THE INESCAPABLE AND EVER-PRESENCE OF CONFLICT

When it comes to conflict, we humans are absolute experts. Hands down. We are so good at conflicting, we don’t even have to have good legitimate reasons to get into conflicts and fights. We are so skilled, we can and do conflict with each other over lots of really stupid things, irrelevant things, and ridiculous things. Truly, we humans are experts at conflicting. And it seems to be true that all of us have had a lifetime experience at developing this strange ability. From the beginning, we wanted what we wanted, when we wanted in, from whom we wanted it, and in the way we wanted it! And if anyone was a bit confused about what we wanted, we let them know.

This is as true at the individual level as it is at the group level, the government levels, and the international level. Just listen to the news if you doubt this. Everyday the news brings us stories of disputes between people. Some are domestic disputes, some are family disputes, business, racial, corporate, etc. Those in the news media have no fear that they will run out of these “bad news” stories—people are everywhere getting into conflicts and disputing over their wants, their needs, and their rights. And it doesn’t seem to be any end in sight.

So what’s a human to do? Well, historically to manage ourselves in the face of all these conflicts, we set up rules and rulers. Rules so that we have some back guidelines about right and wrong and ways to settle who gets what. Rulers by selecting and electing people who we then commissioned to pass laws that will maintain the harmony, peace, and tranquility of a community (whether a family, organization, or government). Then we create police departments to maintain “the peace” that is, to stop people hurting each other or damaging our stuff. And if the police can’t handle it, we call our the army. We also set up courts—mediation, civil, and criminal courts—to settle disputes between people and bring the conflicting to an end. How has that worked out? How well has that stopped the conflicting? Difficult to tell. It does prevent all-out-anarchy.

It prevents all-out-anarchy because we have a Rule of Law structure. This describes a society or organization that follows the rules and let the rules administer justice—what’s right and wrong for citizens or members of the group to do, and how to interact. This creates a formal community, the mores and ethics of a community that reduces the amount of conflicts.

Without a rule of law, then each person becomes a law unto him or herself. Then each person does what is right in his or her eyes. But this is no solution. It creates anarchy. It sets up a lawless chaotic mess where everyone thinks he or she is right and so seeks to do whatever it takes to be right, to win over others, and to get his or her way. Sometimes it is by physical power (gangs), sometimes by the power of money, sometimes by the corruption and manipulation via graft and bribes. Then we would have no civilization; no structure for holding back this conflicting power of humans.

Question: Where does all of our basic conflict come from? Conflict arises from numerous sources.

Scarcity of resources. Whenever there is only so much of something, then whenever one person obtains that, it leaves less for the rest of us. This is what now creates the win/lose scenario that’s most dominate in groups. “Your success means my loss and defeat” so I have a vested interest in you not succeeding! Differences in people. We conflict over our differences. As we differ in thinking, valuing, believing, understanding, so we differ in our style, our preferences, our likes and dislikes, etc. To the extent that I want you to agree with me or do it my way, I will frame your difference as “bad” and “wrong,” and try to get you to stop it and to change to be and think like me. I thereby frame your difference as a threat to me, as against me, as an insult, etc. Intolerance and rigidity. Actually difference is not the problem, my intolerance of difference is the problem. It is when I am inflexible, unable to adjust, to go along, to make compromises, to negotiate, etc. that I come to hate your differences and resent your successes and fear your superiority. Hatred and resentment. Add intolerance to difference and now we have a formula for hatred and multiply hatred over years and ages and we have resentment, the refusal to release, to let go, to forgive. Now the perpetuated negative state becomes a mood and then an attitude and then a disposition so that we are in a perpetual conflict state, ready to see insult and attack from just about anyone at any time. Now we are highly reactive with low capacity to listen, seek to understand, adjust, tolerate, etc. Arrogance and pride. Most of us have been well-trained to hate being wrong. Even when we’re wrong and know it, we cannot know it. We refuse to know it. We pretend otherwise and we generally are so skilled at this, we come to believe that we are right. Yet because at some level we know we are not, we get louder and more voracious about how right we are! We do not have the inner security to be wrong. Refusal of responsibility. We conflict as we seek to be right and seek to avoid being wrong and the less ability to be wrong, we have to be right and so fight for it when we are hopelessly wrong but cannot allow ourselves to know it.

It’s in these ways that conflicts arise among us and which explains why we conflict so easily, so quickly, so regularly, so often, and about so many things. What we don’t see to do very well is seek first to understand each other and flexibly adjust to each other. If only we could do that as easily!

Actually, the first two sources lie at the heart of the challenge before us. The other sources are human responses that makes things worse, that amplify the problem, and that creates meta-problems. The fact of scarcity of resources and differences among us are just facts of nature and human nature that we need to come to terms with and develop effective ways to deal with. And both are solvable.

Scarcity that used to plague the human race has been and is being overcome by science and technology. Whereas once it took many, many people farming to provide sufficient food, today we can feed many, many more people by more intelligent means of farming. And whereas once only the rich could afford cars or computers or other modern conveniences, science keeps reducing the cost so that today the average person can eat a thousand times better than Kings of old.

And why? Because we cooperate. Because we learn to collaborate with each other constantly

proving over and over that together we are smarter and more competent than any one alone or apart. By embracing our differences, especially different understandings and viewpoints we are able to create and innovate new solutions that we would never have thought of by ourselves. So the first two sources of conflict are actually also the sources of creativity and innovation — if so used.