Alternative Definitions of Conflict

ALTERNATIVE DEFINITIONS OF CONFLICT What follows are a set of alternative definitions of conflict drawn from my experience over several years in mediating a wide variety of disputes: 1. Conflict represents a lack of awareness of the immanence of death or sudden catastrophe. As we were more aware of the finite quality of our lives our conflicts seem less important. 2. Conflict arises wherever there is a failure of connection, collaboration or community. When we act together, our conflicts become mere disagreements. 3. Conflict reflects our inability to understand our essential inter-connectedness, the universal beauty of the human spirit. We all tend to behave in ugly ways when we are in conflict, hiding our essential beauty and interconnectedness. When we notice these qualities, our conflicts tend to diminish. 4. Conflict is often a lack of acceptance of ourselves that we have projected onto others, a way of blaming others for what we perceive as failures in our own lives, or of diverting attention from our mistakes. As we accept ourselves more fully, we become more accepting of others. 5. Conflict represents a boundary violation, a failure to value or recognize our own integrity, or the personal space of others. As we recognize and respect each other’s boundaries, we experience fewer conflicts. 6. Conflict reflects a need to support or maintain a false image of who we are, or hide behind a role or mask that does not reflect our authentic feelings. If we try to appear strong or decisive but actually feel weak or confused, we may escalate our conflicts through not being authentic. 7. Conflict is a way of getting attention, acknowledgment, sympathy or support by casting ourselves as the victim of some evildoer. If we give others the attention, acknowledgment, sympathy and support they need, they create fewer conflicts as a result. 8. Conflict represents a lack of skill or experience at being able to handle a certain kind of behavior. As we become more skillful at handling difficult behaviors, we cease being drawn into conflict with them. 9. Conflict is often simply the continued pursuit of our own false expectations, the desire to hold on to our unrealistic fantasies. When we give up our false expectations of others, we surrender the conflicts we create as a result of trying to get them to become the people they never were. 10. Conflict represents a lack of listening, a failure to appreciate the subtlety in what someone else is saying . As we listen closely to the metaphors and hidden meanings of our conflicts, we discover what they are actually about, and feel less like counter-attacking or defending ourselves, and more like responding constructively. 11. Conflict is often a result of what we have not communicated, of secrets, concealments, confusions, conflicting messages and cover-ups. Conflict hides in the shadows. When we throw a light on it, it disappears.12. Conflict represents a lack of skill, effectiveness or clarity in saying what we feel, think or want. When we are able to tell others clearly and skillfully what we need, we are often able to get our needs met without creating conflicts. 13. Conflict is a way of opposing someone who represents a parent with whom we have not yet resolved our relationships. If we recognize that the other person resembles or is behaving like someone from our family of origin, we may understand that it is not them we are really angry with, but the family member they represent. 14. Conflict is the sound made by the cracks in a system, the manifestation of contradictory forces coexisting in a single space. Many interpersonal conflicts represent the points of weakness in an organizational or family system. When these weaknesses are addressed, the conflicts they create usually disappear with them. 15. Conflict is the voice of a new paradigm, a call for change in a system that has outlived its usefulness. Changes always announce themselves in the form of conflict, including increased interpersonal conflict, and the introduction of needed changes often reduces the level of conflict in an organizational or family system. 16. Conflict represents an inability to grieve or say good-bye, a refusal to let go of something that is dead or dying. Many divorcing couples and surviving relatives fight as a way of saying goodbye to each other, or as a way of mourning someone they loved. 17. Conflict is a way of being negatively intimate when positive intimacy becomes impossible. We all prefer anger to indifference until we are genuinely ready for a relationship to be over. 18. Conflict is an argument in favor of half of a paradox, enigma, duality, polarity or contradiction. In an earthquake, which plate of the earth's crust is right? Which is better, hot or cold? Which is at fault, the lion or the lamb? Similar conflicts divide people who are happy from those who are sad, people who are aggressive from those who are passive, people who are risky from those who are careful. 19. Conflict is often a fearful interpretation of difference, diversity and opposition, which ignores their essential role in creating unity, balance and symbiosis. As we learn to see our differences and disagreements as sources of unity or strength, our conflicts tend to disappear. 20. Conflict is a result of our inability to learn from our past mistakes, our failure to learn from them, and recognize them as opportunities for growth, learning and improved understanding, or as requests for authenticity, emotional honesty, acknowledgment, intimacy, empathy, and communication from others -- in other words, as flowing from the desire for a better relationship.

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