Introduction
While life is filled with millions of varied conflicts and disputes – from small and insignificant to that of national importance (heavy pun intended), it is hard to recall them at a time when it is needed the most – thanks to the universal ailment called “memory lapse”.
After a lot of thought, recall and dismissal of many conflicts and disputes the author had endured, he finally ended up on national importance. Hailing from India and being part of a “upper caste”[1] community, the author was rolling in “privileges”. The author, not realizing that these are “given advantages”, grew up in bliss – ridiculing and shaming folks who were neither from his community nor had enjoyed the benefits the author had. While this may seem to be too much information, it needs to be expressed to lay a foundation for this essay. The author’s perception of world changed after he moved to the Americas. Where due to the varied reading avenues[2] and experiences, he gained a better foothold on the intricacies that bind and divide societies and explored the world of philosophy and law. While that, the author also made a series of assumptions in generalising that his realization may also pave the way for others if they are enlightened (not to be confused with being “woke”) or at least provided with options to be educated in aspects they had never experienced before. While correlation may not necessarily mean causation, the situation the author faced seems to be a causation: Starting from 2014 or thereabouts, the author started to lose friends and relatives slowly, but steadily. The reason: Politically motivated divisiveness and disagreements. This essay will explore the conflicts and disputes that occurred on an online platform and opine on the possible root cause(s) and if adopting the lessons learnt from the class would have taken the author on a different course and not lose his friends and relatives.
Conflicts and Disputes
While many parts of the world were working towards a dictatorship and authoritarian regime, the Indian polity took a turn and thought “why not?!” It was a pent-up, knee-jerk reaction by the majority community in India to vote up and nominate a notorious person as a leader of the nation[3]. In any event, this essay is not going to explore those unfortunate events.
The author, through an online platform, started to express displeasure with the new government and alienated some of his closest friends and relatives – who did not expect someone of the author’s nature to either express or show displeasure or a combination of both to their (our?) beloved party and leader. The conflict was purely ideological in nature, which evolved to a level of an aggressive dispute because it was targeted and defined.
The nature of discussion and arguments threads were predominantly mocking and belittling in nature. Either targeted at the author or at a minority community. The author, having no previous experience in better handling of disputes went low-down and towed the line set up his friends, that is: took route of ridiculing and mocking the opponent. His vice overpowered his good learnings about “an eye for eye makes the whole world blind”. His only motive was to emphasize that he was correct, and the others were wrong without giving a thought that the opposite desired the same. Flared up emotions and position were placed before objectives and common interests, thus no avenues were explored or given options to explore to resolve the dispute. The idea was never to resolve the dispute in an amicable manner; it was more about whose ego was better or hurt. In the heat of the moment, one would care less about friends and relatives than their own ego. If only the author had the experience, time and knew better – he wouldn’t have indulged in such a dismissive act and lost; not the argument but his close friends and relatives.
Could things have been done differently?
Possibly. Employing the learning from the class, on could have approached the online discussions objectively by setting up issues, interests, and exploring solutions mutually.
First, was it prudent to have a face-less discussion? When discussions and arguments are exclusively done through a text medium, how effective are we in communicating our emotions? We as humans (of the older generation) may not have evolved yet to incorporate emotions in our text – there may come a time in future when we can.
Second, objectively assess to what level we must oscillate or nudge so that we do not harm our relations. That is, rationally think if it is worth losing kith and kin for an issue at hand. Is the issue more of a global good in losing your close circle?
Third, flip the role and play their card and see their point of view, though may not be possible to entirely play the role – it would at least give one some insight as to how you would play yourself.
Fourth, giving yourself time to frame proper arguments and questions that are emotion-removed and objective.
Fifth, don’t give in to attacks of any kind. Taking a step back and realising them as baits, will open space for new avenues to argue about.
Finally, realising that the disputes and conflicts are necessary for a healthy functioning of a society to thrive and simultaneously communicating it to the opponent will drive home that both of us are to set aside our personal agenda, and deal with a common resolution for the problem at hand.
Conclusion
While in hindsight it looks very simple to realize that following these powerful, rational aspects of ADR toolkit will yield a rich, probabilistic solution experience, it remains to be seen if in the heat of the moment one can remove themselves from the current reality and objectively assess the situation and work towards an amicable solution. Well, time being the healer and teacher, one can most definitely work towards such a noble aspiration!
If not now, then when?
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