Dualism and Serenity
Even with the potential assistance provided by Essential lenses, it is necessary for us to recognize that operating in the “real” world is never easy. The application of an Essential Lens requires slow and reflective thinking, appreciative feelings, and tolerance of that which remains volatile and uncertain. As I shall observe in the next essay, challenging conditions of complex, ambiguous, turbulent and filled contradiction also must be addressed in a VUCA-Plus environment. Some people clearly find it much easier to live their life in the wonderland of Serenity. They prefer finding Serenity in a distorted wonderland rather than finding what is Essential in a VUCA-Plus world. As described by William Perry (1998), those people living in Serenity see the world in black/white, good/bad, right/wrong terms.
Perry uses the term Dualist when describing the world in which these people choose to live. Seeking out Serenity, these members of our society are inclined to accept the expertise of someone who is in authority and offers simple solutions to complex issues (problems, messes, dilemmas and polarities) These “experts” are luring the dualists down the rabbit hole to Serenity. Facts offered by an authority figure are accepted uncritically and without hesitation by those seeking Serenity—for the authority is right, good and strong when we are dwelling in a wonderland of Serenity.
Elizabeth Kolbert (2022) recently wrote about this pull toward Dualism when reflecting back on a famous social psychological study. The Robbers Cave studies of the 1950s provided a compelling narrative of how two group of boys at a summer camp readily polarized and assigned good/bad labels to one another. Kolbert suggests that we might be conducting a comparable “real life” experiment today as we Americans divide not into the Boy’s Camp Rattlers and Eagles—but instead into red Elephants (Republicans) and blue Donkeys (Democrats).
Given that we are a bit older than the boys at camp, we can do much more harm to one another than could the boys—especially if we are living in a wonderland of Serenity. Kolbert proposes that this dualism is particularly seductive for adults—for dualims “flattens, distorts, reduces character to symptom, and in turn, instructs and insists upon its moral authority.” She goes on to note that “the solace of its simplicity comes at no little cost. It disregards what we know and asks that we forfeit, too—forget about the pleasures of not knowing.” (Kolbert, 2022).
Relativism and Reality
What about this “pleasures of not knowing”? These pleasures seem to align with the concept of curiosity that I have associated in this essay with the transformation of uncertainty into clarity and curiosity. Furthermore, in reading Kolbert’s account, William Perry would suggest that the pleasures of not knowing belong to those people whom Perry calls the Relativists. These are members of our society who take on the challenge of freely viewing an uncertain world. They are open to the idea that there are relative truths, relative goods and relative bads—and even relatively trustworthy or untrustworthy authorities.
