The mediation class I took back in law school had us read a book about conflict. It's called
The Anatomy of Peace.
One of the most interesting insights is what the authors called collusion: Basically, you're both inadvertently "colluding" with each other to make the situation--and your relationship with each other--worse.
A really simple example would be something like a wife nagging a husband that he comes home late, which makes him not like the wife, so he stays out later to avoid going home, which makes her dislike the husband for his absence, which makes her nag, etc.
In other words,
each person acts in a way that increases the undesirable actions (nagging, staying out late), even though they're both trying to decrease the undesirable actions.It gets a lot more complicated than that, but that's essentially how I see the left and the right right now. The divide is getting worse and worse. Racial tensions are getting worse and worse. The right hates the left because the left keeps attacking and demonizing people on the right. The left hates the right because they keep attacking and demonizing people on the left.
In every mean action, they all feel justified because the other side is the bad guys. They
deserve it.
Anyway, my point in bringing this up is that people like to punish "bad behavior" to teach that person a lesson. But when caught in a collusion, that punishment is almost always counterproductive. The right wants to teach the left a lesson by using their tactics against them: Find old tweets, get them fired. But instead of teaching them a lesson and decreasing twitter witch hunts, the right is legitimizing the tactic, solidifying it as a valid course of action.
It's just like that old lady that got punched. The black people were trying to teach her a lesson not to be racist. But more than likely, that event made her (and some observers) more racist.
People need to stop trying to teach their "enemies" lessons by attacking them, and instead try to communicate and deescalate.
I bet nachobro
hates this post.
