In today’s column, I returned to an old theme that remains one of the most important ones when we consider conflicts between two individuals or two groups. I’m referring to the tendency to think in groups. Here is an earlier post on the topic (Segregation).
Here is what was published in this morning’s edition of Métro:
Good guys and bad guys
(Source: Les bons et les méchants. Journal Métro, July 12, 2011)
When I was a kid war games were simple. Whenever we wanted to play good guys and bad guys the only thing to do was to pick teams and head off into battle. There were no moral debates. If you were picked to be a bad guy you accepted happily and did your best to win.
As an adult, somehow things don’t seem quite so simple. Whenever there is a real conflict or a war, if you ask one side if they are the good guys or the bad guys they will always say they are the good guys. When you ask the other side you get the same answer. It seems that in a world where millions of people get killed, only good guys do the killing.
Of course war is a complex phenomenon that cannot be analyzed fairly in such a short space. Nevertheless the seeds of major conflicts can sometimes be seen in our daily interactions or in our children’s games. Human nature, whether on a small scale or a large scale, is the producer of conflict, and ultimately the only remedy. At the heart of most conflicts are two important principles.
Us VS. them
We all feel lost and isolated sometimes. Being alone makes us vulnerable. As a result, we seek strength in numbers. This leads us to form groups where we no longer have to question our identity or our beliefs. Group mentality gives us confidence that our beliefs are justified, no matter what they are. This creates the adversarial thinking seen in all major conflicts.
Lack of true empathy
The other important principle is that there is rarely any real attempt for people on one side to put themselves in the minds of their adversaries. We may sometimes take the other side’s arguments and mock them but rarely do we make a sincere attempt to understand why their convictions seem so strong.
There is no doubt that ego and desire for world domination is at the root of many wars. Hitler, for example, needed to be fought not understood. But in many other conflicts, both sides feel as if they are the victims of injustice. In such cases, a true desire to understand the other side’s arguments can go a long way in diffusing tension. Empathy is the capacity to understand and share the feelings of another. This requires an ability to not only pay lip service to an opponent’s point of view but to try to do it from their emotional perspective. Without this ability, the good guys will continue to kill the good guys.
Tagged as adversarial thinking, anger, conflict, war.
Posted in Anger and conflict, Human nature.
Posted on 12 Jul 2011
