Don’t avoid conflict - be creative with it, multiply the options. How many ways can two children deal with one orange?
We were delighted that one of our favourite sources for futures thinking, Andrew Curry’s Just Two Things, ran an item on the importance of Johan Galtung’s approach to conflict transformation. Our founder and co-initiator Indra Adnan has long engaged with Galtung’s approach. We can certainly draw again from his wisdom in this polarised and conflictual moment.
Andrew points to the blog below, as it lays out one of Galtung’s classic exercises - two children and an orange. How many ways can they deal with this piece of fruit?
April Ward:
Conflict is bad.
No, conflict is good.
The answer? Conflict is normal – sometimes it is even important.
So, what is conflict? Conflict can be defined in different ways, but a simple explanation is that conflict occurs when you desire something that seems to be the opposite of what someone else desires.
For instance, conflict will almost undoubtedly happen any time there is a desire for change in a society, Why? Because while many may want change, someone else is out there enjoying life the way it is and doesn’t think change is necessary or feels that change will destroy their way of life. Who’s right? Perhaps one party, perhaps no parties, perhaps parts of both parties.
The problem with conflict is that it often becomes violent, and this is where the negative associations with conflict arise. This potential for violence leads some to believe that it’s best to simply avoid conflict, and avoidance is a tactic many use in their personal lives.
The difficulty here is that, by avoiding conflict, you aren’t dealing with the problem at hand. If the problem involves an injustice then avoiding conflict means accepting an unjust world. Do we want to accept injustice as the status quo?
So the trick with conflict is to figure out how an individual or a society should address the problem (by entering into conflict) and also avoid the eruption of violence.
Good news. If your overall strategy is to resolve the conflict non-violently then you can learn tactics for becoming better at peacefully addressing conflictual issues both in your personal life and as part of society.
One tactic is understanding conflict better and expanding one’s imagination of possible solutions to conflict. Do the following exercise in your head or with friends, family, or colleagues.
Conflict scenario 1: The Orange dilemma
Imagine a table. On that table is one orange. Sitting at the table are two children.What happens to the orange?
Write up, or think up a list of all the possibilities you can imagine (the good, bad,and the ugly). How many answers did you come up with?
This example comes from a short manual called Conflict Transformation by Peaceful Means (the Transcend Method) and was published by the United Nations in 1998 as part of their disaster management training programme.
The author, Johan Galtung, suggests there are at least 16 responses possible tothis orange dilemma (I counted 14). How many did you get?
I’ve run this exercise informally on several occasions with my family and friends.I’d say the average responses vary from 2 or 3 to maximum 8ish. While the list isn’t exhaustive, here are the 16 different responses that the author - an expert in conflict resolution - came up with.
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
Conflict scenario 1: Possible solutions to the Orange dilemma
Category 1: Zero sum thinking, one-party takes all
Might makes right: the two kids fight it out and one takes the orange.
Appeal to rule of law: the two kids turn to some principle, like the one withmore need takes the orange, or the one who is higher up on the social ordertakes the orange.
Role for it: the kids figure it out by appealing to chance, i.e. they roll a dice,pulls straws, or play “rock, paper, scissors” to figure out who takes theorange.
Category 2: Conflict avoidance, withdrawal
Walk away: the kids decide it’s too difficult to decide or not worth it, so theywalk away from the table.
Make the problem go away: if there’s no orange there’s no problem...right?The kids destroy the orange, wasting the food, or they give it to anotherchild who’s passing by.
Frozen: the kids just watch the orange, they can’t decide what to do so theyjust stare at it.
Save it for another day: the kids put the orange in a freezer because theycan’t deal with the problem now, maybe on another day they’ll be able todecide what to do.
Category 3: Compromise and sharing
Divide it up: the kids cut the orange in half. Half for you, half for me.
Juice it: the kids squeeze the orange and share the orange juice.
Other division: any other way of dividing the orange so that it gets cut inhalf and shared.
Category 4: Creative solutions
Another please?: the kids ask the teacher for another orange because sheforgot one child.
Invitation to share: the kids ask other children if they would also like a sliceof orange and each gets one piece.
Transformation: the kids bake a small orange cake. Then have a lottery andshare the proceeds gained from the sale of the cake.
Time is worth it: the kids eat the orange by division, they save the seedsand plant them. Some time later that tree produces oranges, which they inturn share, eat, and re-plant and in time create a profitable orange grovebusiness together.
While this little exercise is fun, imagine if the orange was an important watersource, and the two children were two tribes that both needed that water, what would happen then?
Well, one of the reasons to practice exercises like these is to expand the realm of creative possibilities to what seems to be an unsolvable problem. When one side says, “this is how we solve it,” and the other side says, “no, this is the only way to create a fair solution,” it is much more likely that the conflict will escalate, and maybe become violent.
However, if both sides have imagined many different possible solutions to their shared issue, then the possibility for finding a solution that works for all parties is greatly increased and the possibility for violence much less likely.