We’re just a few days away from the US presidential election, and both parties and media are spending their time demonizing each other and their respective supporters. The left blames the right, and the right blames the left. It is the symptom of a highly divided country and a deeply polarized political and media system.

You may have your own strong opinion regarding which US presidential candidate is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. There has probably been no other US president in history than Donald Trump that has generated such a strong emotional response both domestically and internationally. But regardless of your opinion and judgement, both candidates have something in common: they have chosen to go down the same path of declaring themselves the owners of what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. They have dared to use terms like ‘we’ and ‘us’ when speaking of their own opinions and realities, and projected this onto a country of more than 320 million different people.

‘Right’ and ‘wrong’ have been a part of politics and daily life since the start of time. We make choices every day where we decide for ourselves what is right and wrong. Whether it is a simple decision like which toilet paper to buy, or a more complicated decision like which job or relationship is right for us, right and wrong are an intimate part of our personal lives. Where right and wrong take a bad turn is when they veer out of our personal lives and crash into public life. What’s right for you is not necessarily right for me, and what’s wrong for me might be the best thing that ever happened to you.

We’ve been through many different periods of right and wrong in public life throughout history. Over the last 2,000 years we’ve been through periods of naked power plays (tribes), religious wars, hereditary struggles (monarchies), and most recently nation states based loosely along cultural (and sometimes religious) lines – and the United States is no exception to this. The US was founded first on a naked power grab where businessmen and colonists killed the native inhabitants of the Americas and stole their lands. Later this was infused with religious refugees from Europe who saw America as god’s gift to their cause. And finally the US declared independence as a nation state based on a set of cultural and religious norms (shared by a minority of power holders who were eligible to vote it should be noted). In this sense, nothing much has changed if we only focus on the two US presidential candidates and their strong supporters in the US media.

But right and wrong in the public domain is a political approach that no longer works in our globalized and interconnected world. The current Covid-19 pandemic is a good example: a country that mandates wearing masks is not ‘right’, and a country that doesn’t isn’t heartless, cruel, and selfish. Both approaches are more than likely (and hopefully) based on larger concerns such as public health and economic safety. Some countries are in a privileged position where they have strong social safety nets and public services, and have serviced-based industries that are more suited to remote working. Other countries have to find solutions that work for them where public services and health systems are very basic, and many people depend on daily wages to survive. In all of these cases, comparing a ‘right’ solution to a ‘wrong’ solution, and calling the supporters of these solutions ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ is completely useless, divisive, and only distracts us from the ultimate goals of these solutions: protecting public health and economic safety.

And this brings me back to the beginning of this article: the futility of demonizing the left and the right, and the end of the utility of these concepts in public debate. Whether you are comparing solutions between countries, or between parties in domestic politics, concepts and words like ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ only serve to alienate individuals and groups. When you are grouped together as ‘they’ and compared to ‘we’, it immediately evokes the experience of rejection and abandonment, and the horrible feeling of being worthless and unnecessary. It’s no wonder that when public (and private) debates devolve into fights between ‘we’ and ‘they’ it only leads to conflict. What our public lives and society needs is a new way to navigate a pluralistic, interconnected, and extremely diverse fabric of life. Instead of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ it’s time to introduce ‘what works’ and ‘what doesn’t’ work based on what we are trying to achieve – our shared goals.

Shared goals are all about finding the least common denominator of the effect (experience) that we are trying to achieve. Are we arguing about public health? Then we are more likely to find common ground by using the number of people who consider themselves healthy and happy in our community as a measure of what is working or not working. However if one group has cost-effectiveness of a health care system as the goal, and the other the number of people that are healthy and happy, it won’t matter which solution we are arguing about – we are in fact not arguing at all about the same thing.

I’m not saying that there will always be common ground. Our current nation states were drawn straight across historical cultural and religious boundaries, and immigration policies and social changes have meant that we are busy mixing our cultures, religions and languages. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if the United States eventually devolves into a looser federation of independent states that align themselves more closely along the reality of their own cultural norms and shared goals.

This article is an invitation: an invitation to leaders in communities and organizations of all kinds and sizes to drop the idea of being ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. Embrace and respect what makes you unique, and see that the same applies to another. In our highly interconnected world we can’t avoid our connection with and dependency on each other – regardless of our cultural, religious, and social differences. Instead of striving for a uniform society or organization, aim for one that is unified by common goals and experiences. Right and wrong only serve to divide society – isn’t it time to find a different way?