So far, one of the more enjoyable aspects of the training that I am nearly complete with has been the spirit of brotherhood among those of us on the team. Being the sort of person who is moderately quirky, I have always tried to lighten up frustrations with a hint of quirkiness and self-effacing humor. Last Monday, I had not known anyone at all on the team, and it did not take long until we were all on pretty friendly terms after spending days with each other, eating together and learning together. Some of the people, of course, who had come from UPS were more familiar with each other at the start and had a fair bit of cohesion, but it was remarkable for me to see that developing a bit of espirit de corps among our group of people with about half more established people and half strangers did not take long at all to develop, to the extent that we spoke about our personal lives and helped each other out through technical difficulties and the tasks of our training sessions.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the issue of cohesion. By and large, I have lived life in the grips of a dilemma of being someone who is gregarious and sociable and friendly and deeply concerned about other people but also frequently solitary and isolated. Like a pound puppy with an “adopt me” sign, I have often found a great deal of support from those who have wanted to help me feel comfortable and integrated in places, efforts which I greatly appreciate as it helps me to feel less anxious than I do by nature. In general, I am deeply interested in the sort of factors that tend to lead to cohesion both for myself personally and others as well as for larger groups that I may observe. And so, being the sort of analytical person that likes to share the fruits of my musings, I would like to ponder a little bit on the facets of social cohesion that I have seen.

Within my own particular work group, I have seen a great deal of social cohesion intentionally designed into the process. For one, the teams seemed to have been selected with a wide variety of skills and competence and experience, both among those who were existing UPS employees as well as those who were not. This wide variety allowed everyone to quickly find a comfortable niche without the feeling of competition against others. Additionally, it was made very clear that the whole group was a single team and there were smaller teams within that larger one–four of them in fact. The existence of common goals, a wide variety of niches, a high level of communication, as well as the thrill of being part of a small group with a very clear goal and task made it very easy for us to develop a sense of unit cohesion very quickly. Being a person who is, quite bluntly, not used to that level of cohesion, it was immensely enjoyable to see that cohesion develop so quickly, since it helps make me feel a lot more comfortable in my surroundings.

All too often in life, cohesion tends to come from common enemies on the other side of a line. Whether it is the cohesion of a Somali clan or a group of fans of a particular sports team, it is easy for people to unite in the presence of an enemy or rival. Such unity is limited to one’s boundaries, though, and any unity and cohesion built on this ground requires the existence of a conflict to provide external motivation and alignment of goals. Ultimately, conflict does not provide a beneficial means of unity, as it leads to permanent and unceasing difficulties and disunity on the larger scale. We see this sort of unity when we look at nationalism or factionalism, and all of us (myself included) have a great deal of experience in this area, whether we like it or not. Even when we know that this sort of unity is suboptimal, it is difficult to avoid acting in such a way that tends to exacerbate conflicts in order to find purpose and motivation in life.

It would appear, though, that for larger scale cohesion to exist, that it requires the existence of small enough groups and enough niches where people are not placed in competition with each other, but are rather placed in such a way as to solve a common problem or achieve a common solution, with everyone having their own honorable place in the greater scheme of things. As someone who is always trying to figure out the larger context and my place within it, and who is also concerned with questions of honor and dignity, I find that knowing the purpose of what I am doing and knowing that I am part of a larger team greatly increases my own enjoyment doing a particular task. As someone who tends to be pretty highly motivated to fill available niches and network with those around me, I find great enjoyment when I am able to find (the quicker the better) suitable positions within a larger population. Hopefully such experiences can provide lasting opportunities for growth and improvement along with a comfortable and settled place that allows me to find some sense of security and peace.