Why naive, why vulnerable? Because a) we as humans have many tough, important decisions ahead of us. And b) we can generally make better decisions the more accurate and relevant information we have access to. I imagine most would agree with these two principles.
First, on accuracy: For me naivety is what makes it possible for us to see the “raw” information, without strong prior assumptions and meaning-making filters of the world. It’s how children function. It’s why they keep asking these annoying and at times uncomfortable questions. Becoming more naive is a way for me to see information again as plain information again and not as color-updates to finished stories. But wait, you might say, being naive is dangerous, why not call it “humble”?! I’ve thought about that, too, and I’ll say more on it in a bit.
Then, on relevance: For me vulnerability is what makes it possible for us to get access to the so often hidden, but essential information about life: our feelings and needs, or whatever we would like to call the reasons underneath all the things we want to do or see others do. I see so much of our micro and macro decision-making to only happen on the layer of the what-we-want-to-do, and way too rarely touch into the more vulnerable layers of what’s underneath, of what it is that actually matters to us. And I strongly believe to be able to make any of the vital yet difficult decisions we need to have this kind of information on the table, now more than ever.
Back to naivety and why I don’t want to refer to it as humility: There are a few layers to it. First, I believe many consider “humility” already a value they orient to, so I want something that is a little more provocative. This is just about the framing. Then, more deeply, in the cultural shift I want to see happening I actually want us to be able to become new WEs, at least for the moments of making vital decisions, and even across vast differences. We have been living for so long in our individual stories, separate from each other, that when I say I am humble, I’m making an assumption that I can know what I don’t know. But the way I want us to hold this, is that when we truly come together after having been apart for a very long time, we actually start from scratch and we need to figure out again what is true, what we actually know and also what we don’t know. So by coming together, vulnerably and without prior assumptions, we do become again naive together. To loosely quote Miki [1] here with whom I’ve worked closely over the last few years: “We can only know what we know together”. And to use statistics terminology, I want us to first massively widen our “confidence interval” and then, together with others, narrow it down again.
[1] Miki Kashtan, seeder of the NGL Community and primary source of the NGL Framework