I wrote this a while ago for another blog, but — in this season of conflict that we call the last week of the term — I thought I’d share it with you.
“We’re having a conflict, and we need help resolving it.”
This familiar sentiment often brings people in to see therapists and counselors, (and even philosophers!), and most people start off seeking conflict resolution. Let’s think about this notion of conflict resolution.
First, some preparatory observations. Suppose I ask you, What is the absence of conflict? Is it peace? Harmony? Equanimity of mind? While there’s some truth to responses in this vein, if you look a little harder at conflict, you might begin to suspect that the absence of conflict is . . . death.
Think about it: As an organism, you are largely the collective product of innumerable tiny skirmishes, swinging delicately back and forth in that strange, homeostatic dance that goes by the term life. Without those tiny skirmishes, you would just be a mostly-inert smudge of chemical compounds.
What’s more, as an organism that has acquired the capacity to believe things, you and I and our kind develop and live our lives guided by our convictions. There’s nothing inherently wrong with having convictions, of course — it’s just that each of us prefers our own. But when you take a closer look, it turns out that there are cracks between our convictions, and it’s in those dark crevasses that truth likes to hide.
What do these philosophical reflections have to do with the experience of conflict? More to the point, can we learn anything from them about how to get along, in a moment of conflict?
First of all, reframing conflict, not merely as a necessary condition of life, but as a desirable condition for a healthy life, is a step toward managing conflict in ways conducive to growth (and equanimity of mind). The moment of conflict need not be framed as a contest to be lost or won.
Think of a situation in which you experienced conflict with another person — family, partner, co-worker, whoever. It’s hard not to build into that experience a contest for superiority. In fact, even the customary language of conflict suggests competition: You aren’t hearing me. You don’t respect my views. You are treating me with disdain. You don’t value my feelings.
All of which are possible, of course. More often, however, when I sit down with people (including myself!) in conflict and help them do a little careful thinking, it turns out that the signs of lack of respect or failure to understand are actually disagreement charged with emotion.
Dressing disagreement up with feeling-language at least recognizes the influence of emotion, but I’ve always questioned the usefulness of ending a conversation with “I feel disrespected by you.” Maybe that feeling-report is earned; maybe not. A feeling is not a trump card; you don’t get out of the need for inquiry just by stating how you feel. Feelings are like any other form of information: they generally require examination before they can be put to productive use.
These reflections can lead us to some practical principles for conflict management. If you’re in conflict with someone and you find yourself feeling devalued or disrespected, put your emotional response scripts on hold for just a moment and ask yourself, “Is this person devaluing me, or am I reacting to the conflict between us by feeling devalued?” It’s going to feel awkward the first few times you try making this distinction. It’s much more satisfying to take a cue from a feeling and turn the spigot on full blast. Well, satisfying in the short run.
Once you make a distinction between the actual conflict and your emotional response to it, the next step is to listen. I don’t mean, let the other person talk; that’s useful, of course, but to move toward understanding, you have to be engaged in the hard work of listening while the other person is talking. Don’t underestimate the difficulty of this technique: Most of us stop talking not to listen, but to load the next salvo. Genuine listening involves trying to understand the motivation and grounds for the other person’s position, as she or he sees it. No small challenge, when we’re so often blinded by the transparent Truth of our own convictions. Don’t be fooled.
One analytical technique that I’ve found useful in the process of learning to listen is to reflect on what you expect of others. In a situation of conflict, you feel justified in your response, and you want to be heard, you want to be understood, and you want others to act on their understanding of your perspective. Fair enough — but: Are you the only one who deserves to be heard and understood? Is yours the only perspective worthy of justification?
If, in a moment of conflict, you think that understanding your viewpoint means you “win” and the other person bends to your will, then in all likelihood, you are a major contributor to the conflict.
This is where a little genuine (intellectual) humility can come in very handy. If you explore a moment of conflict as an opportunity for expansion and growth, you are much more likely to gain from conflict and disagreement, even if you end up compromising (which often means taking responsibility for your own contributions).
In this approach to conflict management, I’ve discussed two approaches to conflict: a contest-mindset, and an inquiry-mindset. This is admittedly a simplification of what is more often a complex interpersonal nexus, but it gives us a place to start our inquiry.
Now let’s get practical: How can you tell if you are approaching a conflict with a contest-mindset? Here are some things to watch for:
- Do you tell your story of the conflict to other people, expecting them to “side” with you?
- Venting an excess of emotional energy in a safe relationship can be a great way to prepare for inquiry, but there’s a fine line between venting and self-justification by proxy! Telling your version of the incident to someone who sides with you can feel great, but it can also rob you of an opportunity for understanding and growth.
- Do you portray the other person(s) in the conflict using moralizing language? (“She is so disrespectful!” or “He treats people like dirt.”)
- Making (pre)judgments about the other person’s character and motivations in the conflict with you can serve to deflect attention away from your own — and you lose an opportunity for growth.
- Do you seem to go from one situation to another in which you feel people devalue and disrespect you?
- You may be hanging out with the wrong crowd! On the other hand, there’s one factor in common. . . .
- Do you go “up the chain” to report bad behavior to an authority figure, with the expectation that they will take your report at face value and “do something”?
- Why is this a bad sign? you may ask. After all, the person’s boss wouldn’t condone mistreating me, right? Dysfunctional behaviors are indeed both an institutional as well as a personal concern, but getting an authority figure to intervene in a conflict can be a way of taking yourself off the hook for the challenge of doing your own introspection and taking responsibility for your decisions. The key question here is what you will do with this situation. Are you willing to follow inquiry through with the person even if a supervisor/authority figure becomes involved?
Of course, these questions illustrate where the inquiry-mindset begins, not where it ends. Inquiry involves gathering information, sorting and sifting for relevance, testing possible explanatory hypotheses, etc. None of what I said about this approach negates the fact that, when all is said and done, there are people who will devalue and disrespect you. The problem is that we so often use this diagnosis “up front” to avoid looking at ourselves and doing the hard work of conflict management.
Once at an end of the semester party, one of my philosophy students slyly asked, “So, what’s the real point of taking a philosophy course?” I was candid: I don’t expect students to cherish Kant’s argument for the synthetic unity of apperception or Aristotle doctrine of the Mean — lovely as that may be when it happens. Sometimes I get a chance to say something that may stick.
So I said. The point of studying philosophy is simply this: To learn to view the opinions of others as we see our own — because we are intimately familiar with the strengths and wisdom of our own opinions; and to learn to view our own opinions with the critical scrutiny we apply to the opinions of others, because we are equally familiar with their foibles and shortcomings.
