Lost Art of Confrontation

One of the most frequent complaints I hear about is the constant fraying of our social contract. As the narrative goes, our increasingly amount of time with layers of technology and algorithms between us and other humans has made us less kind and agreeable. Perhaps that is true, but I find myself increasingly focused on what you might call the complete opposite.

Confrontation is a life necessity. If it wasn’t, I’d guess that most of us would hardly ever do it. Constitutionally, I think human beings are designed to be confrontation averse. That is, we are all more or less “pro-social”. Our extent as a species rely on the fact that we have found ways to cooperate with each other at a very high level.

That level of cooperation is something we often take for granted, because our mind naturally biases toward negativity. It blows conflict out of proportion in order to elevate it and prevent threats. In our current political climate, you’ll find scant coverage of the things that opponents of our current president agree with him on. Those are all taken for granted.

For example, I have reasonable confidence that Donald Trump believes Zebras have black and white stripes, that our country is called the United States of America, or that Andrew Jackson was our 7th president. I could go on but you get the point. Our overriding focus is on the disagreements, of which if you’re keeping score at home, I have many.

That is all an aside from the true point of this conversation, which is to discuss the lost art of confrontation. Somehow, there is seemingly more conflict than ever and less confrontation. So for the purposes of this post, I want to discuss the difference between conflict and confrontation, and why it’s crucial to understanding how to counteract some of what we’re all living through today.

Conflict Vs Confrontation

As usual, the following is just how I think of these two terms. The point of how I think about it is in order to understand and organize what kinds of situations