Why CAN’T We All Get Along?
By: Laura Musikanski
Tags: Systems Change, Happiness, Social Change, Wellbeing, Metrics

It is 1992 and Rodney King ask Can we all get along? in the face of riots protesting police getting away with his brutal, unjust, unfair and horrifying beating (warning; that link is very upsetting). He asked from his heart. He asked because he cared. He demonstrated everything that is good about humanity.

It was a historic moment.

We let it pass by.

How many times in your mind or heart have you used these words to trivialize, denigrate or satirize? How many times have you heard them disingenuously used by others? Johnathan Haidt begins his book The Righteous Mind with a similar contemplation. Why has such a profound statement become an abused and abusive meme? I ask you to deeply, honestly and without out shaming yourself or others to contemplate this question.

A few memes from a search engine for Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?

I believe the reason that individually and collectively we missed the opportunity to change our course when Rodney King spoke was — and still is- our assumptions, beliefs and values. These assumptions give rise to institutional racism. These beliefs speak to disempowerment and societal learned helplessness. These values are the basis for our economic, social, governmental and personal systems that put profit over caring for each other (people); economic growth today over our survival in the future (sustainability; and greed over generosity and generatively (7 generations approach).

In a different society, when Rodney King asked Can we all get along? we would have risen up, organized and acted in a riot of love and compassion, seeking out ways to mend the lives of all who had suffered from such systematic abuse. The momentum in the police force that gave rise to Rodney’s beating and untold corruption, brutality and horror inflicted on others would have been stopped in its tracks, replaced with a new model of policing based on peace keeping and compassion for all beings. We would have done this because when we did it, we would be deemed successful in the eyes of others and in our own hearts, just as today we are deemed successful if we have high incomes, great financial wealth, and are beautiful or powerful.

Income, wealth, beauty, power: These are our values today. These are also the metrics we decided to use for our success — well, actually, the government decided.Until a combination of two events: the Great Depression + Post WWII Bretton Woods, governments were not using economic goals or metrics to guide policy or measure the success of a nation. Simon Kuznets introduced what is today called Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to the US Congress during the Great Depression. Seeing it in use, he also gave a cautionary quote:

The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income.

WWII ended and the leaders of nations came together for the Bretton Woods Agreement to mend the damage of the war through economic stability. GDP, the sum of all goods and services produced in a year, became the metric of success. Economic growth became the king. Clear measures and clear goals birthed clear values.

Scientific findings demonstrate the connection between what a government measures and what the people (and society value). What the government measures decide what people (societally) value. We make our decisions and take actions based on our values. Our beliefs and assumptions, which seem so convincing and which many of us are willing (and do) fight to keep and not change, are formed based on our values. We value financial prosperity, good looks, and influential powers, and we believe that these things are more important than taking care of others and our environment, being loving, sharing, and taking time for self-reflection, sleep and leisure. We feel like a failure or a rebel if we choose a different path.

We forget that it was not always like this. We forget that we have a choice.

Why can’t we all get along?

Because caring, compassion, sharing, giving and love not our metrics for success. Because getting along is not one of our values. But they can be. Shifting values can happen. It happens with a choice about what our metric for success is. We can choose a different metric to guide our nations — a metric that measures our well-being, our happiness, our ecological sustainability. These metrics exist. They are already being used by some governments, and a growing number of communities.

How do we start? At home, now. First by learning about how happiness is being measured, then by doing, then by spreading the word. Take the Happiness Index and get your own experience of measuring happiness. Ask yourself what your life would look like if your society used these metrics, or ones like them, to guide your life.

Learn about other metrics, like Raine Eisler’s Social Wealth Index, Lord Gus O’Donnel’s Legatum Prosperity Index, Sabrina Alkire’s Oxford Poverty Index, and lots of others (& watch the vid below for some and an overview of the happiness movement).

And while you learn, ask yourself: What’s it going to take to expand our metrics, and so expand our hearts and our chance for the a good life for all now and in the future?