The Doctrine of Innocence

Описание: We all believe in innocence and fairness. Studies show that even as toddlers we have an intuitive grasp of these principles. We hold them so dear that they colour our perceptions of reality and our own behaviour. And, often, this is not a good thing... #JediReflections


Transcript:

Hello there.
It is a beautiful sunny, central London morning here.
You will hear the sounds of London waking up.
And it sounds like somebody in my courtyard here is, I don't know, spreading all their cutlery out on the floor? I don't know.

My book The Promises of Giants is out on the 22nd of July.
I hope you'll buy it. I hope that we can continue this conversation about leadership.

I'm not going to talk about a particular chapter today but what I do want to talk about is a concept that is woven into and through the book.
And it's about innocence and fairness.

Human beings have a inbuilt need to feel innocent and fair.

And as I say that that seems perfectly reasonable.
It seems like what could possibly be a negative consequence of that?
But there are so many!

The compulsion to feel innocent and fair drives a license for cognitive dissonance.
A demand that we reframe the world in a way that most suits us.
That we put filters on reality to allow us to come off in the best possible light.

When I say innocent, what I mean is the need to be blameless for the pain of others.
The need to know that it is not my actions, or indeed my decision not to act, that has caused harm to another.

By fair, I mean people want to know, they need to know, they must know that they have achieved in this world, and it's an absolute meritocracy, therefore every achievement that they've achieved has been because of their brilliance, their work, their industry. And anybody else's failure is due to their lack of that.

And if you're a person who has fallen short at some point, the fairness doctrine means that you need to know that you only failed because someone else did something they shouldn't have.

Innocent and fair.

It's killing us.

It is damaging us as a society.

You hear it in the language around women, for example.
You hear people talk about violence against women as if they're walking down the street and some magical, invisible entity attacks them.

If you're listening to this and the moment I say "men attack women", you think "not all men", this is part of that narrative of innocence and fairness.

You hear it in the conversations that we've had this past week about violence at football stadiums, vile bigotry online, this idea that "it's not me; it's them".

You see it in people as you walk on the street and you walk past a rough sleeper and we avert our eyes. We don't look at them.
Because looking at someone on the street threatens the idea that innocence and fairness might not prevail.
Perhaps we are part of a system that allows for perfectly decent people to end up on the street.
Instead we look at rough sleepers and we say: "Well I can't give them any money, they'll use it for drugs, right?"
Or we look at rough sleepers and we imagine they've deserved it, because otherwise, in this world that is so fair, how could they end up on the street?

Innocence and fairness is hurting us as doctrine.
It hurts us because we imagine something that we should aspire to as already a reality.

Think about your approach to this world.
How is your need to feel innocent and fair impacting the way you view reality?