Democracy Designed For Dissension

Want to get your co-workers to cooperate rather than play down-and-dirty office politics? Thinking of getting off a volunteer board because all anyone in the organization seems to do is argue vehemently over itsy-bitsy details? Refusing to go to the annual family reunion because the same decades-old feuds will resurface and leave someone - probably Aunt Mabel - giving everyone the silent treatment and someone - most assuredly Cousin Fred - swearing a blue streak?

Is church a hassle because of a hostile split between the new-building-needed faction and the what-we’ve-got-is-good-enough one? Is local government just one big battle between elected officials and various citizens groups? Are you left wondering whether the conflict-of-the-moment will ever end? Do you yearn for a time when people are more interested in finding common ground and a way to resolve concerns than in heaping on hurtful words?

Here’s a news flash. Some people like conflict. They hate peace and quiet, deplore conciliation and cooperation. They would rather die than get along. They hunger and thirst for someone or something to challenge.

These are not good candidates for conflict-resolution seminars. They care not a whit about resolving anything. They want a good fight, because keeping the old pot boiling and tempers exploding is a way they get attention and power. They can find no happiness without at least one foe, and several folks who hate with them.

In a recent “Calvin and Hobbes” comic strip, Calvin is writing a fund-raising letter: “The secret to getting donations is to depict everyone who disagrees with you as the enemy. Then you explain how they’re systematically working to destroy everything you hold dear,” he tells Hobbes. “It’s a war of values. Rational discussion is hopeless. Compromise is unthinkable. Our only hope is well funded antagonism, so we need your money to keep up the fight.”

When Hobbes replies, “How cynically unconstructive,” Calvin says, “Enmity sells.” Indeed it does. The boss who uses office grudges to maintain control knows that. The politician who prizes gridlock and ill will (and probably uses Calvin’s fund-raising advice) knows that. People who share the same hostilities and who are more interested in fueling a vendetta than finding a resolution know that. And anyone else with a hate-filled agenda knows it as well.

But Hobbes makes a salient point; using enmity to get support for a point of view is “cynically unconstructive.” Once people recognize that there are those who are raising Cain for their own purposes and that their agenda is to get as many people all teed off as possible, then it will be easier to find those to work with who want cooperation and resolution. Let the nasties do their own thing. They won’t entirely go away, but their influence can be negated when citizens are determined to find ways in which enmity ceases to be a selling point.

Just seems to me that these days there are an awful lot of conflict pushers who aren’t interested in finding commonality and compromise.

Now, not all criticism is bad. Suppressing dissent is abhorrent to freedom-loving people. And not all problems can be solved by love and peace. There is something to be said about what a report from the Kettering Foundation calls “meaningful chaos.” It occurs when honest disagreements are a creative force in working out problems. When disagreement is not based in hostility, but in reasonable difference of opinion, it can produce constructive dialogue. Healthy dissension is one thing while divisiveness for its own sake is quite another.

But too many people aren’t interested in meaningful chaos. They prefer control, contempt and crankiness. They are conflict junkies who unfortunately have a market for their enmity. And as long as Americans buy their conflict-producing product, then common sense, compromise and consensus suffer.

As does democracy.

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