Tag Archives: intuition
individual integrity in a group
August 6th, 2008. Published under reflection. Comments.
It’s an interesting question about how to maintain my individual integrity within the context of a larger group. How do I keep my own sense of self while keeping commitments to a group of people I’m working with?
Whether it’s at work or on an athletic team or a group that has come together for a common purpose, I think it’s critical that each individual remains in touch with who and what they are and not let the group’s desires overtake the preciousness of each person within the group. I thought I had seen and been able to tell the difference between a group and a team. I’ve generally avoided groups because of the tendency to become an echo chamber and devolve into groupthink. When people are working together for a common purpose, though, the sense of team can arise and great things can be accomplished.
There’s no I in team, right? There’s a U group, though I think the silly semantic saying has it got it backwards. A team has a whole host of I’s in it. The individual excellence of each person while simultaneously working together has tremendous and life-changing power. When the power of an individual, though, is subsumed into the machinations of group desires you run into dirty waters indeed.
A collection of centers
Christopher Alexander has written some amazing books around the art and practice of building structures, neighborhoods, townships, cities. Once key idea in his Nature of Order is that spaces are considered alive when they’re designed as a collection of centers. And, that people working together function best when everyone is their own center within the network.
It’s a paradox. At once the individual is exalted in oneself and at the same it secondary to the actions of the group. And, where is that balance so that neither the individual nor the group is harmed and both find energy in each other? It ebbs and flows for sure. It’s not a constant equality to be balanced… instead intuition must be at the heart of each person’s decisions.
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