“Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness.”
– Dr. Martin Luther King
In the movie Groundhog Day, Bill Murray plays a TV weatherman who travels to a small town and gets stuck there in a snowstorm. He goes to bed and the next morning he wakes up to the same day and has to live it again…then it happens again. Scene after scene you see how the day goes when he has a grouchy cynical attitude and how that day goes as his character starts to change to become less selfish – finding ways to help others, appreciate the people he works with, and eventually falls in love. It’s a great illustration of how much latitude we have at any moment or in any situation to show up differently and how quickly that can generate different outcomes.
Today, on Martin Luther King Day, I’ve been reflecting on King’s quote about the need to “develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness.” One of our challenges is that we are trying to create a new culture based in the values of equity, health, balance, resilience…yet working to make these changes within the structure of a capitalist economy and within organizations and institutions that are rooted in values of competition, scarcity, greed, and self-interest. So many influences encourage us to be selfish and self-focused in our individualistic society – “build your brand” – “look out for #1” – “what’s in it for me?” – “get noticed.”
We can choose to do the opposite, like Bill Murray’s character. Even though conventional wisdom says we should “get what’s ours” we can choose to be unselfish – to share, be generous, open the door for others, give the floor, and listen rather than talk. It would be a lot easier if our organizations and ways of working cultivated this ethic of generous exchange, reciprocity, and collaboration. The good news is that this shift is well underway, if we have the eyes to see it.
New models are rising up in a self-organizing way. As Buckminster Fuller says” “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
We spend a lot of time and energy and certainly devote most of our media attention to critique or fix current models. I was in a dialogue recently with people from many countries all envisioning how we can evolve these economic systems and institutions that are not generating outcomes we want and that feel so stuck. An image emerged of an underlying flow or exchange and on top of it these are calcified institutions and structures that we devote our efforts to trying to reform/resist, “prop up,” fix, or perpetuate. As I consider the innovative work underway in the networks I see and examples in the sharing economy video, I’m inspired to put my energies into the new models that will eventually make the selfish old ways obsolete.
To quote King again: “We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.”
For a culture that focuses so much on the individual, I see why King chose to remind us that this network is “inescapable.” As we honor him on this day, may we all find ways, small and big, to practice a “dangerous unselfishness” and contribute to the creation of ever expanding networks of mutuality, of generous exchange and collaboration across the earth.