He started it! And other Sources of War
The Logic Chain to Hatred and Violence
When I was an older sister of about age ten, in a brawl with my younger sister, age 7, my Mother would often arrive to stop the yelling and pushing. But she would finally close (or slam) the door, claiming she was at her ‘wit’s end.’ The first time this happened was not her last door slamming when facing us. Wit’s end meant that she was so worried, confused, or annoyed that she did not know what to do next. She was in a ‘state of distress because she had no more patience or mental stamina after having dealt with us in this problematic and difficult situation. The situation was a seemingly irreconcilable, intractable conflict in which she never could get to the starting point of the brawl. Now, three of us were in conflict.
My sister and I, each had a different claim on the point which was the source of any incident, and we could go back days, weeks, and as we got older, years to prove our point of who started the fight. There was no beginning, of course. So, Mother usually punished us both to cover all bases and show us how everyone loses when you fight.
It was during a pre-teen time, and the conflict eventually passed for us. But at the moment, it seemed a war without end in our heads.. In our minds, we still rationalized how we had suffered at the hands of the other. How we were wronged, and the others should be held to account. I remember even citing the “eye for an eye,” being a budding Biblical scholar, to no effect on my mother.
After years of working on myself, I can easily see the real starting point. One Armenian Philosopher called it Third Force Blindness. We were steeped in a two-term paradigm and could only see two sides of any conflict. Each is sure they are on the right side of good. And that there are only two sides. And, therefore, we choose sides by picking a ‘starting point’, in the conflict, who or what started it, and clearly making one side wrong. I now see how there is always another point before the cited ignition point that I believe ‘started it all.” But, from a two-term view, I am missing the way out of the duality which leaves everyone at their wit’s end. And now I have become part of the problem, claiming to be working on a solution for the good side.
For the real way out to be visible, we must see the starting point as in our undeveloped psychology. It often is initiated with the invisible choice of identifying with a position, perspective, person, or place.
Exercise: Think of a personal conflict you are familiar with. Where is the initiating point of the conflict, and how do you justify that point, position, perspective, person, or place? Explore the possibility that it started from an immature or undeveloped mindset and lack of capability of the humans.
Consider this chain of logic. It starts with identification with one side.
1. What is identification? - That by which we define ourselves—God-fearing Christian, progressive, concerned independent thinker, generous and fair citizen, loyal friend, Buddhist adherent, professional engineer, medical doctor, parent of high-performing, well-behaved children, university professor. We can be all of these and not identify with them. We can tell we are identifying if our emotions are triggered by someone speaking in a contrarian way about the image we hold of us in the role or behaving toward the role or toward us in our position. With some self-observing, we feel ourselves ‘take it personally’, and ‘feel reactive ‘ (defensive, protective), our ego is invoked (proudful, recognized, or rewarded for; or if we feel elevated in other eyes and esteem.
Exercise: If you have the courage to observe your experience within a conflict, consider how you would describe the emotions triggered in yourself about it. Notice any tendency to deny emotions and argue for facts. If you can notice what role you are identifying with in the situation and help trigger the emotions, that is a step toward breaking our identification.
2. What causes identification? Underdeveloped inner processing ability. We fall into Internal considering (unable to separate worldly events from the concern about the effect it will have on us) and become disturbed by ‘feeling defined by another outside of ourselves. Plus, identification grows when we have reduced or diminished external considering or concern about worldly effects on others and a role we can play to support change in outcomes (empathy, compassion, caring for the ableness of other beings and life forms)
3. What activates internal considering? The threat of, impact on, or uncertainty about income source, status, higher judgment (minister, parents) categorized wrongly, personally fabricated narratives, family history and philosophy (race, nationalism), shame or grief of any of the above—political position on issues. Envisioning being cast out, condemned or shunned by our tribes, family, or ‘friends’. Anything that disrupts comfort and joy. When we feel that our work is to balance the playing field and do what is right, we know we are captured by internal considerating.
4. How do we manage internal considering: With Self-observing (i.e., separate ourselves, observe the aspect of the self, watch the doing aspect, and notice our inner thinking and being, its effects on ourselves and others; then give a name to the inner mental machinations. “It is not me, not my nature, but a personality in me which is reacting.” Make an effort to do this without judging yourself or others; then work to set an aim to manage this internal consideration, i.e., set a ‘Being Aim’ to steady yourself to be imperturbable in regard to experiences arising. I often use, I am not this idea, or My ideas are not an ideology.
5. Master Aim of Non-identification: use Life and disruptions of Life to develop myself, which WILL indirectly change existence since it adds to a better field in which we all exist.
6. What fosters worldly Third Force change? Activism, which polarizes sides, is the opposite of the non-identification path and rarely brings in the Third Force or development of the humans involved. To bring in a Third Force, we need to put a larger system in mind (e.g., Peace in the Middle East) in which the other two forces are embedded in a larger system, and both ultimately need things to change in that same direction. Both “sides” need the development of consciousness of the whole, which is usually a good place to start. How do you work with a group of each to build the capability to not identify with their side?
One example: some of the most effective third forces come from two forces being brought together. In 2005, I sponsored a group of sixteen women (4 Christians, 4 Israeli Jews, 4 Palestinian Muslims, 4 facilitators) who stayed in my home and a neighbor’s home. I arranged to drive them to about 20 meetings in the Seattle area to speak and interact publicly with the Aim of promoting Third Force understanding with one another. They shared what they were learning and how the experience was changing them. We even eat all our meals together. The third force we used for our work was Unidentified, Unattached Understanding. I was blessed with being able to do development work with the 12 women, which they took back to their homes. They also traveled around the US before going home. One Palestine woman was killed in a raid a few years later, and all the others came together, inviting people and using the process we started.
One of my Change Agent members brought together members of 5 organizations in Boston, MA, in the wake of the killings of healthcare workers at Planned Parenthood Clinics. They held facilitated talks for a year on Women’s and Family Health. All reported it changed their perspective and respect for one another. And changed their behavior toward members outside their designated community.
7. Why is it essential to stop Polarizing Activism? Because it is based on two forces and choosing a side we are identified with to speak for, trying to create balance for those on ‘the other’ side. But it invites identification on the side of the other force from which there is no release into the third force. It is doing violence to the other side by mentally judging them and trying to change them from the Ideals we hold. You and they are always arguing, out loud and in their mind, on our different sides, each saying “they started it” and “they caused the most harm “(which will change in the story, overtime, and incidents. )
8. And, we forget, the source of who or what started it may have been outside the two sides, which then invited the others to choose sides. Like tribal history, things out of our control, and other people’s lives. Some beginnings we can no longer remember. The Hatfields and the McCoys. It is still embedded in Ireland’s history of political revenge and requires enormous consciousness not to react. I learned this by working in South Africa for several years in co-creating The New South Africa. We have eight tribes and two nations of colonists, Dutch and English. We did not try to fix the ‘starting point but worked on building the capability to manage a non-identifying Third Force mindset and ableness. Colgate SA had no violence between groups on-site or in transporting workers, which was then endemic to the cities. Stelios Tsesos, the GM for Colgate, said, “What a profound impact this had on his life and leadership approach.” Read more of the story in No More Gold Stars: Regenerating Capacity to Think for Ourselves, my most recent book. There is a story about Mandela giving them the Constitution Award for their amazing work on disabling racism by redesigning work systems and developing people.
9. The point of the story, where action and reaction all started, is that it is always with the undeveloped humans (at our birth and when a nation is forming). We are reactively transported into one side to seek to change conditions or situations, which then activates and exacerbates polarizing forces, trying to change one another. We produce this polarizing force with our initiation toward one another, the force built on each ‘side’, the fabrications we do in our head, the identification we rationalize and coalesce around.
The beginning of all conflicts is in our lack of development to non-identify and see a third force that is more encompassing than the conflicting one. It's not a compromise but a genius greater idea than either side has considered. That is where we need to start, or we bring about more acceleration of polarity and identification with it. We make a ton of messes in the world that we feel are real concerns, trying to fix problems we take sides on and don’t move to a Third Force Process. I am sorry I could not teach this to my mother back then and to my younger self. It would have meant I had learned younger and been able to apply this understanding to other domains. We all take on polarizing forms of doing and activism without consciousness or without third-force processes. We try to convince others or stop them. We thereby make the problems we seek to solve worse.