In case you’ve been in a coma for 24 hours, we had a little “incident” here in Vancouver last night. It turns out the local sports team was unable to get more points than the visiting team, so people set cars on fire and started looting – as one does when you feel disappointed.

Of course, Vancouver is trying to make sense of it this morning. Online and in coffee shops, people are asking questions. Why did it happen? Who is to blame? Who are these people? Where did they come from? As someone put it on Facebook: is this who we are?

It’s a good question, but we need to refocus the lens to get an accurate answer. There is this tendency to look at one dramatic example and then try to assume that this is who we are really. At the root. At the core. And, unfortunately, it’s often the negative examples that get our attention.
But if the rioters give us a window into human nature, so do the peaceful protesters of Egypt who brought down decades of oppression through collective action. We are both the people marching in Selma and the police who set the dogs on them.

The right answer to the question “who are we” is actually pretty simple: we are potential.
Humans have a long and rich history of both inspiring nobility and horrifying savagery. And often, it’s the very same people acting in both ways. Germany in the 1920s was considered one of the most progressive and civilized cultures in the world. Less than two decades later, the same country sank into a barbarism that still staggers the imagination. The same city that burst into flames over a stupid hockey game last night was a gracious host to the world a year ago.

The more important question isn’t who we are, but who do we want to be. I’m betting most of us want to see more of the noble, the enlightened, the loving, the inspiring. And so did our grandparents, and their grandparents, and their grandparents before them.

So, if the vast majority of us want the best, why does it seem to go wrong so often? I think we make two fundamental mistakes: 1) we ignore the laws of inertia and 2) we believe the illusion of separation.

The laws of momentum and inertia apply to the social world just as strongly as they apply to the physical one. A habit in motion remains in motion. And the reality we experience today is the product of generations. That doesn’t mean we are trapped in history – it just means that we are part of the flow. It’s not going to change overnight, but it is going to change.

Consistent choices turn into habits, habits turn into ways of being, and ways of being create a new reality. So, it starts with choices – with little acts of will. But to have an impact, we need to develop the disciplines and supports to keep the choices going. Habit energy is extremely powerful. To change those habits, we need some powerful tools.

And that’s where the illusion of separation is a killer. The most important fact that most people forget: humans are social animals. Everything about us, from our DNA to our freakishly large brainpans, is designed for us to work together. We see this potential released in a mob, but that same potential is there for good as well. It’s the same energy – the question is how are we going to use it. And yet most of us fail to use the single most powerful tool in the kit – social support and deep social connection – to make the kinds of changes in our lives and in our world that we want to see.

The Vancouver riots can be read in two very different ways. You can choose to cluck your tongue at the hooligans smashing windows and burning cars (letting yourself be demoralized and justifying your inactivity) or you can focus on how the community is responding. We can dedicate ourselves to learning all we can about primary social technology – not Facebook or Twitter, but rather the ways we can come together to unleash the positive potential we all have.

Even as I am writing this, a spontaneously created Facebook group has organized a clean-up of downtown. At this point, over 17,000 people are attending the event and the streets downtown are filled with thousands of people doing good.

“Who we are” are is just potential. Who we want to be – which potential we choose – is the real question.

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