Behind the Book
The themes of this book were presented in the form of the Livingood Lecture at the plenary session of the 2006 American Academy of Dermatology meeting. Thousands of dermatologists were in attendance. Two other lecturers presented as well. The academy collected feedback from the attendees. The three lectures were all well received. The Livingood Lecture received the highest score of all. Eighty-seven percent of the survey respondents considered the lecture outstanding. Several people offered written comment on the lecture. One said the talk was thought provoking and worthwhile, another that it was timely and appropriate, and yet another that the talk was superb. One even said the talk was tremendous and that “I have never had my mind stretched like that in such a short period of time.” It was encouraging that after the lecture several people spoke to me saying how important it was to say these things. One dermatologist said that he and another dermatologist noted that all the political issues in dermatology that were talked about at the meeting were all issues that depended on one’s context and perception.
The positive feedback wasn’t exactly unanimous. The Livingood Lecture was the only one of the three plenary lectures to receive a score of zero on any of the surveys, which it did from three survey respondents. One commented that the talk was terrible and inappropriate, another that it was a disgrace and an embarrassment. A few people approached me weeks later to say that the lecture was a travesty and an insult to Dr. Livingood’s name.
One thing was clear, all these dermatologists, the ones who loved the lecture and the ones who hated it, attended the same lecture. Objectively, they all saw and heard the same thing. Yet their perceptions of the lecture were diametrically opposite. That was one of the central themes of the lecture: people can look at one objective reality and, based on the context they bring to it, perceive totally different things.
Compartments starts by asking the question, is there an evil power underlying conflict in the world? And depending on how you look at it (and after reading this book you probably realize that “depending on how you look at it” isn’t to be taken lightly), the answer is yes. The evil power is misunderstanding. Misunderstanding is built into the way our world is organized and structured. The compartments in which the world is organized are a feeding ground for misunderstandings that result in conflict. A world full of good people can still be a world troubled by conflict.
When we look at the conflicts in our own lives and in the world around us, we should ask ourselves if we really understand how others see things. Are there things that we are missing, things we aren’t seeing that could explain the conflict? Are the things we are seeing representative, or are we just noticing a sample that doesn’t accurately reflect the whole? Is it possible that the reason we saw something was because it wasn’t representative of the norm? Finally, what we perceive as real, as true, as fact, depends on our context. We should ask, “What is the objective reality?” and we should ask whether others have reason to perceive it differently than we do. Where we stand depends on where we sit.
When we do these things, we may find that we have a lot in common with those we previously thought were our enemy. We may find that others are no more evil than we are. We may find ways to work more productively toward shared goals. We may even find a path to greater peace for ourselves and our children.