Dealing for years with a topic of public participation in urban planning I had lots of opportunities both to mall over and to discuss the nature of conflict. My own experience tells me that when the parties stick firmly to their opposite goals with no slightest trial to communicate and much hatred, then the situation will not be solved. Looking for solutions needs communication and dialog, which must assume some efforts on both conflicted sides. There is little good will in people who by definition assume that only their stand point is right and that their adversaries have nothing to propose. Usually such attitudes are simply fake and people who demonstrate them either belong to a party/ social group where fight is the main goal, or are simply paid for spreading their philosophy/ their views, etc.

Source of cartoon by Chris Slane: www.slane.co.nz

There is however one situation when a person becomes extremely hard to discuss with and make understand, this is the one of contesting somebody’s lifestyle. The norms which are behind the ways of life, especially when a person acts in a certain way every day, follows certain patters, become something as a second nature. The power of habit is enormous, the features which are present in people’s life persist, even when a person changes the environment and reasons for performing certain activities. The fashion plays a role here, next to the social norms present in a given society. A fear may be a part of a mechanism enforcing changes, however they would be short term in such a case, and easily rejected when the cause of fear disappears.

On the other hand, changes happen easier when groups involved feel at ease, obviously the situation opposite to the one of a conflict.  Hatred mixed with differences leads to war rather than to positive transformation. When we feel comfortable a hint from a friend and lack of pressure may help a lot, similarly as good example.

The figure below illustrates an interdependence between the compliance of goals of two parties and the level of engagement of participants. According to this theory it may be extremely difficult to achieve any kind of consensus when the engagement is high and goals are contradictory. Contrary when goals are similar and engagement remains at lower levels the chances for cooperation are much higher. Anyway the situation when goals are utterly different is rare, usually the option that both parties want something which may finally occur similar exists. Then it depends mostly on their rationality to calm down some of emotions and to look for the possibility to negotiate. War and conflict is useless, and looking at some of my friends, who used to share views and now suddenly insult each other only because of some abstract and distant political issues is kind of a shame.

On the other hand lack of resistance when a social group is attacked would cause their dilution, the refusal to accept different norms should not however take forms of hatred, as this will not help solve the problem. They say compromise is good for ‘softies’, but it does not change the situation that hatred serves no one. The mutual respect which is necessary to start solving conflict may be a necessary condition and this is why the demonstration of force happens from time to time and may be sometimes required. But still hate is just a blind path, please my dear friends, have a little sense of humour, acquire some modesty and try to communicate. Even if I am talking of utopia here, still we Polish have some round table traditions, lets make an assumption we are just good at solving things out and having this agreed would be already the very first step towards “a good change”.