E02 Conflict Principle

Which do you think is more likely?

You must take a firm stance against anyone you see as believing or acting wrong.

OR

The more fervently you oppose others, the more you reinforce their errant beliefs.

Anankelogy

Your prioritized natural needs exist as an objective fact, prior to your subjective experience of them. Others can have an objective priority of natural needs at odds with yours, even while they experience them subjectively.

Neither side can easily change objective facts to fit their subjective experiences. The more you oppose what the other cannot readily change, the more they must dig in their heels. The more you provoke their defenses, and they provoke yours, the more all sides tend to get stuck in the dark of diminished awareness. You easily conflate what they do with what they naturally need.

Anankelogy distinguishes between inflexible natural needs and what we flexibly can do about those needs. You can rightly question, challenge and perhaps oppose what others do about their needs. You have a need to report how their actions impact your needs. You fight in vain to resist the natural needs themselves.

What you reactively resist you reflexively reinforce. The more you push against what they cannot change, the more they naturally push back. They double down. They use your opposition to grow their coalition of support against you and your types. To guard their inflexible priority of needs, they vilify you.

The more you honestly relate to each other’s natural needs, the less you slide into stifling debate. Instead of triggering each other’s defensiveness, you will solve more problems by keeping it safer for each side to drop their guard and be more vulnerably honest. “You catch more flies honey than vinegar.” And who wants to honestly solve a problem while being viciously shot down?

Need-response

Need-responseanswers this oppo culture problem with mutual regard. You address the inflexible needs on all sides in a conflict.

You learn to shift from popular yet failed selfish approaches to more effectively engage each other. Instead of shutting down awareness of how we came to our current needs, you shine a light on the best path to resolve each other’s affected needs. Rather than stay stuck in pain, you mutually support resolving needs to remove cause for pain.

Reactive Problem

Anankelogy and its application in need-response identifies this as a problem of what it calls the power delusion. That’s believing it is good to socially pressure others to agree with you. We recognize it as a delusion since all available evidence suggests such coercive behavior typically detracts from resolving needs, which then perpetuates our problems and pain.

Many of us prematurely oppose others. Less because we’re truly right and more because we try to avoid the discomfort of exposing our vulnerable needs. Let’s be honest, we oppose those we want to push away.

This delusion of coercion includes the problem of oppo culture. Short for "opposition culture", this refers to the set of written and unwritten norms privileging a more antagonistic stance against others with whom disagreed.

This intent to quickly oppose others betrays the intent to avoid the discomfort of a disciplined path toward resolving needs. It’s easier to claim another is wrong than to invite them to acknowledge their weak points on par with you admitting you have weak points they could call out.

Responsive Solution

You’re introduced to the power of mutual regard in a wellness campaign. It works in concert with social love, to temporarily put the needs of others ahead of your own. Mutual respect resolves more needs than mutual defensiveness.

Consider how this could dissolve the tensions in polarizing politics. A progressive argues for the reproductive right of the woman not ready to be a mother. A conservative tries to the voice for the voiceless unborn.

Oppo culture tends to reinforce each side not being able to address their inflexible needs. Mutual regard opens a meaningful dialogue for each side to better understand and relate to the other. Social love dares to do something for another’s need selflessly.

Neither side tries to change the other. They focus more on what can be changed: the way they relate to each other. A wellness campaigncan show you how to coordinate your efforts to resolve more needs, remove more pain, and reach more potential.

Instead of enflaming conflicts with selfish opposition, you learn to snuff out the fire of painful tensions with the power of love.

Responding to your needs

How does this principle speak to your experience of needs? Post in our Engagement forum your thoughtful response to one of these:

• But I can’t let others walk all over me, so sometimes I must take a stance. Right?

• What if the other side exploits me when I drop my guard?

• How does this apply to adversarial justice and to oppositional politics?

• Isn’t there any exception to this, when it’s better to take an immediate stance?

Instead of selecting one of these, post your own engagement feedback about your experience with the subject of this principle. Remember the aim is to improve our responsiveness to each other’s needs, toward their full resolution. If you’re new at posting here, first check the guide below.