When the Node E makes a contact (SPARŚA) with the Bayesian Engine, it leads to the feeling (VEDAN), which is equivalent to Node S, of that contact as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Then, Node S leads to Node I (SAJÑ) when prior models are used to make predictions of the events; the predictions cause Node A to act to interact with the events, so Node A is a conditioning factor or volitional action (SARA). In this process, consciousness emerges when the top-down model (Node I) interacts with the bottom-up data (encoded in Nodes S and A) (He and Raichle, 2009; Bachmann and Hudetz, 2014). It is important to note that mental awareness is one of six kinds of consciousnesses, in addition to five sense consciousness, i.e., vision, audition, olfaction, gustation, and bodily senses, which are afforded by different organs in the body (Tenzin Gyatso, 2020).
It challenges us to become the kind of person who can remain grounded under pressure and connected under strain. And clarity is essential if we want to move from reactivity to mindful resolution. Compassion in conflict isn’t just about how you treat your partner—it’s also about how you treat yourself. If you said something you regret, acknowledge it and offer yourself grace. If you find these skills hard to use in the moment, remember that change takes practice. At this summer camp, youth from conflict zones—such as Israelis and Palestinians, Indians and Pakistanis, and others from areas marked by long-standing violence—come together not as enemies, but as teenagers.
We can start by noting that organisms evolve because they confront and adapt to the two challenges of life of survival and reproduction (Buss, 2019; Workman et al., 2020). These challenges give rise to all living things that face three basic life tasks. They have to be able to identify and defend themselves against threats in their domain of existence.
In these groups, individualistic, self-focus, and self-promoting control and hold strategies (trying to secure and accumulate more than others) were shunned and shamed. These caring and sharing hunter-gatherer lifestyles also created the social contexts for the evolution of new forms of childcare and complex human competencies for language, reasoning, planning, empathy, and self-awareness. As a result of our new ‘intelligence’, our ancestors developed agriculture that reduced mobility, increased group size, resource availability and storage, and resource competition. These re-introduced competing for, rather than sharing of, resources and advantaged those who now pursue (often aggressively) control and hold strategies. Many of our most typical forms of oppressive and anti-compassionate behavior are the result of these strategies.
Evidence suggests that humans adapted their physiological and cognitive systems for extended and extensive parent-infant caring (Hrdy, 2009) and these became a template for a range of social relationships, particularly in small groups. While caring and sharing in hunter-gatherer societies had a number of sources including conflict resolution and prevention, compassion as “the desire to intentionally help others in need and care for them” was certainly one of them (Spikins, 2015, 2017; Kessler, 2020). The basis of this is partly because the same hormones and patterns in the autonomic system underpin all forms of caring. Indeed, many argue that we are hard-wired for caring and sharing even, in certain contexts, with strangers (Keltner et al., 2014); that our basic nature is caring and sharing (Ricard, 2015). This was partly honed in hunter-gatherer groups where it works well and is a source of joy, social safeness and meaning. We can plot the genetics, epigenetics, physiologies, and brain patterns of caring and how caring became the rich textures for compassion.
This pause gives you the opportunity to choose compassionate actions rather than impulsive defensiveness. Resolving conflicts compassionately helps maintain positive long-term relationships. It prevents resentment from festering under unresolved wounds and creates a pattern of respectful interaction that can handle future disagreements constructively.
The reactions to the events from Node E pre-occupy P1’s Nodes S, A, and I at the expense of actual attunement to P2’s Bayesian Engine, manifesting as an ego-preserving bias. The obscuration of P1’s Bayesian Engine is denoted by the other person P2 who is excluded from P1’s sample space. Due to the conflicts that are not constructively reduced by the obscured Bayesian Engine, excessive free energy ensues and results in chronic stress.
This is often testing, especially when what they say differs fundamentally from how we view the World or the things that they have done have profoundly wounded us in some way. Essentially, it takes self-accountability and awareness and whilst I can’t promise that you’ll get it right in every conflict, I can give you some tips on how you can use empathy and compassion to resolve and prevent conflict. This flash of vulnerability made me connect with his loss and empathise with his sadness and anger. I apologised after a long pause, offered my condolences and he suggested that I try a different computer with a better connection.
For example, some individuals are brilliant scientists, but are very poor at empathy. Indeed, talented scientists or business people can also be somewhat lacking in empathy or be on what is called the Asperger’s spectrum, which has implications for how they understand social needs (Baron-Cohen, 2011, 2020). Others can have excellent empathy skills, but they will never be able to win a Nobel Prize for physics, be entrepreneurs or make good politicians.
It’s all well and good to point a finger at terrorists or fundamentalists or the target du jour. Inconveniently, our natural inclination when we feel the sting of conflict is to outsource the blame, making it impossible to get the lesson and move on. Dialogue defines issues and solutions collaboratively and searches for ways of making them acceptable to all parties. Debate is a circular process, in which opponents argue and disagree with each other and are more interested in demonstrating that they are right than they are in discovering the truth. In dialogue, truths emerge not from one side winning and the other losing, but from both sides explaining their different perspectives, identifying the meaning of their disagreements and searching for solutions that satisfy their underlying interests….
Many of the major problems that humans have with each other are precisely because we treat “the other” as a resource to fulfil our wants and needs or as a threat. The Vikings and Romans had a flourishing slave trade, as did the Chinese who used them to build their walls, and the Egyptians who used them to build pyramids. In all these societies, little attention was given to the plight or suffering of slaves or the less fortunate because the empathy and caring systems in the brain, necessary for that, are switched off in favor of control and hold shaping phenotypes. Again and again, we see that it is the culture that is regulating the brain and its phenotypes. Different strategies will recognize different threats to their enactments. The threats in agricultural-based, high resource-storing environments, with individuals pursuing competitive resource control and hold strategies are quite different from the threats in hunter-gatherer societies.
Mike and Nancy have been married for seven years and have lived together for nearly ten. Their home is understandably chaotic, but one issue has become a particularly sore spot, namely Mike’s messiness. Overcoming these challenges requires patience, practice, and sometimes external support such as mediation or counseling. People’s stated positions (“I want X”) often mask underlying needs (“I need respect”). Identifying needs creates common ground for solutions that satisfy both parties.
Develop Emotional Intelligence
After resolving conflicts, follow up with each party involved to ensure that all voices feel heard and validated throughout the process. Checking in demonstrates ongoing care for one another’s well-being beyond mere resolution. Recognize your own emotional triggers before entering into conflict discussions. Being aware of potential reactions allows you to respond mindfully rather than react impulsively, maintaining an atmosphere conducive to compassionate dialogue. Compassion helps you stay calm and focused on resolving the issue at hand. While empathy can sometimes trap you in an emotional loop, compassion allows you to say, “I see you’re hurt, and I want to work together to find a solution.” This keeps the conversation productive and solution-focused.
Kasser (2016) sums up some of the key findings about the problems of materialism in his important paper. Table 1 brings together some of the themes addressed above in terms of how different strategies organize the brain. Of course, minds do not operate Lego-like systems but complex networks of dissipated circuits that produce patterns of electrochemical activity underpinning motives and behaviors. Hence, it is preferable to think of these as multiple dimensions that we can all move along to some degree according to context and life stresses.
We consider that our first hypothesis lies in the scope of the second Noble Truths, and our second hypothesis in the scope of the fourth Noble Truths. Conflict resolution requires time and patience; rushing through discussions often leads to unresolved issues resurfacing later. Allow ample time for reflection before re-engaging if necessary—this helps prevent escalation during heated exchanges. Shift the focus from assigning blame to identifying solutions collectively.
- The theme became “less is best” and the promotion of enterprise by facilitating “controlling and holding” onto the fruits of one’s enterprise.
- The caring social mentality (to provide care and support and be responsive to the needs of others) has been evolving over hundreds of millions of years, traceable in many ancient species and with the lineage of physiological processes increasingly well understood.
- Consider starting conversations with affirmations of mutual respect and a shared goal of resolution rather than blame or defensiveness.
- While caring and sharing in hunter-gatherer societies had a number of sources including conflict resolution and prevention, compassion as “the desire to intentionally help others in need and care for them” was certainly one of them (Spikins, 2015, 2017; Kessler, 2020).
Focus On Common Goals
In the case of sheep, for example, it can be very difficult to get a mother to adopt an orphan. While adoption does occur in mammalian species, it is rare; humans, who foster and carry out other forms of caring, are exceptional in this regard (Spikins, 2015). The evolution of the genetics of caring predisposes us to focus on those closest to us. For example, imagine we go to maternity to have our baby delivered and they take our baby away to weigh it and come back and say, “we have some good news and some bad news.” The bad news is we have lost the name tags and are not sure whose baby belongs to which parents.
Today, we are still exploring the important role fathers have on child maturation. The idea that a male should be absent for most of a child’s upbringing, returning home from an office tired and grumpy to an isolated mother and child, is a gross abnormality (Narvaez, 2020). For some fathers, COVID lockdown has given them new opportunities to interact with children and discover new ways of relating. The domain of knowing intentionality, however, is also tricky because many of the reasons we behave in the ways that we do are partly unconscious (Huang and Bargh, 2014; Bargh, 2017). Nonetheless, humans do have opportunities to gain insight into the nature of “mind” (Baron-Cohen, 2011; Siegel, 2016) and then choose to develop compassion motives and a compassionate identity; to live to be helpful, not harmful (Dalai Lama, 1995; Gilbert, 2009; Ricard, 2015).
The Importance Of Compassion In Conflict Resolution
Future research is required to https://themeetheage.com study the effects of Buddhism-derived compassion trainings on conflict resolution. Compassionate empathy creates an environment where individuals feel heard and validated. When one party acknowledges the emotions and experiences of another, it fosters understanding and reduces defensiveness. In this space, both parties are more likely to share their thoughts and feelings openly, paving the way for meaningful dialogue.
Hormones such as oxytocin and vasopressin and a range of physiological changes such as to the autonomic nervous system and frontal cortex evolved with, and tune us into caring behavior (Porges, 2007, 2017; Mayseless, 2016; Carter et al., 2017). In addition, caring and sharing became the central social discourse in hunter-gatherer societies as a resource distribution strategy. In this social environment the phenotype for caring possibly became more flexible and variable and extended to the wider social relationships in which individuals matured (Spikins, 2015, 2017).
This stage is powerful because it shifts us out of blame and into responsibility. Not responsibility for the conflict, but responsibility for our inner world, for our feelings, triggers, narratives, and behaviors. Empathy becomes particularly challenging when we encounter individuals or groups who hold prejudiced views or actively perpetuate harm against marginalized communities. Their disdain may manifest as microaggressions, overt discrimination, or even violence.