tl;dr: when we see a similar foundation with another, trust is built.
I’ve been working my way through Adam Grant’s book, Think Again, which is designed to teach us each how to challenge our assumptions.
In Chapter 6, he explores the deep-seated feelings of antipathy that fans of the Boston Red Sox have for the New York Yankees and vice versa. He extends this to other famous sports (and political) rivalries.
The chapter, however, begins with a story of an African-American man having a conversation with a KKK leader and ends with the same person renouncing his KKK membership.
Grant explores the various possible ways that each of us can
- recognize the stereotypes we have made of others
- challenge the accuracy of those stereotypes
- look for areas of commonality
The first way that Grant brings up is based on the idea that “if you find areas of common ground, you are more likely to change your stereotypes.”
The story he tells is of astronauts who, when they return to Earth, are “less focused on individual achievements and personal happiness, and more concerned about the collective good.”
The reason for this, Grant explains, is something known as the Overview Effect.
As Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell observed,
“From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, “Look at that you son of a b*tch.”
This was a perspective repeated by commander Jeff Ashby who said
“You can easily from space see the connection between someone on one side of the planet to someone on the other–and there are no borders evident. So it appears as just this one common layer that we all exist in.”
This idea of a “common layer” triggered by blockchain neurons. A blockchain is supposed to be a borderless, 24/7, accessible to everyone layer of truth.
And it made me reconnect with that idea as the ultimate promise of the technology.
Imagine one common layer that we all exist in when it comes to ownership of assets, historical records, and transaction information.
We’ll quickly see how interconnected and interdependent we all are.
It will give us the Overview Effect on how everything we do is connected to everything that everyone else does…..and we won’t have to leave space to get it.
That could be really powerful and transformative.
