The Façade Behind Sharing: What We Really Mean

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How do we understand the concept of ‘sharing’? Is it that humans are naturally generous? Or perhaps it’s a value inherited from family that allows collaboration to blossom? Or is it a fictional story allowing us to mistake comfort for care and exchange for generosity? It may be the case that most of what is defined as sharing isn’t actually sharing at all, but a soft moral language to smooth around contracts, expectations and power dynamics that is often not acknowledged. A comforting word to hide the uncomfortable truth.

Recent research by Arnould and Rose argue that sharing has become a cultural camouflage, misused to describe things that are profoundly not about generosity. In the scenario a family ‘shares’ a home, there is still a web of negotiation, gendered labour, power dynamics and expectation. When employees ‘share’ knowledge, they may be doing so in favour of their own status or in self-protection. In the example of a ‘shared economy’, it is not related to collective care, but about monetised access.

Sharing: the word that implies selflessness, community and goodness.

The reality: a word used to soften intentions that are self-serving and conforming.

Leaders, parents, managers and colleagues will all use language this way, not with malicious intent, but unconsciously, because confronting the real dynamics behind these social behaviours is uncomfortable – avoiding discomfort the way our nervous systems are programmed to.

There is disconnect perpetuated by a deeply Westernised and modern belief, that the self is where all action emerges, the being that decides to be generous and reciprocal, but research argues, and anthropology supports, a profound misinterpretation of what it means to be human. It is not about being individuals who occasionally connect, but being a collective of social beings whose understanding of self is constructed from the ‘we’. All identities, obligations, moral instincts are inherited before a person chooses them, and the self doesn’t generate generosity – community does.

This is a naturally uncomfortable belief; if an individual is shaped by everyone else, what happened to autonomy? Where did the decision really come from? Does this mean everyone is accountable to more than just themselves?

And yet this can be liberating; cooperation may be inbuilt, and human. It implies that belonging is not earned but innate, and the real work is not to polish the self, but to tend to the spaces in between the self and others.

Circling back to the idealism of family, it is supposedly the most natural site of ‘sharing’…or is it?

The family unit may appear to be a sanctuary, but it is but another system. A system of exchange, labour, hierarchy and negotiation. Sometimes it is loving, sometimes oppressive, but always structural. A mother sharing food with a child is not to be romanticised, it involves labour, sacrifice and is emotionally taxing, conforming to a gendered expectation. Siblings sharing clothes may not be out of choice, love or generosity but occurs due to enforcement, birth order politics or simply economic necessity. If the dynamics of our closest relationships and misunderstood, then all relationships may be, and that’s why it matters. For example, how many organisations replicate these structures by calling themselves and their teams a ‘family’, and how many times has this ideology allowed blurred lines, indebtedness and power imbalance?

If the goal is to achieve healthier cultures, the myths must be seen for what they are, protective (and comforting) but not necessarily true. Putting into practice an alternative, more honest model, may allow for better connection. Mutuality, as an example, could be utilised, not for transactional reciprocity, but for something deeper; the assumption that all living within the same social fabric will promote acting for one another’s benefit. This may not be immediate or equal, but it may be the most reliable. Mutuality holds communities together without contracts, it makes teams resilient even under stress, it promotes shared work, shared crises and shared success. The outcome of mutuality is what sharing should feel like, recognising the strength in community and respect for what each person can offer.

Depth psychology would delve even deeper. Our obsession with sharing is not just sociological confusion but a psychological defence; a way to avoid the unconscious self. People desire to be seen as good more than they want to actually be good, the performance of giving, the shame in receiving, the need to belong in a group by being ‘exceptional’. Jung calls it ‘the inflated persona of the helper’, a socially rewarded mask that hides the fear of being inconsequential. Most people cannot separate the association of sharing with the ego, but mutuality requires shadow integration. Accept the ordinary, accept the need for dependence, acknowledge the resistance of our shadow, and perform the psychological work of becoming whole.  

For the full research paper, published in the British Journal of Management, 2022, find the link here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276384602_Mutuality

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