Great People of History

There used to be a lot of talk about great people in history.

Books, philosophies, ideas, inventions, and other movements in the past were lionized by being included as part of an overall “canon” of history that people in a present age dutifully memorized, internalized, and regurgitated to the next generation, creating a virtuous circle.

This memorization was designed to educate, inculcate, and to inspire. It was done with the best of intentions and was meant to join people’s current struggles (even if they weren’t great struggles, just mundane ones) to a past perceived to be great.

This “canon” of great people of the past primarily included political, social, and military leaders (and yes, the majority were men, and–in the West at least–white) but this was designed to pass along to future generations the idea that certain people have the ability to “stand astride history” and that conflicts, disagreements, and disputations could be solved by examining successful best practices (and failures) gleaned from large examples.

But now, sixteen years into the 21st century, all of that is over.

The philosophical, political, and cultural movements of the 19th, 20th and 21st century have sought first to expand the “canon” of who can be included as “great” (i.e. women, minorities, etc.) and then to expand the “canon” of what ideas can be considered “great” (i.e. Marxism, religious atheism, feminism, historical determinism, etc.).

With this expansion two things have happened concurrently:

The glorious historical past has become untethered from the inglorious day-to-day present. Along with this, the lessons from the formerly glorious historical past have become untethered from the inglorious problems and concerns of the day-to-day present.

The glorious historical past has become an object to be examined through the lens of current events, and day-to-day struggles, in an ever more frustrating search for pure meaning and linkage.

Both of these expansions underlie our current cultural, political, and moral anxieties, which manifest in conflicts and disagreements between people, institutions, nation-states, and even philosophies and ideas.

But these expansions also form the basis for generating the solutions to conflicts, disagreements, and disputations. And to ending our modern anxieties about seemingly intractable problems.

Because, as the present has become more and more democratic, individuals have the opportunity, the power, and the need to ascend to being great people in, not only our own personal histories but also, in the history of the world.

HIT Piece 06.28.2016

In our desire to run forward to the new, we have forgotten as a global culture, that history still matters to many individual people.

You can’t vote against history, and you can’t go back to the past, but nostalgia is a terrible driver. History matters, particularly when the rate of change is constantly being cranked up.

Then, there’s the issue of listening to the past. Somehow, human beings have convinced themselves that because our tools have changed (i.e. we use email instead of carrier pigeons to send messages) that our historical, moral, and ethical footing has shifted significantly.

This is the seduction of the new, and combined with an ignorance of (or disinterest in) history, global culture sets itself up for further conflict. And adding shinier newer tools (e.g. AI, deep learning, algorithms, VR/AR, et.al) won’t decrease conflict, it will merely increase it.

Because the most important history is that involving the human heart, human drivers, human intuitions, and human fears. All those things, wrapped deeply in our history.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Opinion] A Modern History For Labor Day II

There’s a lot of political commentary floating around about the perils of income inequality.

A Modern History For Labor Day II

This issue—which can lead to conflicts—is mask for a much larger, more pervasive, and more pernicious kind of inequality though. And this conversation masks discussing the core question, buried deep inside the second type of inequality.

Here’s the question that a conversation around income inequality can‘t touch: Why do some people become “successful” (whatever that means) and other people don’t (whatever that means)?

Labor Day is a day to focus around outcomes and inputs:

  • Labor is an input. Work is an outcome.
  • Effort is an input. “Success” is an outcome.
  • Childhood is an input. Adulthood is an outcome.
  • Actions are inputs. Consequences are outcomes.

Conflicts come about when there is an avoidance, an accommodation or an attack as an outcome related directly to deeply held perceptions about the nature, range and efficacy of a particular consequence, for a particular action.

Different people respond in a random variety of ways to inputs and outcomes, consequences and conflicts.

Trying to focus on equalizing responses—and thus removing the risk of conflicts related to differing outcomes—is an exercise best left to academics, politicians and political commentators on the news.

The celebration on this day should be about how successful and persuasive efforts have been (inputs) to create different, and materially better, outcomes, rather than continuing to circle the room, searching in vain for better outcomes.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Opinion] A Modern History For Labor Day

“Eight-hour day with no cut in pay.”

Working for a $1.50 a day, 60 hours a week, during a six-day work week is enough to make any American decide that enough is enough.

At least, it was during the last twenty years of the 19th century.

The last major economic disruption of technology, society, culture, politics and economics occurred at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

We who are living through the second decade of the 21st century, are going through another series of major economic and cultural disruptions right now and have been for at least the last 20 years.

The history of Labor Day though, tends to be forgotten, in light of the seemingly never ending, daily stream of reportage around conflict, uncertainty and social disruptions.

What does this have to do with Labor Day and the establishment of an eight hour a day/forty hour work week?

People these days, seem to do more work for less compensation, and this is the core of the issue of Labor Day, because, inherently, more money equals more happiness, less conflict, lowered uncertainty and more peace.

Right?

Well, if that were so, we would never need a day to celebrate the end of the summer and—tangentially—the eight hour work day.

Right?

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/