These two sides have more in common than they think.

When I first started in banking, I expected to find a collection of ruthless mercenaries desperate to squeeze every last drop of profit out of whomever they could exploit.  Instead, I discovered a group of surprisingly compassionate human beings – as overwhelmed by global problems as anyone – who found engagement, passion and purpose in their work.  They were thankful for their good fortune to have uncovered a career that they enjoyed so much that still provided security for their families (and for more than you’d think, an opportunity to give charitably). And they took pride in their place within an economic system they believe has provided the greatest amount to the greatest number of people in the history of civilisation.

Their qualities were unmistakably human. Moreover, the qualities of competitiveness, ingenuity, passion and dedication that I came to admire in my work colleagues started to look a lot like the qualities I admired among my growing set of development role models. Increasingly, the differences between worlds looked less and less ideological and more and more like a comparatively superficial disagreement on the best methods to realise the same desired outcomes.

With so much the same, time to reflect has left me with the sense that what differentiates us is little more than the random walk of our personal histories.  Through an innumerable collection of moments, events and people in our lives we have each come to believe what we believe and seek what we seek.  Certain behaviours and aspirations are reinforced while others are discouraged over the course of millions upon millions of interactions with other individuals, groups and environments.  While we retain the idea that we are consciously in control of who we are, it is the momentum of the emergent patterns of our history that have played the greatest role in leading us to our values, our passions and our careers.

While I do not believe that the reality of how we got here ever absolves an individual of responsibility for their actions, it is a powerful teacher in explaining the dissonance of bankers who inexplicably seem to behave like human beings.

The individuals who I worked with are not separated from their humanity any more than the UN worker on the ground in Haiti may be. They have merely travelled a different course to this point in their lives. While one parent may have stressed the virtue of sacrifice in service, another may have insisted that you cannot help the materially weak without starting from a position of strength. While one may have had the money to travel to the Cambodia after finishing university, another may have needed to start work straight away. While one may have had a passionate 7^th grade Social Studies teacher, the other may have found a compelling 11^th grade Economics teacher of their own. My futile list of contrived contrasts does little justice to the complex network of influences at play except to allude to the idea that one value or career choice is no more human than another.

OK, so we disagree on the optimal structure of organisation for capital, material resources and human energy. We disagree on how the decisions on such matters should even be made, let alone what they might be. Indeed, we likely disagree on much more. But, crucially, these differences are small compared to what have in common. Every human being still conceptualises collective problems along the same dimensions of incentive, empathy and hope. And in that common language of understanding there is a framework for solutions, awaiting the coherent, collective application of competitiveness, ingenuity, passion and dedication for their release.

Every individual is an agent of change provided that change is conceived in a way that acknowledges the dualism of our common experience. While we all walk the same conceptual road, our experience of the path is superficially very different. That duality of similarity and difference, on most days, may appear to be a worst-of-both-worlds bargain – we live in a reality where our fates are interlinked but we can agree on nothing. But on our best days? Our common humanity binds together the only collection of agents with the diversity of knowledge, capability and experience to meet our greatest collective challenges.  All of us.