Day 108 in MIT Sloan Fellows Class 2023, Choice point "An enemy of people"
Overview of Play
An Enemy of the People (original Norwegian title: En folkefiende), an 1882 play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, followed his previous play, Ghosts, which criticized the hypocrisy of his society's moral code.An Enemy of the People (original Norwegian title: En folkefiende), an 1882 play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, followed his previous play, Ghosts, which criticized the hypocrisy of his society's moral code.(Wikipedia)
Discussions in the class
- Initial impressions and motivations of each character
- Role-playing of a challenging discussion between Peter and Stocksmann
- How people changed their stances
- How could people behave differently to have a better consequence
My key takeaways
- Ego made people crazy and interrupt necessary collaborations
- Beautiful contrast between Peter and Thomas highlights real-world problem
- Science vs Politics
- Theory vs Execution
- Idealist vs Pragmatist
- Long-term vs Short-term
- And each other with family and business relationships easily despise each other and identify each other as enemies.
- Emotion and relationship really matter to the conversation. And they make the conversation more complicated. No one can be independent of those irrationalities.
- Important questions
- How can we avoid the point of no-return such as a conflict in the play?
- How can we admit our vulnerabilities and biases to proactively listen to others?
- How can we avoid reacting emotionally and prevent a polarized situation?
Real-world application
We have very similar polarized situations in the real-world.
For instance,
- Populism
- Environmental problems(Corona)
- Feminism
- COVID
If everyone stops listening and start justifying themselves, it is impossible to collaborate.
