Conflict is Good….and Bad!
Click on the image above to play the video (flip your phone to widescreen if you want image to be bigger)
Conflict is good.....and bad!
Thank you to many of you who reached out about last week's post around beginning with our end in mind. It was encouraging and inspiring that so many of you felt this is truly important. I just have to agree!
It is a bit counterintuitive. In order to get to where we want to be, we have to first start at the end. It is only then that we can return to the present, to our here, and chart the course that leads us there. But all in all, it’s a practice in defining our purpose, setting our intentions more deliberately, and putting them into action. It's NOT about death or dying (or, only obliquely.) It's really about living.
Too often we get caught up in climbing the wall without first reflecting on whether that is a wall worth climbing (thank you, Kjell!). In the links below, I have a bonus TED talk for those that want additional inspiration on the subject.
This week, I am zooming in on ground zero of this newsletter series. As you know, I write in an effort to inspire myself, and then hopefully others, to elevate our perspectives such that we can improve our public discourse. We are clearly stuck in a very polarized, dehumanizing, and divisive conversation these days.
Consider the graph at the top of this post. It's a typical curve we recognize from many relationships. Per my economics background, I think of it as a Laffer Curve, named after Arthur Laffer, who used this curve to demonstrate tax income elasticity (higher tax rates generate higher government income, but only to a point when higher tax rates actually diminish government income).
Like all graphs and simple illustrations, I am not using this to demonstrate anything too specific. Rather, I’d like to cast light on a broader general insight. This relationship is pivotal—that some amount of something is good for us and too much of that same thing is bad. There is an optimum to be found, a balance to be struck.
I wrote a whole post about the Swedish concept of lagom (just the right amount), as well as one on the Stoic virtue of temperance.
Without friction, there is no spark. We just need to find the right balance within whatever it is we are pursuing.
Consider the example of working out. It's good for us. But not too much. And not too little. The same goes for almost any human activity. Eating. Relaxing. Sleeping. Putting pressure on ourselves. Think about the expectations on kids. We know that having no expectations is a terrible thing for a child. But putting too much pressure on anyone is equally bad. I can go on and on. But you get the picture.
That brings me to conflict. Conflict is actually a wonderful thing. It is what makes us all better. Without it, we will stand still. I would argue that societies being liberated from censorship, authoritarianism, and lack of freedom has been one of the most fundamental drivers of the enormous progress we have witnessed during these last 100 years or so.
In a free and open society, we welcome a degree of debate, challenges, and conflict because we recognize that thinking anew is often associated with some form of criticism of the old.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the field of science. Scientists must put new ideas out there and then welcome and participate in a process of peer reviews, shepherding their ideas through the twists and turns that ultimately either reject their hypothesis completely or acknowledges it as new and upgraded knowledge.
Our constitution, likewise, was a brilliant operating system designed to foster good healthy conflict and dialogue between different, and all-important, branches of government.
So, what happened? Is it still working? What has changed?
Well, let me first channel my more optimistic nature. I still think it is working. We are not broken or finished. People betting against humanity will lose. Every time. I am convinced of that.
However, it might be instructive to unpack conflict a bit. Fortunately, I found an expert. The talented and thoughtful journalist, Amanda Ripley, has written a great book just about this. Here is how she distinguished between good conflict and what she names High Conflict, which is the title of her book.
“High conflict is different from the useful friction of healthy conflict. That’s good conflict, and it’s a force that pushes us to be better people. Good conflict is not the same thing as forgiveness. It has nothing to do with surrender. It can be stressful and heated, but our dignity remains intact. Good conflict does not collapse into caricature. We remain open to the reality that none of us has all the answers to everything all the time, and that we are all connected. We need healthy conflict in order to defend ourselves, to understand each other and to improve. These days, we need much more of it, not less.
High conflict, by contrast, is what happens when conflict clarifies into a good-versus-evil kind of feud, the kind with an us and a them. In high conflict, the normal rules of engagement no longer apply. In this state, each encounter with the other side, whether literal or virtual, becomes more charged. The brain behaves differently. We feel increasingly certain of our own superiority and, at the same time, more and more mystified by the other side. When we encounter them, in person or on a cable news channel, we might feel a tightening in our chest, a dread mixed with rage, as we listen to whatever insane, misguided, dangerous thing the other side says.”
Does that sound familiar? Sadly, it does to me. I think our public discourse has moved too far deep into the high-conflict territory, where the conflict is the conflict. Many people seem more interested in determining which side you are on than what concerns you have and what solutions you might find.
I found the distinction very useful and actually made me more optimistic about what we can do about it. Giving something a name is helpful as it puts things in perspective, and I can then act and react differently. We all know high conflict when we see it. We saw it as kids, in high school, as parents, and at work. Our emotions have pushed all of us into that place. And we never feel good about those visits. Do we?
When our emotions get the best of us, we shut down our ability and desire to listen and process what the other side is saying. That's also the end of progress. In most cases, at least. That's, where I fear our public conversation sits right now. We have stopped listening. We are not open to any feedback or any new idea. We are more interested in confirming what team we are on. If you are not on my team, you are just not to be trusted nor listened to.
But here's the problem. When we don't listen and demonstrate any willingness to adjust our own perspectives, we will stop improving. Feedback is the fuel of betterment.
Amanda has many stories and ideas and so do other people involved in the emerging "bridging industry" that I have mentioned before. People such as Monica Guzman at Braver Angels, No Labels, and most recently, Starts With Us (I am a proud founding partner…thank you, Daniel!). Please do what you can to join and support these and many other incredible organizations working to depolarize the state of our union. We will all be better off for it.
Amanda's book is very helpful and inspiring. You can find it here and you can also listen to a great conversation Krista Tippett had with Amanda about the notion of High Conflict. No voice in America does a better job than Krista in entering the sacred space in between polarities.
As extra bonus to last week's post around beginning with the end in mind, I had a reason to rewatch Ric Elias's short TED talk from 2011 about what happened to him after he almost died on that US AIR flight 1549 in 2009 landing on the Hudson River. Few of us have the opportunity to come back from visiting the other side. He did. What did he learn? Well, you can learn from him here. It's less than 5 minutes. That's what I call value for time!
Have a great week!
