E11 Conflict Principle

Which do you think is more likely?

You’ve got to fight for what you know is right or others will disrespect you.

OR

You’ve got to cultivate mutual respect if you want to solve more problems.

Anankelogy

Anankelogy recognizes how modern societies tend to slide deeper into mutual alienation. Few us truly know one another. Or what we specifically need in the moment. We reveal less and less of ourselves even to our closest companions. Loneliness has become a global health crisis, as a global epidemic.

The more we sink back into our hyper-individualized silos, the less we engage one another. We replace interpersonal responsiveness with impersonal laws. We get legalistic. We repeatedly set ourselves up for disappointment when crediting laws more than mutual respect for our safety.

When was the last time you won an argument and then was able to completely solve a problem? Has any of your arguments provoked more problems than it actually solved? Did they win you any friends who can now help you in a moment of crisis? Or did it leave your needs unresolved?

The less our needs resolve, the more painful they feel. The more painful our unresolved needs, the more urgent they feel. The more we urgently react for their relief, the less our needs resolve. The less our needs resolve, we’re back to feeling their painful urgency. And on and on.

The less we personally relate with each other’s changing needs, the more such estrangement can set up the conditions for violence. As JFK put it, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

Anankelogy unpacks our shift from civilly respecting each to indulging in more forms of disrespect. We now privilege once prohibited traits like selfishness, self-righteousness, rudeness, haughtiness, spitefulness, and so forth. All in the name of public debate!

Need-response

Need-response can help you shift from privileged selfish regard, which traps you in misery, with mutual regard, which can remove cause for pain by resolving more needs.

Selfish regard rudely boasts to others: “My needs matter more than yours!” or “My needs matter and your needs don’t matter at all.” Its groupish cousin sounds quite the same: “Our needs matter more than theirs!” or “Our needs matter and their needs by comparison don’t matter at all.”

Anyone indulging in such selfish regard and stubbornly refusing to engage others in mutual regard can now be assessed as complicit in contemporary problems. This includes those prioritizing relief over resolving the needs causing the pain. And this includes complicity in furthering any form of violence.

Reactive Problem

If terrorism is such a horrific problem, why do we reinforce it with our poor reactions to it? Do we dehumanize militants (who understandably dehumanize others) by totally disregarding any unmet needs driving their desperation?

Opposing violence with violence predictably provokes more violence. Responding to the unmet needs behind the violence predictably mellows the violence. Claiming that only rewards violence ignores how punishing violence with violence rewards the violence.

Group violence typically reacts as a form of resistance to ongoing violence of a greater force. Wherever there are resistance fighters up against a stronger military force, there will be asymmetrical battles using guerilla tactics.

Guerillas fighters win when they hold out long enough not to lose. The stronger military force loses when they fail to decisively win against guerillas. Consider the example of Vietnamese resistance against the U.S. military fifty years ago.

Guerilla tactics ideally remains contained between armed combatants. But sometimes spills over into noncombatant populations. Resistance fighters may rationalize targeting noncombatants in response to the stronger force targeting their own noncombatants. The standard applied sets the standard replied.

Wherever there are these guerilla tactics frustrating the stronger force, the stronger force tries to smear these resistance fighters as “terrorists”. To be sure, that’s a loaded term. It means whatever the speaker wants it to mean, which spurs more conflict.

If the first casualty of war is the truth, then perhaps the first victory is effective use of propaganda with such loaded language. It can effectively manipulate us into accepting grotesque acts of violence for our group’s ostensibly noble cause.

Once employed, propaganda of the stronger force paints such resistance fighters as subhuman, ignores their legitimate concerns like violated rights, and self-righteously boasts of their “right” to squash any resistance. The weaker force typically joins in such mutual defensiveness.

Once employed by the both sides, while denying targeting of innocent lives, they start to lose the discipline necessary to resolve conflicts. This becomes evident when failing to resolve internal conflicts within their own populations. The violent self-righteous typically spark more problems than they resolve.

Responsive Solution

Need-response instills the discipline to engage all the needs provoking a conflict. Need-response insists we all relate to each other’s needs, regardless how they are conveyed. Need-response challenges the usual excuse that such mutual regard rewards violence. No more excuses!

If confronted, engage. Identify all the needs in a conflict. We’ll keep challenging those who selfishly champion only their own side. Who underpin defensiveness with their lack of empathy.

If provoked, engage. Refuse the temptation to indulge in mutual defensiveness. Maintain your open and responsive orientation amidst the conflict. We’ll keep trying to incentivize them with your mutual regard.

If accosted, engage. Never strike back at the level they strike you. You’re internally stronger than that. Together, we’ll document the exchange. You keep standing tall and we’ll keep the receipts.

Those you engage who stubbornly persist in their defensiveness, with no clear reason, can be written off. They risk losing their responsive reputation. We’re going to enforce the social love we hold as the higher standard. Together, we’re keeping score.

Anankelogy demonstrates how there is no greater human authority than resolving needs in love. Need-responseis set to enforce this highest moral authority, when enough qualified need-responders can effectively establish its greater legitimacy by resolving more needs, solving more problems, removing more pain, and reaching more potential than other available options.

You can become a qualified need-responder, starting today. Simply join our free program to get started. The next program walks you through the steps to develop your conflict orientation. If you by habit remain closed and guarded during conflicts, like most of us do, then you will learn what it takes to remain open and responsiveto needs.

In that first program, you learn to stretch your tolerance so you can readily replace mutual defensiveness with mutual regardeven as it hurts. You learn to replace easing the pain of your needs to fully resolving your needs, so you can remove cause for pain and reach your full potential.

If your potential includes becoming a qualified need-responderwith us, we’d like to hear from you. Sign up to Anankelogy Foundation and post any question you may have in our forum. Help us all to replace mutual defensiveness with mutual respect. Welcome aboard!

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:

• Applying this to terrorists seems implausible, not to mention risky.

• It takes more than mutual respect to resolve needs; it takes mutual efforts.

• Many are too traumatized to remain open in a conflict.

• Defensiveness can’t be all bad, as it protects me from suffering further harm.

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.