Understand the Complexity (It's Not Just Us-vs-Them)

4. The Massively Parallel Strategy for Dealing with Scale and Complexity

Most intractable conflicts are very complex. But people, by nature, tend to have trouble dealing with and, therefore, tend to dislike, complexity. They try to simplify complex stories into something they can more easily understand and categorize. So they typically simplify stories about conflict into a dichotomy: some things are "good," others are "bad." New information that corresponds to the narratives that they already believe are "accurate." Information that contradicts what they already believe is "wrong." (Psychologists call this the "confirmation bias — people interpret all new information as confirming what they already know, and if it clearly doesn't, it is considered clearly false) People trust themselves more than they trust others, and when there is a question of who is right and who is wrong, or who is good and who is bad, most people will automatically put themselves and people like them on the "good side," while they will put people who are different from them (and especially those who are opposed to things they want or believe) on the "bad" side.

These very different world views then drive the sense that the other side in a conflict is "bad:" "selfish," "self-serving," "hateful," or even "evil." We tend to assume that it is their choices and their behavior that is causing our own problems, not our own choices and our own behavior. Not only is that usually false (on both sides), but such over-simplification is problematic for other reasons.

First, it tends to spiral. If we blame "them" for everything that goes wrong, they will likewise respond by blaming "us." If we lash out about that, they will lash back—sometimes escalating the rhetoric, perhaps even adding in a negative behavior. These tit-for-tat exchanges can continue, sometimes escalating to full-blown violence, even war. Although "war" is not something we tend to worry about in the United States, there are some prominent people who are publicly suggesting that "civil war is inevitable," or that it is already happening. Even short of war, the protests we saw in the United States in the summer of 2020 and then again on January 6, 2021 suggest that a return to large-scale violence such as we last saw in the 1960s and 70s is certainly possible.

Another problem with such over-simplification is that it assumes that the solution to "the problem," whatever the problem is, is to just "get rid of" the other side, or subdue them, over power them, or, perhaps, convince them that they are wrong and you are right. None of those approaches is likely to be possible, or to work, because the other side thinks the same way. So the situation is like an equally-matched tug-of-war. But unlike tug-of-war, in which one side eventually prevails, and the game is over, the other side in these contests gets up, dusts themselves off, and comes right back to the fight. So the fight goes on and on, often getting worse, not better, for all sides.