Marken called Controlling People: The paradoxical nature of being human (http://tinyurl.com/z49jprf). I hope you enjoy it.
