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Season 2 episode 3 of the Resist + Renew podcast, where we talk about some unhelpful frames* that come up when we think about conflict.
‘Conflict may not be the choice of how you’d choose to improve relationships, but given the conflict will happen… play the hand you’re dealt’
‘We need to be in it with each other, which makes the conflict worth it’
* We give examples of different “frames” in this episode, but don’t define the term “frame” (for shame!). To plug that gap:
A frame is a lens you look through to see the world. When looking at conflict through the frame of essentialism, you will see people who do bad things as inherently bad people. Frames will always highlight some things (‘they did something I didn’t like, so they must be a bad person’) and hide others (e.g. questioning what could have led them to act the way they did).
No frame is an accurate summary of the world. To adapt a phrase we’ve alluded to before, “all frames are wrong but some are useful”. A few other ways of thinking about it:
- “mental structures that shape the way we see the world” (George Lakoff)
- “The frame around a painting or photo can be thought of as a boundary between what has been left in and what has been left out. Each of the elements placed inside the frame is significant, and makes a difference to the meaning of the piece.” (Common Cause)
Show notes, links
A very condensed summary of what we talked about:
- How we think and feel about conflict is shaped by our histories, our society, our traditions
- People often don’t consciously know what these ‘norms’ around conflict are, though they can affect how we act, how we approach conflict — and as they sometimes make us act out of line with our values
And the zine that was mentioned was “You can’t blow up a social relationship”.
Perennial resources:
- our sister facilitation collective Navigate have a conflict facilitation booklet (from back when they were called Seeds For Change Oxford).
- See our “What is facilitation?” podcast episode page for more general facilitation resources.
Transcript
ALI
This is Resist + Renew,
KATHERINE
the UK based podcast about social movements,
SAMI
what we’re fighting for, why and how it all happens.
ALI
The hosts of the show are
KATHERINE
Me, Kat.
SAMI
Me, Sami,
ALI
and me, Ali.
SAMI
I’m recording this now, baby!
ALI
Shit, it’s a podcast!
KATHERINE
Welcome to the second episode of the Resist+Renew Season Two toolbox.
Last time we talked about conflict in general, we talked about how we three feel about it: as facilitators, as people in groups, as people. We talked a bit about what we’re going to cover in the toolbox this season. And we also had some introduction to what we mean by conflict, and and some of the ideas that we’re, sort of, using throughout this toolkit to shape our thinking.
In this episode, we’re gonna do a deeper dive here on ideas that people often have about conflict, and why they might not be so great. Sami, do you wanna tell us more about that?
SAMI
Sure, yeah. So I guess, maybe we can start by just, like, putting forward some like, axioms or assumptions, I guess, about, like, conflict and our thoughts around it, just to make sure we’re all starting from the same page.
So one is that like, and we touched on this a lot in the last chat, like how we think and feel about conflict is shaped by our histories, the society we live in, cultures, internal norms, assumptions, all these kinds of things. Like, there’s a hodgepodge of different different things that go into that mix of how we think about conflicts and how we interact with conflict. And what that means in practice, is that the ways in which we interact with conflict will be like shaped by a lot of that stuff, but, because a lot of these things are like societal norms, or maybe like unspoken norms and groups, they’re not always norms that we’re aware of affecting our behaviour.
So I guess that’s partly why we want to spend some time on it today, like, to draw out and make explicit, bring into the spotlight some of these norms, so that people can listen and be like, Oh, yeah, I definitely, I feel that thing. I feel those totalizing feelings, or whatever, I guess we’ll see. Let’s talk about what the things are.
And like, and so those things will… And I guess the third, maybe like assumption-y type thing, axiom-y type thing is that like, these ideas, and these norms can often be the causes of why how people think they should act when they’re in conflict, and how people actually do act when they’re in conflict, don’t match up. And so what we want to do now is spend some time thinking of like, some of those assumptions, some of those norms, some of those frames, and like what they can mean, in practice.
ALI
I guess I can go. I feel feel very, feels like a very philosophical thought experiment-menty thing: axiom! Such a big word.
SAMI
[Laughs] It’s because I’m a mathematician, I always talk like, I’m a mathematician, I try and hide it normally. It’s always that or –
ALI
What are our base assumptions here? Yeah, I can go first.
So, one idea that I am definitely guilty of bringing into conflict. Or one thing, an idea I have around conflict, which shows up is conflating the idea that people doing something I don’t like, something that’s bad, makes them a bad person. And that is a bit of a sneaky shift. I feel like it’s like, definitely, I definitely, like don’t see it, and then I catch it later, where like, oh, wait, I’m deeply deeply annoyed with this person. And it’s gone way beyond like, what they actually did.
But I’m like, just seeing them as like, grrrrr, I’m so annoyed with you. And yeah, I guess, what that does. What’s the impact of that kind of assumption? And thought is: it doesn’t give me much like, empathy for like, some of the understanding of like, why they might have done some things and it doesn’t give me much, like, motivation to, like, engage with them as a person. Because I’m like, ‘Well, they’re just bad. So: write them off’-kind of thing. And I, it when I catch myself doing that, I have to, like, do some, like, unpacking of that in my own head and like being like, okay, is that true? No, it’s not. What else could have been going on here? Do, maybe go back to that, like, conflict iceberg model we brought back in season one and be like, ‘Okay, I can see those positions are really separate and, like, why’s that pissed me off so much? What might have been driving them?’ And like, just do some of that in my own head and like, I can feel, like, a shift in my own self being like, ‘Okay, I feel like I’ve got a bit more space now, now that I’m moving away from them being an inherently bad person. Now I might have a bit of space to talk to them.’ But if I don’t do that unpacking, then I’m not very, like, open to dialogue in that sense. So, yeah.
KATHERINE
Can I jump in with a question? I’m just a bit curious about something you said. Like how, when you said, you catch yourself, I’m really interested in that, because it feels like once you’ve caught yourself, and you’re then doing that work of like, dialling yourself back from the narratives around them being a bad person and trying to build in that empathy. That’s like, really great. But I’m wondering like, what is the the work of catching yourself? Like, how do you notice that that’s what you’re doing? Or how do you help yourself shift? Because I find when I’m in that place, I get so stuck in the ‘rrrrrrr,’ that it’s really difficult. I don’t want to be moved out of it, I kind of am holding it just for holding it. So yeah, I’m wondering if you can share just a bit about how you do that shift.
ALI
So: one of the ways that I noticed this recently was thinking about like, nervous system reactions, and like, the defaults between like, fight, flight, freeze, dissociate, and all that kind of stuff. And like how those are tied with responses to conflict. And like, my initial one is like a Freezie, one of like, ‘Oh, God,’ rabbit in the headlights-kind of thing. ‘This is a bit scary.’
And then I can feel myself, if I go past that (I don’t always go past that). Then I go to, like, a Fight. And I’m like, ‘Fuck that guy!’ And it’s usually, like, a bodily sensation. And like, ‘Wait, that’s, that’s different from what it was before.’ And like noticing the internal state around things can, that can be a catching moment, as well. But it doesn’t always happen that quickly. And sometimes, I can hold those thoughts for… a long time! [Laughs]
SAMI
So one of the one of the lessons to take away from this conversation: Just because we’re giving a series of talks on conflict, doesn’t mean we’re all saints. [Laughs] Which I think we said at the start, but we should probably just keep saying again and again, in conversations. I think that was really useful Ali. Did you have anything else to say on that?
ALI
I don’t think so.
SAMI
Because I’ve got a different one that I want to throw in. Okay, cool.
So, another idea that I think can play out a lot is this frame that conflict is a zero sum thing. So meaning, like, conflict is a thing, if there’s two people that are, like, in conflict, or whatever, one of them will win, and one of them will lose, and that will be the outcome of the conflict, that will be the conclusion.
And I think there’s a few things that that, like, foregrounds, and the few things that like hi- like a few things, that highlights in a few things that hides. I think there’s something in that idea of like, it being zero sum i.e. ‘There is one winner and one loser.’ I think often means is that that’s a thing that can lead to like, Well, I think this other person has, like, won this conflict in the sense of like, people are looking on them positively and think that they did the right thing in the situation or whatever. And that means, therefore I must have done the wrong thing. Because if other people are seeing them as the winner, that means I must be the loser. And that kind of dynamic, I think can be like a really powerful internal narrative. But that often lends itself to that kind of like tit-for-tat-y, like, ‘Oh, well, I don’t want to make sh- I don’t want them to come out of this well at all, because that means I’ll be the loser. So I want to make sure that they’re the loser so that that means I win.’ Even if what you’re doing is cutting off your nose to spite your face. [Laughs] And you’re not like actually doing something that benefits yourself at all.
And I think it’s that kind of. like, winner/loser mindset. Like, I think we plan, we’re going to talk about this, again, in the future in a little bit of a thing, but like I think it does stem from that, like, societal punitive approaches to justice type thing, of like, there’s something really in that around, it lends itself to quite a fact-finding thing of like, what like, ‘What’s the right evidence that we can find that shows that I am the correct person in the situation that shows that I should be the person that should like win this conflict.’ And that often can lend itself to a very, like, ‘Well, you did this first and then I did that and then bla bla bla bla’-type thing, which sometimes is helpful in these kind of like group conflicts, but often isn’t, like. And often just leads to you like treading the same ground but not necessarily making much progress and not it’s not really beneficial for anybody that’s involved. And I think lends itself better to certain types of people than others, like people who can like keep calm and remember details and all this kind of thing, which I say because I can’t keep calm and I remember very few details. [Laughs] I remember vibes of things.
And so like, that’s definitely a feeling that I have a lot in those kind of discussions. And I think probably the main flaw of it is like, it hides the fact that like, everybody could benefit like everybody, there could be a positive outcome for everybody from a conflict, even if it’s not necessarily, like, your preferred way of getting to the positive outcome, like, start with where you are. And it could be that, like, the process of having these discussions and like, it’s definitely a thing that, that I always think about it as like a relationship thing, like, like a romantic relationship thing, like having arguments with your partner. It’s rarely a pleasant experience at the time, but then, if handled well can lead itself to be like, ‘Okay, well, we really clashed about that thing, like what was going on?’ and we can have a chat and then like, you can like really help deepen the relationship or through help move you to a better place, or that kind of thing. So like, I think it really hides that fact that like, like conflict may not be the choice of how you’d choose to improve relationships. But given that conflict will happen, it is potentially a thing that can be used in that like, shape, change, deal with deal the hand you got… what’s the phrase? play the heart, your play the hand you’re dealt! That’s the card phrase! Play the hand you’re dealt, there you go. Smooth.
ALI
Nice. Can I come in on that? I feel like there was two thoughts which came up for me. One was the fact-findy-y proof, ‘prove your case’ kind of thing. It feels kind of legalistically. And it feels like it fits with like, potentially certain like, personality traits, or even like identities, which are more mainstream.
SAMI
[affirming agreement sound]
ALI
It’s like, confident speakers. And yeah, like people who remain calm, and not people who get emotional about things, and not people who like, express feelings, rather than facts. Tends to be like a certain type of person and not other kinds of persons. And that’s kind of bad.
SAMI
Yeah, and I think there is something really in that, like, I think one of the like, one of the like, it’s like English-y framings around conflict is like, ‘If you’re a person that expresses feelings, then you are the person that loses the conflict.’ Like there’s that real, like, bullshit debate culture thing of like, ‘this is just a rational, like marketplace of ideas, man’-type thing. And I think that, that is most often the, that’s the one that I hit up against the most because like, I am not a person that is great at having a dispassionate conversation about something that I’m passionate about. Like it’s, it’s, it’s a thing, which I really, I find difficult. And I’m passionate about loads of things. So it comes up a lot. And so like, it’s, there’s a real power that can come in like a lot of the norms. In our in like a lot of spaces, I think a lot of like more mainstream spaces, a lot of more mainstreamed behaviours around, like, dealing with things like rationally and coolly and not having emotions, and how any emotion will immediately write off what you say, that I think, yeah, there definitely feels like there’s a crossover there.
ALI
Yeah. And there was another thought I was gonna have as well, which was: I feel like this like ‘zero sum’ way of thinking about conflict fits really well with groups and urgency, because it’s when it’s like, a conflict about what we do. And ‘what we do’ has to be done really quickly. It’s like, do this action! do this, like, event! Do it now because the crisis is happening right now!
It often is kind of zero sum in within the, within the amount of time available, even though that’s totally not the case in reality, like you can slow down and look at things and see how everyone’s needs can be met, and everyone’s ideas could be taken into account. But it just can’t be done that quickly. And if everyone is like running, running, running
KATHERINE
Mm-hmm.
ALI
To get the thing done, then people tend to get left by the wayside. And that’s
SAMI
Yeah, for sure.
ALI
That’s not great.
KATHERINE
Yeah, absolutely. I feel like that kind of brings into the next one. I don’t know if that was, you’re done on that one, Sami? Okay. Yeah.
So I feel like there’s another, another thing that I see in groups and experience a lot of myself around like this focus on Getting Things Done. And there’s this sense of like, often as as groups who are organising for social justice, or climate justice, or whatever we’re organising for, and there is like this sense of the Real Work is the Organising, and we’ve got to get it done. And it needs to be done a really long time ago because these harms are happening and we’ve got to get it done. And we do have to get it done. And also when we’re trying to get it done, we don’t always agree with each other. And sometimes we create harm in the process. But because of this urgency and because of the sense of what we’ve gathered together to do is often outward focusing and needs to get done, it’s a sense that conflict or having feelings about what’s happening is a distraction or a waste of time. And if you try and raise something, you’re seen as, like, disrupting the purpose of the group in some way, and can be shamed for that, can be told that there’s not enough time and to like, Wait, or to just not bring it at all. And it can really silence, the desire to bring, to bring difference, to bring challenge to bring feelings, to bring opposition, maybe to what’s happening. And in the sense of like, ‘everything’s got to happen really fast.’ We’re also often I often find I’m, like, get super stressed, which makes me more likely to have conflicts and more likely to notice when things aren’t okay, because I’m, like, more raw at the edges. But if we’re then in a space where there’s no time, or it’s seen as a distraction, it can make it really hard to raise up stuff that can be in service of the group. And of what we’re trying to do, but is seen as as not helpful.
And, yeah, I feel really stuck with this one actually, like in general of like, when there is like, a need to be doing this work and a need to get this work done. How conflict can be seen as like a generative, necessary part of the work, not something that is like a distraction or a waste of time, or taking away from the main focus when everyone feels like or seems to be very strung out. And it’s this sort of balance of: how do you weave in conflict, almost like it’s just a normal part of the process. And I wonder if it’s because perhaps in my head, I see conflict as like something that is a bit scary and happens, like when things are really bad. That’s when we get in the like, ‘waste of time’ frame. And if it was like, ‘This is just something that’s always going to be part of how we work. It’s not a waste of time, it’s part of it,’ it would feel very different. Yeah, bit stuck with that one.
SAMI
If I can come in on that, I think there’s, there was a session that myself and Ali were running the other day. And I think one of the one, that like basically, the first point, I think we made about conflicts, maybe in the whole session was basically like, conflict is normal. [Laughs] Like, and like, then a lot of the other stuff followed on from that. And I think that’s what, what, what feels like, like a really crucial part of that. And I think what, where the difficulty comes in and maybe could be linked to the feelings of being stuck is around like, I think often, like, it’s, it’s easy to think. Or probably if you’re listening to this conversation, like it’s easy to think like, ‘Oh, yeah, like, I’d really like to be in a space where like, conflict feels generative, and like, it can really help improve relationships, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.’ And I guess the difficulty is like, that is a that is a cultural attitude that is a, like, social norm within a space around conflict and what it is, that is linked to a set of values that’s like: care is important and things like that. And, like, if what you if the problem that you’re facing is like, people don’t live those values in the same way, and people basically like, bluntly, often don’t think that care is important enough to potentially postpone other work and things like that. Like, it’s not like, ‘Oh, it’s fine, we’ll just do a check in at the start of a meeting. And then magically, everything will be okay.’ Like it’s a it’s a cultural shift that has all the difficulties of a cultural shift in that, like, it’s not just like, ‘Oh, I’ve got to institute this ritual, and then it will be fine.’ You’re like shifting, there’s so many bits in terms of how people interact in and out the space and all those kinds of things. It’s it’s like, it’s a big, it’s not a it’s not a small shift, though. It’s a small shift to describe a sort of small shift to do, I guess.
ALI
Yeah. And I guess what comes up for me around that is the urgency piece and like, how, how people think about social change, and how like: ‘When is it going to happen? When are we going to have won?’ Like, if you think we’re going to win in the next year, then sure, let’s throw, throw everything at it. And we’ll deal with it after “the revolution”, which is just such a bullshit idea.
But if we think we’re gonna win in like 50, 100, 200 years, we need to we need to be in it with each other the whole time. And like, that makes the conflict worth it. And like going through it worth it if we’re going to be working with each other for like, the rest of our lives because we won’t have like, transformed everything by the time I’m dead. So yeah I think like holding that in mind, probably, for me gives a different framing around like, the time and the effort required.
SAMI
It’s the classic prefigurative politics line, right? Like, the, your, your means should be your ends in practice, you’re not just trying to achieve distant goals. You’re trying to, like you’re trying to do stuff in a way that is not shit to get to a place that is not shit. Like, and that is I mean, I have a better vision than things not being shit. But you get the gist. Like, and I think that’s like we’re in it for the long haul. I feel like it’s a phrase that comes up a lot in like the groups that I’m in, and that kind of stuff. And I feel like that idea Yeah, is so central
ALI
Anarchy 101
SAMI
[Laughs] We should write a zine.
ALI
Is there any kind of chat that can link these things together? Any other thoughts that sparking off these other things before we wrap up?
KATHERINE
For me, there’s like something linking around, like, what you were talking about before Ali around the body experience. And this idea, you were just talking about Sami around, like the cultural practices of a group, and how like, our bodies can get used to experiencing conflict and being in relationships of care with each other over time. And I feel like because many of us don’t necessarily have, like, great experiences of conflict in groups, or don’t experience like good practices of collective care in groups… Some of us do and it’s amazing, but not everybody has that. And so it’s like, how do our bodies get into a state where it’s like, I’m okay, here, I can like be in this and I can have the bandwidth to stretch to, to meet these conflicts as they come in the moment. And I can notice in my body when I’m freezing, and I can, like, do some work on that helps me shift into a place where I can meet whatever’s coming.
It feels like they, they’re sort of cross weaving into like, practising like, we might not get it like in the next meeting, or the next one or the next one. But it’s like this constant going towards trying out these new prefigurative other ways of being with each other and with ourselves in these maybe difficult spaces.
ALI
Yeah, that makes me think of what Sami was saying around cultural shift. Like, a cultural shift is not just like an intellectual idea that we like, now believe in transformative justice or whatever. They are ideas, they are, like, values that we have to think about and change in our minds, but also are baked into our bodies through like, living in these societies. And, like the somatic course I did with the Strozzi Institute, the one the way that they phrase ‘embodied’, when something is embodied, is like you’ve practised it so many times that even under stress, you react the way you want to do rather than the way that you’ve been acculturated.
SAMI
Acculturated, is that a word?
ALI
Acculturated.
KATHERINE
Yeah.
ALI
Who knows. The way that you’ve been trained through society. So yeah, that’s, that’s really helpful, links hose two pieces together.
SAMI
Yeah, I think there is something around and I guess this is where it comes to like, like, our politics coming into our approach, right? Like, there’s, there’s a zine, there’s about a different thing that I read ages ago. And that’s about like, like political terrorism, and, like, blowing shit up and stuff like that. But it’s got the really good name, of ‘You Can’t Blow Up a Social Relationship.’ Which I think is, it’s a phrase I think a lot when we’re talking about things like this for different reasons to how they intended it. It’s like, when it comes to these kind of like, these practices are maintained through the network of how we all interact with each other as individuals and collectively.
And that’s not a thing which you can just be like: Bam! We’re doing something different today! And then it magically goes different, like, exactly, like it’s a collective – exactly! Safer spaces policies: an episode coming up later. But we’ve got like, it’s it’s that you it’s a practice that is inherently collective. And like you were saying, Katherine, like you can do individual reflections and obviously, like you like you are, you’re a node in that web, right? So like, there’s always stuff that you can do independently. But it’s never a thing that you can do solely independently, like it is an inherently collective endeavour, like, shifting group cultures.
And when people try and do it on their own, often tends to be when people lose their minds, in groups and like really work to the bone trying to like, drag a horse to water or whatever the relevant idiom would be?
ALI
Nice. Cool. I think we’re kind of okay to wrap things up here. We had, like, some bullet points of what we wanted to talk to you about. And then I feel like this conversation has, like, spiralled in a really like, generative way. And yeah, it’s been really fun to like, see how there’s links go-going on and I’ve enjoyed it. The main point we wanted to, started off thinking about was like: the ideas that we have in our heads, known or unknown, are going to impact how we think about conflict.
And where we kind of left, ended up is like: shifting those ideas is a cultural and embodied practice. And that’s really hard. So we got to keep working on it. Little by little through practice and through listening to all these episodes.
SAMI
[laughs] Great plug. Great plug.
ALI
They’re already listening, so it doesn’t really work.
[all laugh]
ALI
The end!
KATHERINE
Great.
SAMI
Peace out everyone. Bye.
ALI
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Resist+Renew podcast. As ever, thanks to Klaus for letting us use this song Neff for the backing track. If you want to find out more about Resist + Renew as a training collective, check out our website, resistrenew.com. There’s also transcripts of all the other podcast episodes there. And we’re on all the other socials so you can follow us and do all that jazz.
We’re also on Patreon – patreon.com/resistrenew. So if you want to send us some money to support the production of this podcast, please do so there. And that’s it for this week. So: thanks so much and catch you next time. Bye bye.