Some Thoughts About Conflict

If you’ve ever interacted with another person (I hope you have), I can confidently say that you’ve dealt with some kind of conflict. Maybe you argued with your sibling over who gets the seemingly larger piece of cookie, got upset over something that another person said about you, or had a heated argument with you friends after the test about if the answer was 2.5 or 1.25. All of these conflicts have one thing in common: they stem from our differences and need to defend our beliefs. Even though they lead to conflicts, society still values our differences because they make us unique. The more unique our beliefs are, however, the slower things get done. If there were five people on the board of an organization with distinct perspectives of an issue, nothing would get done. One person would have a belief, and another one would have a wildly different approach to the issue. If they weren’t unique, they could make a more decisive decision instead of arguing until the end of the world about how to solve the problem. We see this everyday in areas like politics or even in school when a group of students are trying to pick a topic for their project. Knowing this, I’d like to ask the following question: what’s the balance between having diversity and similarities in a positive and effective society?

While reading The Stranger, one of the details I couldn’t help but notice was how Meursault would only ever refer to Raymond’s attackers by their ethnicity. It’s quite interesting how he says “the other Arab had gotten back up and around behind the one with a knife” (Camus, 1946, p. 54), almost as if the man’s ethnicity is more important than the fact that his friend was getting attacked and could potentially be killed. One reason why this may be is something Ron Fisher calls in Sources of Conflict and Methods of Conflict Resolution “Value Conflict” where two peoples’ ideologies clash with each other which in turn causes the two people to have conflict (Fisher, 2010). An example of this would be two people who practice religions that conflict with the other one. This is applicable to this situation because in 1942, the most common religion in Algeria was Islam. On the contrary, the French who occupied it have a long history practicing Catholicism. Both communities of people have a long history of not getting along, like in the wars of The Crusades which went on for almost 200 years over these religious differences. 

Differences don’t always have to lead to conflict which is shown by Marie’s relationship with Meursault. Even though their intentions for each other are wildly different, with Marie wanting to commit to marriage with him and Meursault wanting to continue his intimate physical experiences with her, it appears like it brings Marie closer to Meursault because she finds him interesting. Another great example of how differences don’t always lead to conflict is in Wonder written by R.J. Palacio. Summer and August had one very prominent difference being the physical appearance, and despite this, they became extremely close friends with each other. The reason why these two relationships were able to form despite the obvious differences was the characters’ ability to put their differences aside to find similarities. For August and Summer, this was relating their name to the season of summer, and for Marie and Meursault, it was the physical pleasure they shared with each other. This allowed their relationships, less so for Meursault, to grow and benefit both parties.

I’m not sure it’s always possible to ignore one’s differences, despite what I’ve always been told growing up. While Julian was definitely wrong for what he did to August, it’s not difficult to understand the reason why he did what he did. Emily Prosin discusses in her paper How We See Ourselves and How We See Others how this lack of the complete picture often leads to us making biased assumptions (Pronin, 2008). In the rest of the characters’ eyes, Julian is just a bully, but they don’t know how Julian is getting night terrors because of August (even though it’s not Augusts’ fault). Like you can’t just tell someone to change their appearance, I don’t think it’s reasonable to tell Julian to just not have night terrors (although he shouldn’t have taken out his fear on August). The Chaplain is a perfect example of this in The Stranger because it’s so difficult for him to wrap his head around the fact that Meursault is refusing to choose religion. He doesn’t have the experiences that Meursault does that led him to this path.

A misconception I had until I reached high school was what ignoring differences really meant. I don’t think being open to all different views makes sense in all situations.

We often pride ourselves over being unique from one another. Heck, we just spent the past few months writing to different universities about how different and unique we are as people! After writing dozens of essay drafts trying to distinguish myself from other applicants, I’ve realized after some thought that being able to make yourself more similar to others when you are different is much more beneficial than just being different. In a lot of cases, if two people who are in a conflict are able to talk things out, it brings them even closer, like Jack and August as an example who became great friends when they were previously on bad terms after Jack apologized to August for his past actions. Society makes no progress if we continue to insist that we all have to be different from each other, but at the same time it is crucial that we all stay diverse because it gives us the opportunity to learn how to accept and work with others.

However, in more corporate environments where decisions have to be made, finding similarities is critical. The most effective companies are the ones who can unite their workers under a common goal, but a diverse perspective also allows the company to create more innovative and robust solutions. I like the way that Tom Weisner describes society as “WEIRD” (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich. Democratic) in his talk about how we are shaped by our distinct upbringings (Weisner, 2016). It’s quite profitable for a business to have workers from different upbringings because it could allow them to better understand what people want and tailor their product towards more people. They are using their differences to pursue a common goal. This need for unity is also the reason why companies cannot “talk out their differences” with others. Changing a company’s mission and vision is dangerous because you would have to rally everyone under them if you want to have an efficient business. With how common these differences are, it just isn’t worth it for companies to change their identity. 

Ultimately, I don’t think I can say that there’s a concrete answer to balancing diversity and similarity because it all comes down to context. If society can maintain understanding in their personal relationships while being able to seamlessly move to shared goals in a professional setting, we will be able to thrive and progress.