Violence

2. Intractable Conflict Threat and Opportunity

Most interpersonal conflicts, including intractable ones, do not usually result in violence. But too many do. In 2012, a student wrote a resource page on domestic violence which we posted on BI, even though that wasn't one of our primary areas of focus. Nevertheless, that page has been accessed a lot!

Anyone who reads the news knows well that violence is rampant in America (and elsewhere too, of course). But the level of gun ownership and gun violence death rate is much higher in the U.S. than it is in much of the world. Our us-versus-them, power-over approach to conflicts is prevalent in our news, social media, literature, and the arts. It encourages people to resolve their conflict through force, and force very often is interpreted as violence. (Nonviolence can be very forceful too, but is chosen far less often).

So even though we focus much more on large-scale conflict and violence in this guide and on this website, we do want to acknowledge that violence is a significant problem at the interpersonal level as well.

And some apparently small scale violence can morph into large scale violence easily. Examples include the killing of high-profile political figures such as Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, which unleashed massive riots across the United States. So, too, did the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, which resulted in anti-police marches with varying degrees of violence and destruction throughout the world.

Whether small scale violence grows depends a lot on how it is covered in the media (if it is covered at all) and how the police and political leaders respond to it. If they are a calming influence, the chances of escalating violence diminish; if they fan the flames of anger and hatred, the danger of spreading violence goes much higher. We talk more about how to prevent and/or arrest such spread in the Guide section on Preventing Small Scale Violence.