The Moment of Conflict

When you feel that there is tension between yourself and someone else---when you are walking home with harm done to you---more over, when you feel that you’ve done harm to someone else and cannot shake their reaction (were you looking for a reaction?)---there is an arena of conflict found within both the intrapersonal and the interpersonal plane.

One begins there---a foundation of chaos and passion pulsating inside the skull---two skulls together or one alone. What then? Do you keep it bottled inside? Do you throw a fist? Do you wait and hold it in a special separate file that roped off, waits for the perfect time to unleash retaliation? Do you compartmentalize everything and lock the doors on those drawers and rooms of which you have no interest in entering anymore (and yet it is all still there)?

In our own little way, what if none of us living can be said to be innocent of any such ways of dealing with that swinging pendulum of inner and outer conflict? How healthy are any of us really, when we are stomping around, be it within the interior or the exterior, waiting to explode?

You can see it in the face of an angry co-worker. You can hear it in the voice of a passerby who just missed getting on the subway train that they wanted to. Someone is late to an appointment that they vitally value and they start slamming things around, no matter where they are---and it goes on and on. When it hits us, it seems so easy for us to obey that societal voice, which of course, cares only about itself---a self, which does not exist without you, as you area functioning member (and if you are no longer a functioning member, then it no longer does for you). And so, in part, if one runs with the idea that society, playing a role much like god (for those that believe in either concept---as dictator, as authoritative policeman, as reaper of all things originally ones’ own) or in fact, as Emile Durkheim is known to have pondered, plays the role of god--- in that without society’s various present defects, our gods would have no place.

In his study, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, Durkheim informs his reader that in accordance to the societal need of religion and the pathologies of which it seals up like some kind of salve, the ironic thing is that those that push the envelope regarding what a proper citizen is supposed to be, quite often become its leaders.

“It is certainly true that religious life cannot attain a certain degree of intensity without implying a physical exaltation not far removed from delirium. That is why the prophets, the founders of religions, the great saints, in a word the men whose religious consciousness is exceptionally sensitive, very frequently give signs of an excessive nervousness that is even pathological: these physiological defects predestined them to great religious roles (Durkheim 226).”

Thus, the sheep enters the flock seeking a greater sheep. However, if you have no interest in entering the flock, you will be labeled an outcast adjacent to whatever the prevailing wind brings. In the vicinity of intrapersonal conflict, simply cutting off those around you for five seconds to try and self-assess the damage done inside can be quite a chore. It can be even more of a problem when those around you march to the beat of a different drum, one that presumably is supposed to solve all of their problems for them. It seems inevitable then that clashes between those that try to take responsibility of themselves for themselves, and those that put the solving of their problems in someone else’s (or something else’s) hands will continue, unending.

And since those that try to deal with the world on their own terms without succumbing to any pressure from those around them, must, in the majority of cases (as most do not move to a cabin in the hills, hunting & gathering their own food---far removed from anyone & anything else), constantly interact with those that feel that they are alleviated from their problems in making a scapegoat out of another person or idea, the possibility for conflict on a daily interpersonal level is distinct.

How then do two such personalities come to healthy conclusions in their everyday head-butting, without physically harming one another? Some attempt to be completely ignorant of the situation (as if it never happened), while some commence a verbal attack on the other party (to try and win the fight in wit, etc.)---others ball it up inside.

While following the philosophy of complete ignorance may be at first the most alluring, as it would seem to be the quickest way to deal with anything, it is hardly realistic, and of course, not a productive way of furthering our species in any kind of positive direction. Even if we could walk around as if absolutely nothing affected us, as if it slid right off our backs, we would be defining ourselves as someone whose life purpose was in fact pure apathy. Pure apathy cannot exist unless an individual is born within a self-sustaining bubble, wherein all its decisions are made for it and there is no difference opinion on behalf of that individual on any plane whatsoever---from what it wants to eat for a meal to when and wear it should urinate, sleep, etc.

Verbal attacks between two individuals may in fact “resolve” a conflict. Let’s not pretend that after two people engage in a confrontation of this kind, that one or both may stop the behavior that led to the fight. However, to say that the prior demands of both parties have been met and satisfied would be to lie to ourselves. Resolution does not implicate a winner/loser dichotomy. Instead, it takes us to a higher moral platform---one in which a new paradigm has been established whereby both parties now hold different roles, quite possibly they are no longer antagonistic to one another and have become, instead, allies.

To get to that higher moral platform, we need to mutually agree (seemingly in the present instant) that what has been, prior to the moment of potential conflict, does not in fact work as a reasonable system of co-existence for the both of us. This can come about through conversation in the moment, something that gives way to the essential differences or, if simultaneously the two parties come to a consensus, then the move directly to the discussion can be made. This kind of agreement that a discussion is both needed and evidently about to occur anyway, seems to work better for two individuals who have known one another prior to the conflict at hand, in opposition to a situation involving two complete strangers.

Through conversation directly after the moment of potential conflict or if one cannot discern, at the moment of conflict, the bottling up of one’s grievances is no longer possible. This unhealthy containment of concerns, problems and worries does nothing for us but delay conflict. It builds up a well of negative energy and a reservoir of need which most assuredly will be satisfied through an unhealthier means, if the moment of conflict is not dealt with in the first place.

If one refuses to rely on a policy of transference, of passing on conflict to another person (friend, family member, doctor, psychologist, psychiatrist, minister, priest) or fictional character (god, gods, etc.), or for that matter by simply delaying the matter by taking refuge in escape through the use of mind-altering substances, one is forced to play out the conflict in real time with the other party, and to come to a point of resolution at the moment of conflict. If this action does not end the conflict itself, prematurely, it most certainly will conclude whatever issues instigated said parties in the first place, moving them both to a place of mutual satisfaction and moral sanity much quicker than any other alternatives might. Within this new state of intrapersonal and interpersonal understanding, we are able to see real human progress whereby the ability to learn from our conflict as well as our potential conflicts can only better the both of us.