Cooperation

What we need to do is learn to work in the system, by which I mean
that everybody, every team, every platform, every division, every
component is there not for competitive profit or recognition, but for
contribution to the system as a whole on a win-win basis.

W. Edwards Deming


We've got it wrong in our country--dreadfully wrong.  We've devolved into a society that focuses on separation and competition rather than cooperation, and we're paying a very heavy price for that.  We've lost the respect for other people's positions and opinions, and we no longer ask someone who disagrees with us for their opinions of advice, and we suffer because of it.  Sometimes, the very thing we need to improve dramatically is input from someone who doesn't agree with us, for their perspective is very different from ours--and there's a very good chance that they see something that we don't.  All of us have a limited perspective, and if we choose to respect input from only those people who agree with us, we're keeping ourselves down for good.  If we can't see the bigger pictures in life, we function in very limited ways.

We're not here to compete with each other--we're here to cooperate with each other.  We're not here to judge and insult people who disagree with us--we're here to learn from them.  Until we learn how to cooperate, especially with those whose positions are different from ours, we're merely limited little creatures who are trying so hard to maintain and defend our version of reality that we lose sight of the fact that the world is much bigger than we are, that there are different perspectives everywhere we look--and they could be very valuable to us as we try to improve our lives and the lives of those we love.  Because we ignore them, though, they're like picnic baskets that are full of wonderful food--but that we never open because we don't like its color or its shape.