145-13-05-2010

Groups Sometimes Violate Human Kindness

By W. Owen Thornton

Each human being is a unique individual but most of us spend most of our time attempting to fit into a group or groups.  We ARE social animals.  Life, for most people, is better in a group.  I won’t get into the strange paradox regarding being a unique person and then somehow finding ourselves willing to give up parts of that individuality so that we can fit into a group.  What I am interested in here, is what groups are about, and how they can violate human kindness.  I will go on record as saying that there is usually nothing wrong with a group unless its morals, values and beliefs go against overall societal norms.  A negative example of a group might be the Nazi’s from the 1930’s to the 1040’s.  So groups are “mostly” a good thing.  They give us a common place to talk about our interests and our hobbies.  They make us feel comfortable and normal … whatever normal means to six billion unique individuals.  “Normal” is highly theoretical term that appears indescribable yet it’s a word we all use and we think we know what it means.  The problem is not with groups in themselves, but when the members of the groups forget that there are people outside of the group.  When this happens, groups can violate human kindness.

What I mean by that is that groups can ostracize others: make others feel like outsiders … freaks … someone whose views that are different from the groups’ views are wrong.  As soon as a group does this, human kindness may appear to remain within the group, but it falls apart for outsiders and those who are members of different groups.  In other words, once a group becomes isolationist, human kindness is out the window.  I can better explain things by citing a series of examples of groups that make others feel uncomfortable.

Consider a sports bar where Montreal Canadian and Pittsburgh Penguin Fans are both watching the game.  Friendly barbs back and forth between the two jersey-wearing clusters of fans, is expected.  But when a bad check happens on the ice, the indignant fans of the team who’s player is lying on the ice begin to turn hostile towards the other group.  Someone from the offending group says the victimized player had it coming because the victimized player had been “gooning” the members of his team all night.  Suddenly barbs become a pushing match and a fight breaks out.  Ironically, these two groups are subsets of a single larger one that should get along: Fans of hockey.  The people caught up in the moment and who are slowly devolving into a fight are just members of different groups.  But what they have now failed to recognize is that they are members of a single larger group: that of the human race.  There is nothing to be gained by a fight here.  In fact if any of these people who are about to enter into a fight were to look at the situation from the outside, they would all say that fighting is wrong and there’s never an excuse to fight … unless life and limb are threatened.  From outside the situation everyone would know that they all have to go to work tomorrow and no one wants to go to work with a busted jaw or a knocked out tooth while waiting for further dental surgery.  What started out as a fun night out with the group, turned unfortunate because the group failed to see others outside of their group as people who essentially want the same things from life: to enjoy watching a good hockey game.

Across town lies a church.  It is an active church of 300 or so members.  These folk are members for lack of a better term are part of a group.  The fancy term for this group is “congregation”.  One thing these church members fail to recognize is that their group looks exclusive to those from the outside who want to join.  The church members didn’t mean to look exclusive, but any group quickly takes on that appearance to outsiders.  It doesn’t help that this active church has its own lingo to further exclude people.  The WHO is just one of a series of nicknames for the various committees that exist within the church.  WHO stands for the Wharncliffe Hospitality Organization.  Wharncliffe is in the name because that is the street that the church is on, and Wharncliffe is in the church’s name.  I’ll call this made up church Wharncliffe Episcopalian.  What it does WHO do?  It is the group that is called upon in emergency situations when the church is asked to host a reception for a funeral.  This is a group of ready volunteers who make sandwiches and squares for funerals.  But the church and the specific committee rarely says the full name of the organization and even if they did, it wouldn’t help newcomers learn what the people of the “WHO group” did.  The term WHO makes people feel ostracized where no intention to do that was deliberate.  The problem?  There are a host of groups with committee and subcommittee names all of which have cool acronyms … all of which make belonging (once you belong) sound cool, but all of which make newcomers feel estranged and this prevents newcomers from getting involved.  It would be an act of human kindness to name church committees for exactly what they do.  IE WHO should become “The Committee That Makes Sandwiches and Squares for Funerals.”  It’s a silly thought, but it is one related to human kindness.  Still, failure to consider that every introduced term, every kitschy idea or slogan estranges people from the group … something that is completely counter-productive to the Christian denomination which is supposed to help introduce people to Christianity.

What is lost in the bigger picture for the members of Wharncliffe Episcopalian is that for complete outsiders to even enter a church … where the people look like members of an exclusive club … it is hard enough to approach those doors and check out Christianity without there being odd terms that the group has created which makes them feel even more different and strange.  I remember once, hearing someone who had come to my church, one with all sorts of catchy acronyms for groups, that said that they had stared at our exterior doors for two years before they found the courage to enter.  Once they did that, they were very grateful for they found our church is one that is very friendly.

And what is lost in a picture even bigger than that is that if someone is considering exploring their spirituality, many no longer grow up knowing anything about Christianity.  So these folk don’t even know anything about Jesus and what he said.  They would have to learn how the Wharncliffe Episcopalians worship, how people of their denomination pray, why they hold the order of worship in the way they do theologically (yes there is a theological methodology as to how churches worship) etc.  They would have to learn all these things let alone come to learn it’s idiosyncrasies of the specific church what with all their “cool” committee acronyms.

Examples of groups of hockey fans or members of a church are one thing.  Schools and places of work do the same thing.  What we do to make the group members feel welcome and to make the group experience fun and relevant and interesting are the things we do that prevent other people from feeling comfortable in that group.  I’m recently leaving the University of Western Ontario as an undergraduate to attend Laurier University in their Master’s program.  It has struck me that all the things I knew about going to one school are useless for attending a different one.  All of the terms are different.  Universities have a tendency to reference their buildings by code numbers or initials.  So you might want to go to the philosophy department at S004 where the “S” stands for the first initial of the building where the department is located.  But if there are two buildings with names starting with the same letter, then new students/professors/office administrators won’t be able to find these buildings … even on maps that might be provided.  And the names of the buildings and the location of departments change faster than maps.  I attended one school where the map from the visitor’s centre was two years out of date.  So ironically the visitor’s welcome centre was handing out a map that would have led me to the wrong place.  How welcome would I have felt had I actually followed the map when I arrived at the wrong building with people looking at me saying, “What’s the matter with you?  This department hasn’t been here for two year?”

A lesson to be learned here is that groups adapt to the changes within their organization more readily than people outside of the group.  The members of the group have a grasp of much of the terminology of the group so when one thing is changed, they readily adapt.  But if support documents are not changed and web sites are not updated, these minor changes simply confuse those people that these groups are intending to serve.  If a retail store changes the return desk from one side of the store to the other, and I only return things once every five years, I, as a customer cannot be expected to know this.  Nor do I, as a customer, need to put up with “attitude” from employees who are members of the group who think I am foolish for not knowing this change of location took place five years ago.  Any group member who can accept that people outside of the group may not know what they as a group member already knows can act in a manner that promotes human kindness.

The trick then for groups to help reestablish human kindness towards people outside of the group is to:

• Examine all of the codes and acronyms of your organization to see where they are needlessly complicated and then to do something about streamlining those complications.
• Remember when names are chosen for committees and departments, don’t choose them because they are cool, but because they are “at least somewhat descriptive” of what they do such that anyone outside the organization can understand what the committee or department does.
• Remember the people you serve outside of the group/company/church/fan club will not know your lingo.  Have a sheet of unique terms readily available to help explain the language your group utilizes so that people outside the group aren’t made to feel silly or uncomfortable.
• Remember that whenever a name or group is changed or created that there is a host of other things that need to be updated like stationery, signage and web site pages and that a plan to update these aspects of your group/company/university/church need to have a concise timeline to ensure the changes are made.  If you cannot successfully budget for all of these changes, perhaps the name shouldn’t be created or changed in the first place.

These are just some of the considerations one needs to consider when one is a member of a group.  Remember: groups are always friendly internally: that’s why they exist in the first place.  But groups usually either want more external people to join them or they serve people outside of their group and when the group makes themselves look unfriendly towards external folk, lack of human kindness problems quickly ensue.