E05 Conflict Principle

Which best describes your response to conflict?

I must never appear weak to those who challenge me.

OR

I must remain firm yet humble when someone challenges me.

Anankelogy

Anankelogy helps us understand a key motivation for violence. When you experience a need, you quickly evaluate its urgency. If you must satisfy a need now in order to survive, or to avoid harm, your options include brute force.

Even when you feel this option, ready to apply force against another, we usually reflect for a moment and discount it as inappropriate. But in those moments when you must defend yourself from a violent threat, you may be glad that option sits ready and able.

You also have the option to absorb an insult, to laugh off a stinging offense, and to ignore a painful slight. Where physical force gives you outward strength, reasoned options give you internal strength. The less pain you provoke, the less pain you attract.

Anankelogy appreciates how unprocessed pain spurs most acts of violence. Reacting in violence, even nonphysical violence like verbal and emotional abuse, tends to result in more pain. If not checked, a vicious cycle unfolds trying to ease the pain it repeatedly creates.

Need-response

Sometimes brute force is necessary, even at the risk of hurting another. But we best exhaust every less violent option first. As the pilot episode of Kung Fu aptly put it:

“Avoid [contention], rather than check. Check, rather than hurt. Hurt, rather than maim. Maim, rather than kill. For all life is precious, nor can any be replaced.”

A key problem with violence is how it easily creates more problems than it solves. Once you bite into that low hanging feel-reactionfruit, it can be extremely difficult to get back to more effective need-responsive options.

Reactive Problem

Once you hurt another with some kind of force, they instantly distrust you. They’re less likely to tell you what they actually need of you. You may appear like you don’t care anyways.

Inappropriate use of force can create emotional wounds that hurt much longer than physical wounds. Physical wounds tend heal more quickly. Festering emotional wounds damage relationships, sometimes beyond repair.

The more you react with violence, or even the threat of violence, the less you are trusted. The more you emotionally wound others, the more others pull away.

Responsive Solution

If struck with force, you typically have the option to not strike back. Consider the example of Jesus who was struck repeatedly on his way to the cross. Never once striking back.

Consider historical examples. Ghandi inspired thousands of Indians to oust the occupying British with an effective nonviolence approach. Consider Dr. King and the effective nonviolence of the civil rights movement.

Sure, those civil rights activists endured harsh training. They were subjected to all kinds of abuse by their fellow trainers, to prepare them for the real abuse they faced when confronting white supremacy. You and I under those circumstance may be less tolerant.

Need-response offers a free program that can stretch your tolerance for life’s many forms of pain. You learn you can endure far more than you thought you could. You develop your stamina to take undeserved punishment. You grow your resilience to face almost anything.

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:

• In the heat of the moment, it’s not always easy to be resilient.

• I can see myself sliding to the opposite extreme of being stepped all over.

• How does this apply to geopolitics? Could this apply to diplomacy to stop wars?

• How does this apply to the state privileged violence of the criminal justice system?

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.