In addition they make us less charitable, less compassionate and more self-focused with group favoritism and aggressive defenses (Steinbeis et al., 2015). We increasingly understand more about the human mind than at any time in history, including our genes, evolutionary history, and the emergence of different phenotypes in different cultures. Crucially too research is revealing more and more ways in which compassion impacts our brains, bodies and communities. This is gradually filtering through into education and into businesses, which is inspiring. The arms industry will blindly strip vast resources to fuel research and the manufacture of new weapons and artificial intelligent robot soldiers likely to be sold to narcissistic leaders to suppress their own population.
Understanding Compassion-based Conflict Resolution
Compassion, however, allows you to stay grounded, recognize their pain, and offer a supportive response that’s still constructive and focused on solutions. Adopting these compassionate approaches not only enhances our conflict-resolution skills but also strengthens our relationships and communities. As we navigate through life’s inevitable conflicts with kindness and understanding, we become architects of resilience—not just for ourselves but for those around us as well. By transforming how we handle disputes into opportunities for connection and growth, we contribute positively to our personal development and the wider world around us.
The Vikings and Romans had a flourishing slave trade, as did the Chinese who used them to build their walls, and the Egyptians who used them to build pyramids. In all these societies, little attention was given to the plight or suffering of slaves or the less fortunate because the empathy and caring systems in the brain, necessary for that, are switched off in favor of control and hold shaping phenotypes. Again and again, we see that it is the culture that is regulating the brain and its phenotypes.
Put crudely, developing affiliative, trust, and dispositions to be sharing will not be helpful if the environment is going to be competitive, callous, full of down rank threats, and cheats. Having looked at the physiological and epigenetic effects linked to evolved caring motives, we can now turn to the psychological functions of caring. Parents provide many resources to their infants including food, thermoregulation and protection. One of the major models for understanding these supports has been attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969, 1973, 1980, Cassidy and Shaver, 2016; Music, 2017). This describes how parents provide their offspring with a secure base from which the young can begin to play, explore, and return to for guidance and support.
They cannot suddenly decide not to do it, become vegetarians or to lose weight. Knowing intentionality has probably been one of the most important human competencies that have powered science and built the cultures we have. It is knowing intentionality and the use of these human cognitive competencies that turns basic caring motives into compassion.
Competition by attraction means one cannot simply impose ones will on others; one has to stimulate an audience to bestow status and share access to resources. Indeed, it is now known that competing for status, with experiences of pride or shame, is a major common dimension of human social behavior (Gilbert, 2007; Durkee et al., 2019) and linked to reputation (Sznycer et al., 2016). Many on the right-wing argue that competition is important because it drives enterprise, and you cannot share resources unless you create them.
Compassion As A Tool For Understanding
These individuals can be caring, but this can be because they want to be liked and avoid rejection (Catarino et al., 2014; Böckler et al., 2016). The essence of the story so far then is that we are biologically designed with a whole suite of potential motives and social mentalities which organize our minds and bodies. We think these are all under our control, but in reality, they have been designed and evolved to be sensitive to the social contexts and niches we grow up in and have to function in Wilson (2019). While we are hard-wired for caring and sharing (Keltner, 2009; Ricard, 2015; Narvaez, 2017, 2020), we are also hard-wired with potentials to be a much nastier species.
- Figure 4 indicates an interaction between what culture and political system privilege, the regulation of individual minds and then how those minds support the accepted resource distribution strategies.
- Not responsibility for the conflict, but responsibility for our inner world, for our feelings, triggers, narratives, and behaviors.
- Things changed when I started to approach our conflicts with compassion instead of empathy.
- Self-compassion facilitates emotional regulation, making it easier to respond empathetically towards others.
Say, evoking a mental image of “friend” or “enemy” is like turning on the electric stimulation in the rats, and the cessation of this mental image is like turning off the stimulation in the rat. The first three types of VIKALPA (Types 1–3) point to the fundamental reification (SAMROPA), i.e., a mistaken attribution to an object of a quality that the object does not in fact possess (Buswell and Lopez, 2013). It is important to note that mental awareness is one of six kinds of consciousnesses, in addition to five sense consciousness, i.e., vision, audition, olfaction, gustation, and bodily senses, which are afforded by different organs in the body (Tenzin Gyatso, 2020).
Third, they have to be able to identify when they are not under threat and have sufficient resources to allow them to rest and digest. Ways of building a compassionate society will have to address how we go about all three basic life tasks and motives because they are the ones that are involved in both control and hold and care and share. To state it briefly and somewhat simply, control and hold have both elevated threat linked to losing control over resources and elevated drive to obtain them putting their own security in their own hands.
Checking in demonstrates ongoing care for one another’s well-being beyond mere resolution. Recognize your own emotional triggers before entering into conflict discussions. Being aware of potential reactions allows you to respond mindfully rather than react impulsively, maintaining an atmosphere conducive to compassionate dialogue. Stress, sleep, and all the challenging emotions — care for your mind with the everyday mental health app that’s shown to make a difference. Lack of respect and tolerance for opposing views is often the cause of unresolved conflicts.
It may not instantly solve every problem but it will change how problems are faced—and quite often that makes all the difference. Active listening means fully concentrating on what the other person is saying without interrupting or mentally preparing your rebuttal. Show you are engaged through nods, affirmations like “I see,” and summarizing their points to confirm understanding. Compassionate communication signals respect and care, nurturing trust between parties.
Indeed, as Gilligan (2011) reveals, some politicians are ‘more dangerous’ than others. Many right wing policies, which are basically invigorated control and hold strategies, tend https://medium.com/@asiavibe/a-review-of-the-3-innovative-features-promoting-beneficial-communication-on-asiavibe-in-2023-8122a203bf53 to increase mental health difficulties, crime, social inequalities and social division and increase a sense of threat. So, it is not only the politician that is problem, but also the strategies they ignite to ripple through the groups they lead. In addition, priming people with memories of caring others or seeing caring behavior can impact on physiological systems involved with stress and the way people cope with stressful events (Norman et al., 2015). Individuals who sense themselves as living in supportive, caring communities are in different physiological states than individuals who are in threat-focused communities or see the world as “a dog eat dog” place where you cannot trust or rely on others to help you (Perry et al., 2013). The general sense of being contextualized in caring and socially safe versus socially unsafe environments may well be crucial for many psychological processes (Kelly et al., 2012; Armstrong et al., 2020).
We are an evolved species that adapts to its social niche for good and for bad. Having said that, it is also important to recognize that even in the Milgram’s experiments around 35% did not comply and the issue of rebellion is as important to study as the issue of compliance. Indeed, in psychotherapy, working on peoples’ ability to rebel against internalized authority or hostile others is essential (Gilbert and Irons, 2005). Networks of women would also act as protectors and infants were passed around between grandparents, aunts and sisters, thus, the infants’ brain was responding to multiple social interactions; seeing many smiling faces and hearing kind voices. Throughout the child’s life many individuals would be a source of comfort and guidance.
The Bayesian Engine optimizes the inferences actively by computing the prediction error, i.e., the difference between Node S and Node A, and then updating the prior probability in Node I to minimize (variational) free energy, the upper bound of prediction error. Notably, only the third notion, that of identifying with friends and enemies equally, is directly aiming to counter ego-preserving bias. If I do not actually exchange my happiness for the sufferings of others, I shall not attain the state of Buddhahood and even in cyclic existence shall have no joy. But that suffering (is mine) because of my conceiving of (myself as) “I”; Thereby it becomes unbearable. Thus, because he loves to pacify the pains of others, He whose mind is attuned in this way, would enter even the deepest hell, just as a wild goose plunges into a lotus pond.
For example, consider caring behavior in hunter-gatherer groups, which were (commonly) child-focused compared to the factory workers of the 18th century. The variation in these two environments would have a huge impact on the maturation of a child’s brain and epigenetic profiles. Consider how competition and the propensity to develop highly narcissistic self-focused orientations emerge in competitive cultures compared to caring and sharing ones. Again, the social and ecological environments will have major impact on the phenotypes of competitive and caring behavior. This is important because these phenotypes will be regulating motives and competencies, turning some up and others down (e.g., compassion and empathy).
Compassion, caring and sharing will require sacrifice of some of our personal material wealth for social wealth and health. To pursue this endeavor we can explore the evolution and dynamics of caring, sharing, and compassion, how we evolved the potential to be a compassionate and courageous species but also the nastiest, vicious and cruel (Gilbert, 2005, 2018; Black, 2016). It was not long before these benefits created wealth and wealth settled into expectation for more. The uneven accumulation of wealth, along with fears generated by inflation re-ignited a more self-focused and less welfare focused politics. Changes in the social discourse, peddled by an increasing right-wing media that wanted to invigorate competitive behavior and “the market” regardless of the “fallout for the losers,” refocused governments on what they should aspire to do (Gilligan, 2011; Sachs, 2012; MacLean, 2017).
This third cognitive process is known as the prominence effect and occurs when we use a simplified rule to choose between options. By using this we feel more comfortable because if someone questions our decision we have chosen the option that is easier to defend. This is evident in how politicians currently frame the refugee crisis by claiming the solution is to “stop the boats” or implement a “Muslim ban”. Support systems reinforce resilience by reminding us that we are not alone in navigating life’s challenges. Holding onto grudges or seeking revenge can perpetuate cycles of conflict and negativity.
Mother and infant should be seen as a co-regulating couple who both require care in contextualized supported networks. Depression among mothers is much lower in societies that operate strong kin supportive networks (Hagen, 1999). To put it in another way, isolation and lack of caring support increases risk of depression. A depressed mother, coupled with a lack of alternative sources of care and stimulation, can have serious consequences for her maturing infant.
With these insights and concepts on compassion we can see how compassion is profoundly important to so many aspects of our lives; texturing epigenetic profiles, multiple physiological systems and psychological values plus how we relate to each other. Consider the passions of people engaged in charity work all over the world, building wells for freshwater, making medicines available to the poor, or in international peace efforts trying to end the conflict and release perhaps millions of people from the intense suffering of the conflict. Consider a recent movement of “compassion in politics” which seeks to stop politicians passing laws that are known to cause suffering to the least able to cope (see below). Note too that some people can be very impassioned for some domains of caring and compassion but not all; motives can be specific. And some people can be very good in some aspects of compassion but not others.
Compassion-based conflict resolution is not about avoiding disagreements or compromising your truth. Rather, it centers on the idea that conflict can be resolved by building understanding, empathy, and connection between the parties involved. By viewing the other person through a lens of compassion, you make space for a resolution that supports mutual growth, healing, and respect. Indeed, it is very hard to be aware of how much our minds are puppets to the social discourses we are embedded in.
Altruism requires individuals to be prepared to make sacrifices to help people. Helping people that does not have a cost or can benefit you in the long term is questionable as to how altruistic it is (Colqhoun et al., 2020). Interestingly, therefore although helpful behavior has been observed repeatedly in young children Green et al. (2018) investigated how helpful they would be if there were a cost. They found that children would help a hand puppet achieve a goal of completing a task (e.g., puzzle) if there was no cost to them, but helping fell away significantly when they had to give up something to help the puppet. Even when the puppet made appeals and was clearly distressed, the child still would not give up their own resources or rewards to help the distressed puppet.