From Childhood To Statism: Conflict Resolution
Anarchists are often accused of being utopian. Critics suggest that we are naive to believe human beings can peacefully coexist. “There will always be conflicts and you will always need an authority figure to resolve these conflicts,” they say.
I was always perplexed by these responses. They were part straw-man — suggesting that anarchists naively believed in a conflict free world — and part invalid deduction — asserting that if there was conflict then it was necessary for an authority figure to resolve it.
The first part wasn’t hard to understand. Straw-man arguments are a dime a dozen. But the second part seemed so illogical; how could anyone reach such a conclusion?
Why would so many people automatically associate the resolution of conflict with the necessity of authority?
Now I know at least part of the answer.
Everyday in school I see my students being taught two lessons that lead directly to the acceptance of statism:
Lesson 1: Conflict Is Bad
This is the first and less obvious lesson that is being reinforced constantly.
Conflict is a bad thing. It’s bad when it happens. It should be avoided at all costs. Conflict is the worst possible outcome of any interaction.
That’s what kids learn.
Teachers and assistants hover over children during every activity. And at the first sign of a disagreement they swoop down to “break it up.” The result of their interference is often that somebody gets in trouble.
These situations occur dozens of times every day. Two kids will argue over who gets to play with a toy or who gets to be first in line for their snack. They get into conflicts over taking each others’ crayons or books or whatever. They fight over who holds the jump rope they’re using to tie up their teacher and tickle him (I always get them back).
Almost every time something like this happens a teacher or assistant is waiting to step in and stop the disagreement — and sometimes to punish the student “responsible.”
This sends one message: conflict is bad.
Conflict Is Natural
Conflict isn’t bad. And it isn’t good either. I wouldn’t use any moral labels when defining conflict. Conflict is neutral.
Conflict is the natural result of interacting with other human beings. Every person has their own values, desires, and needs and everyone has different ways of satisfying those needs. In any relationship or community or society it is absolutely NORMAL that these different and competing interests result in conflict. It’s not a bad thing. How could it be?
What I would apply terms like “good” and “bad” to are the ways of handling conflict. For instance, violence is a pretty bad way of handling conflict (I’m looking at you, statists). Peaceful negotiation, on the other hand, is generally a pretty good way of handling conflict.
When a conflict is handled poorly the consequences can be devastating, as surely all of us have experienced. But a when a conflict is handled well, it can be a great thing and actually improve the relationship.
It is the bad ways of handling conflicts that causes teachers and assistants to interfere. They want to prevent the children from hitting or fighting or name calling. It’s well-intentioned. But by constantly interfering they don’t teach children real conflict resolution skills, they just teach them that conflict is a bad thing.
It also teaches them the second lesson, that when there is a conflict, the best thing to do is appeal to authority.
Lesson 2: Authority Resolves Conflicts
This is the second lesson. It’s more overt but it is also more dangerous.
The consequence of training kids that conflict is bad and that an authority will always be there to intervene imprints this programming onto them: when there is a conflict, an authority figure will resolve it.
On my first day of class — no exaggeration, my very first day — a student I had never spoken to before came up to me and said, “Arthur took my pen, will you give him a frowny face?”
I can’t remember the rest of the conversation, but it went something like this:
“No sorry, Eric, I don’t think I’m going to give him a frowny face.”
“He took my pencil!”
“He didn’t take my pencil, though, why should I give him a frowny face?”
Cue the blank stare I’ve seen hundreds of times by now. “But…but…you’re the teacher!”
“Want me to go talk to Arthur with you?”
“No, I want you to go beat him up and get my pencil back.”
The point of that dialogue is to show you just how much children are trained that authority is the ultimate conflict resolver. Whenever there is a disagreement, if you handle it on your own, an authority will intervene anyway and you’ll get in trouble. But if you appeal immediately to authority you might just get your way.
Authority is there to resolve your conflicts, whether or not you want it.
Conclusion
The connections to statism should be blatantly obvious.
Instead of teaching children infinitely valuable conflict resolution skills so that they can learn to handle disagreements peacefully and efficiently, they are taught to fear and avoid conflict. And in the case conflict does arise, they are trained to run immediately to the nearest authority figure and plead their case, otherwise there will be punishment.
This is what most children are exposed to for 12 years of school — and probably longer in their homes.
Is it any surprise that they become adults and can’t imagine a world where conflict is resolved without authority?
User Comments
Greg Gauthier
04/12/10
Great post, guys.
I firmly believe that the central problem to be solved in a stateless society, is teaching people how to manage conflicts in their relationships.
When we’re having fun and enjoying each other, relationships are easy. It’s when we disagree, or have overlapping or disparate needs and desires, that relationships become a challenge.
Up to now, the default has been to submit to a dominant in a hierarchy, whether we are satisfied with the outcome or not. And we’re told this is the MORAL thing to do. Stateless conflict resolution asks the question: “Why is this moral?”
Nathan
04/12/10
I really love this, great post.
Anderson
04/12/10
Thanks Greg and Nate!
Brian Foglia
04/12/10
Fantastic post, gentlemen. This is a great insight into the roots of statism.
Anderson
04/12/10
Thank you Brian
C
04/12/10
True, conflict resolution through communication is imperative. False, teachers don’t teach this, they just act as authorities and deal out judgments. Teachers may act as mediators, which could be viewed as judges, but they open communication and discussion of ways to resolve the matter. Not all teachers are dictators,and it is tiresome to hear that, just as the endless parroting of other worn out definitive statements are which are portrayed to encompass a whole but in reality do not. Humans need to learn how to problem solve a conflict just as a mathematical equation. However, there are elements such as time factors, mandated curriculum for a year’s span, and the other students in the room at the time to be considered. The best scenario? At some point in time, have the students involved removed from the room to discuss the matter sans peer audience and teacher. Administrators and their offices offer this more productive handling. There is not one involved from the scene, no one to impress. Just pure, raw, components to work out the problem in a progressive manner. Those bashing parents and home life? If you are questioning and raising the need for this type of resolution, certainly, you have learned it in the home as well. Think about that. Your ideas are sound and reasonable; your foundation gave you that. Look at the whole picture, not just its separated parts.
Anderson
04/12/10
I’ve never seen a teacher act as a true mediator — where their say wasn’t the final decision. And most teachers I see now (and experienced myself for 12 years) wouldn’t even make the attempt to look like a mediator. Most of the time the response to a classroom problem was a “write-up” or being sent to the office. Which were punishments, nothing more.
Not all teachers are dictators, of course. And I tried to explain in the post that a lot of what they do is motivated by good intentions. And yes, they are in a system where even if they wanted to spend time on conflict resolution they can’t because they are constrained by the number of students, required materials, short time for lessons, etc etc.
But shifting the blame from the teachers to the system — where it truly lies, especially in America — doesn’t really affect the end result: kids don’t learn conflict resolution skills.
Even more than the system and teachers, parents are responsible for teaching and modelling healthy conflict resolution skills. Which is rare in my opinion. My own parents taught me some basic standards like “hitting is never okay, even if you’re a parent” — which despite being so simple and obvious, is more than most other children get. But I never learned any real negotiation or conflict resolution from them or any other adults. The ability to question and identify these problems has less to do with my foundations, and more to do with the self work (journaling, reading, therapy sessions) I’ve done over the past two years.
Nathan McKaskle
04/12/10
Heh, where did he say “all teachers are dictators”?
Also, he’s in China.
Patrick Kramer
04/12/10
True, the necessity of authority is in the training, but it is also how things work. So the necessity is technically there, but more like needing sex or a cigarette as compared to needing food and water.
Someone robs your home, you catch them in the act:
[Authoritarian Model]
1) You call the police:
a. They find/arrest the thief.
b. They don’t catch the thief; but make it a point to increase enforcement in your area to deter future thefts.
2) You kill the thief, you call the police; they validate that you killed a thief and clean up the mess:
a. You are let go.
b. You are arrested for killing the thief.
[Anarchistic Model]
)
3) You attempt to remedy the situation without the use of the authorities:
a. You are killed by the thief.
b. You kill the thief (and dispose of the body yourself)
c. The robber leaves, with the threat of coming back better prepared.
d. You and the robber come to an understanding and the robber leaves promising not to rob you again.
x. An epic battle ensues, destroying the planet in the process. (It was on the whiteboard when I was done, so I had to write it
To me the constraints supplied by the authoritarian model vs. the anarchistic model are superior; because it has the most likelihood of solving the problem. The probability that conflicts can be handled optimally without the use of a authority appears to be dismal, at least intuitively. Therefore I see a need for laws and enforcement to facilitate a set a rules we all must live by; hence the necessity of authority to solve conflicts.
Anderson
04/12/10
Maybe this will help clear things up Patrick:
When I say I’m against authority I mean a specific kind of authority. I usually divide authority into three different categories.
I. The authority that basically means credibility. A scientist who is the world renown expert on cancer is an “authority” on cancer.
II. Voluntary accepted leadership or decision making. When you take a job, you voluntarily accept your boss’s “authority.”
III. Authority imposed by force, involuntary authority. This is the state. And can employed by essentially every adult over a child, given children’s complete and utter weakness and dependence on adults.
When I talk about authority being bad, I’m talking about the third definition. I’m talking about the initiation of force being bad.
As for your example, there is no reason to assume an anarchistic society wouldn’t have law or courts or police. The point is that these things are not supported through violence (taxation) or monopolized through violence (the state will attack anyone that competes). If you want to dig into some specifics about how this could work there are some good authors out there. Check out Murray Rothbard, Stefan Molyneux, and David Friedman.
Here are some links to get you started:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard133.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machinery_of_Freedom
http://www.lostlibertycafe.com/index.php/2009/04/03/the-stateless-society/
http://www.lostlibertycafe.com/index.php/2009/04/16/caging-the-devils/
http://www.lostlibertycafe.com/index.php/2009/04/30/these-cages-are-only-for-beasts/
emy
04/12/10
I have to say, this is true…as parents we have to learn to allow them get into conflict without using certain tactics, letting them learn w the balance…thanks great one…emy
Tony
04/12/10
While i certainly see the point of schools embuing kids with a statist mentality, i fail to see the purpose of the teacher’s response to Eric. So the teacher refuses to help Eric get his pencil back, what does he expect little Eric to do by himself, exactly? Go and beat Arthur up? (what about Eric’s feared consequences for that?) Beg Arthur for the return of his pencil? Bribe him with lunch money for the return of his pencil? Simply accept the theft? What’s the expectation of Eric here? In a stateless society Eric could expect some private policing force to return the pencil for him, by force if necessary, from the hands of the thief. But the teacher obviously refuses to serve this function so what is supposed to be Eric’s lesson and his solution in getting his property back?
Right now, what i’m reading simply smacks of injustice for Eric, which could not possibly be the point of a proponent for a stateless but just society.
Anderson
04/12/10
Hey Tony,
Thanks for the comment. This incident happened on my first day of school, so I was still an amateur at resolving classroom conflicts. I included this story to illustrate how the students were trained firstly to run to authority immediately and secondly to expect that authority to dish out punishment.
It might not have been clear from that short section of dialogue, but I wasn’t refusing to help Eric. I was just refusing to punish Arthur. I offered to go with Eric to talk to Arthur about the disagreement, and I think that is what we eventually ended up doing.
And yes, there would certainly be private police or arbitrators in a stateless society, but I don’t want that to be my role as a teacher. I want to be a mediator as much as possible without handing down judgments or solving problems.
Does that make sense?
Tony
04/12/10
@ Anderson
Yes that makes sense. The only problem i’m having with it is that if you try to mimic a stateless society resolution in a class room, you’d have to include some kind of party that represents justice instead of just mediation.
After all, Arthur wouldn’t just be a party in a mediation if he decided to rob someone.
What i’m trying to say is, it might justifiably seem unfair to Eric if there is merely mediation from the teacher between him and Arthur when Arthur is a thief and Eric is a victim.
After all, while it may not be the teacher’s role to pass judgment, in this situation Eric has no other recourse for justice but the teacher, since there is no party representing justice like a (private) police force would.
Anderson
04/12/10
Even if we make the comparison of a classroom to a full society, these conflicts (like stealing a pencil) still aren’t “crimes.” They are minor disputes, like an argument between friends. These kids — like when friends argue — don’t need a justice system, they just need to learn how to express their feelings to each other and have empathy for one another.
Tony
04/12/10
You want them to learn how to deal with a situation where someone is taking something that belongs to them, right?
Since stealing a pencil is something almost only kids would get upset about, making them learn from this is rather limited. So it’s more rational to teach a kid how to deal with actual theft, or physical bullying, since that sort of thing also happens to adults. And in that case teaching them empathy is a wrong lesson. Teaching kids from an early age why they do not have the right to other people’s property (or “taxes” in the adult form) is much more valuable.
Victims don’t need to learn to behave better, thieves do. It is thieves who also make up the government and the government-dependent citizen.