Insularity Breeds Contempt
There’s an old saying (isn’t there one for everything?): “Familiarity breeds contempt.” If you are not familiar (pun intended) with this cliché, it means that the longer you are around someone or something, the higher the odds that you will begin to hate it.
In popular art, excellent examples of this are the black comedy “The War of the Roses” starring Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas, or “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”. Yes, dear audience, if you are familiar with these films then you realize they are both about failing marriages.
The interesting thing about marriages is that they all have something in common: they are insular relationships. Two people get married and decide to build a life together. These relationships are entered into with excitement and love and hope in the future. The two people rely on each other at the exclusion of others in most cases, and it is usually the inclusion of a third (or fourth) party that leads to destruction. Why? Because the insulation of the situation is broken with something new.
Insularity – which may or may not be a real word – walks hand in hand with familiarity. We all know another old saying: “That’s the way we’ve always done it.” When that mindset takes hold, we stop questioning and do what we are told without really thinking it through any longer. We become insulated from the outside world of different ideas when we join an insular organization. New ideas and outspoken individuals are seen as the enemy, which they are, because they threaten not only the status quo but the power positions and economic constructs of those benefitting from the system.
Insulation from outside influences is usually the death knell of most organizations. They may limp along for years, congratulating themselves for maintaining their system, but then they will begin wondering why they don’t grow or change. They will continue going to the same people over and over again for the same tired ideas that, for some shocking reason, still don’t work.
As insulation within an organization solidifies and takes hold, cliques become increasingly dominant, and exclusion increases. Those who disagree with the ruling groups are shown the door and sent the clear message they are not welcome to participate (but do please keep paying your dues). But there will be no questioning of the Way Things Are Done.
As someone who has been in the nonprofit management profession for over 30 years, I am astounded at how little things have changed in three decades, but what is more astonishing is what we are willing to accept without question. As Shakespeare said, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
The question is why are things staying the same? And why do we accept “the way things are?” Insularity breeds contempt for new ideas or ways of doing things, which is why I think we get stuck in ruts. But for things to truly be different we need to stop doing what “we’ve always done” and embrace an alternative. As American poet Robert Frost wrote in his poem, “The Road Not Taken”:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.