the timboucher experience

I count myself very lucky to have such excellent people reading my work and interacting with me on a daily basis. I’m continually bombarded with new ideas, fresh perspectives and observations that are fucking brilliant as hell. Today’s award goes to Carlos for his comments on my post about occultists and Christians. His entire piece is worth reading, but this line struck me like a bolt out of the blue:

there are less differences between groups than within groups.

That’s a stroke of brilliance, Carlos. It makes me realize that in order for a “group” to even exist, we must have a group dynamic: You’re the loudmouth; You’re the quiet sensitive guy, You’re the bossy girl; You’re the devilish ladies man… It’s almost as if we’re starting up a boy band and we are simply required to divvy up the roles. It’s like we MUST have all these segments interacting to constitute a fully fledged group. The way that the group exists and develops is through the dynamic of ALL the people inside the group. It can’t only come from (what you think are) the favorable members of the group. The neighborhood “troll” has as important a function as anybody else! In order for it to be anything near full or real, it’s got to allow for the expression and activation of all the pieces of the dynamic. And since it’s a dynamic it has to allow for change or else it goes nowhere. We don’t all have to stay in the same roles the whole time either, and maybe we shouldn’t.

It strikes me though that a lot of people who are trying to start spiritual (or other) groups do so thinking that they can make the “perfect group”. The perfect group would only consist of probably one or two segments out of all the possible ones. They simply think they can eliminate all the messiness and problems of a group dynamic, and still reap all the benefits of functioning as a group. And guess what - they always fail. Somebody not quite up to snuff always manages to weasle their way in and starts trouble. But this is good. This is how groups change and progress.

Carlos’ comment also suggested that there is a bigger difference inside groups than in between groups. That’s because all groups have the same basic roles or elements in them. One of us might be playing the same role as somebody in a Christian, Islamic, Republican, or Zapatista group. Oftentimes when we try to compare our group to other groups, we’ll ignore that everybody faces the same challenges as a group. And we’ll try to grab onto some of the unfavorable elements in other groups and characterize the whole according to that. When what we could be doing instead is comparing notes about how groups work, how to face challenges that come up within a community and strategies for growth and evolution.

Thanks again Carlos. This is an excellent piece of the puzzle that I’ve been looking for without knowing what it was!

• The 8 Dynamics of Scientology
• Archetypes in Systems Dynamics
• The Developmental Conspiracy
• Ken Wilber Critique, Part 1
• Illusion of Control In Emergent Systems