Abraham Lincoln and His Team of Rivals: What Did They Teach Us?
We can turn to a somewhat more recent example of someone who preserved (or actually established) relationships in the midst of major differences of perspective and practice. This exemplar was Abraham Lincoln. Though admittedly he was leading American more than 150 years ago, the lessons he taught us are particularly important because they concern a gap that is particularly difficult to cross. This is the divide between Left and Right political perspectives and priorities—a divide that not only exists in mid-21st Century America but is particularly wide and filled with mutual distrust and even hatred.
Valuing Mutations
Lincoln seemed to have crossed this divide by inviting (even requiring) his colleagues from the other side of the divide to create new perspectives and practices on behalf of a shared goal: winning the war (Kearns Goodwin, 2005). In the second essay I prepared for this series (Bergquist, 2023b) I brought in several concepts from evolutionary biology as a way to make sense of the adaptive role played by new ideas (and new ways of governing in the case of Lincoln and his cabinet of rivals. While most new ideas are dead on arrival—because they are not very good or because they are ahead of their time (or behind times)—there are a few (mutations) that offer a fresh approach to an existing issue. This issue is typically not a readily solved puzzle—rather it is a multidimensional problem, opposing perspective-filled dilemma or completely complex “mess.”
As Thomas Kuhn (2012) noted in his widely cited (and often misused) concept of “paradigmatic revolutions”, there are always existing issues (problems, dilemmas, messes) that can not be readily solved inside the existing, dominant school of thought (paradigm). Kuhn identifies these as “anomalies” A new approach must be taken to solve the presenting anomaly—and subsequently to successfully solve many other related anomalies, as well as other pervasive and elusive issues. While most of the alternative approaches are of little use, there is one approach (mutation) that does a good job with the anomaly. Based on this success, a new, dominant paradigm is installed (paradigmatic revolution) that builds on this specific approach—only to be replaced at some point in the future by another school of thought (paradigm).
Though Kuhn’s analysis is itself based on a paradigm regarding historical analysis that could be replaced by a new paradigm, we can tentatively accept his analysis as well as the evolutionary biologists’ description of mutations–and trace out the implications of these perspectives for our understanding of the way Lincoln used differences (competing mutations) to achieve success. Specifically, there seems to be some value in promoting a diversity of ideas when seeking not only to get at the “truth” of a specific situation (Gergen and Gergen, 2004), but also to generate the best (and most creative) solution to the issue being addressed (Page, 2011). As I noted in the second essay (Bergquist, 2023b), collective IQ seems to increase when any group values differences.
Abraham Lincoln exemplified the valuing of differences and shows how diversity can lead to successful guidance when faced with a profoundly challenging issue (conducting a civil war). Thus, there is a first lesson to be learned from Abraham Lincoln and his team of rivals: be sure to appreciate and protect diversity of perspective and practice. As I noted earlier regarding the use of spectrum analysis, we might find a kernel of truth and seed of a good idea in everything (all mutations) that is offered.
