Human Obsession with Conflict
I have never loved/hated writing a deep dive more than this one. I’m not even going to dress it up here, other than saying I’m excited to present this thought I’ve been pondering on conflict in our day-to-day lives. Let me know your thoughts!
For all the newbies (welcome), make sure to check out why MWF @ 8 is valuable to you
If you’re a regular, share MWF through the button below or by forwarding the email to someone else who would enjoy today’s content. We could use some more readers like yourself!
Lastly, follow me on Twitter and the newsletter on Instagram for ways to connect. I want to hear from you on how to make MWF better!
Deep dive time👇
Human Obsession with Conflict
It was a violently cold morning in Boston, with snow just beginning to fall. Phillip and Macy shuffle on board the subway and sit across from each other. They avoid eye contact the same way they would a beggar in the station. After several bumps and inaudible conductor calls, they arrive at their stop.
"After you," says Phillip, as the couple exits the train to a new reality.
The previous night began similar to most Friday nights. Phillip had taken off early from work and joined the afternoon gym crowd. Macy met a few friends for drinks after a stressful week of content creation. As the two got ready for Phillip's work dinner at their apartment, Macy mentioned a relationship counselor a friend recommended earlier. Phillip was quick to brush off the idea.
"Let's just get through dinner first."
Later that night, after dinner sparked the traditional fight about the future of their relationship, Phillip met up with some old high school friends at a popular bar. During the second round of Vodka/Red Bulls, a once summer love mentioned going upstairs to dance. With dance music reverberating and a haze over the strobe lights, the only uncertainty was when Saturday morning would become a reality.
.
.
.
I don't like the greeting of, "What's your story?" The lineage of this question is a westernized notion created by us as Americans. Typically, we reserve this question for scenarios when we expect to be wowed by a person's life, like the idea that a particular person should be our entertainment for the evening.
In addition to personal interactions, we rhetorically ask this question every time we turn on a podcast, TV show, or movie. What is this character's story? We take it a step further and obsess about the story of people in our lives through social media 'stories'.
Because of all of this, I can’t help but ask myself, "What is my story?"
At the root of this question, we want to know or hear a story involving conflict. If you meet someone who served overseas in Afghanistan, your first question is, "What's it like over there?" Seldom is anyone interested in hearing about the mundane duties; rather, it's the potential live-action they have encountered. If you meet the founder of a company, you're not going to ask how it is to be a millionaire; we want to know the obstacles it took to build the company.
Humans love conflict. Not only do we love it, but we’re obsessed with it.
Storytelling
To understand why we love conflict, let's dive deeper into storytelling. In the book The Storytelling Animal, Jonathan Gottschall uncovers this about childrens' stories:
In one collection of familiar nursery rhymes, a critic counted eight murders, two choking deaths, one decapitation, seven cases of severed limbs, four cases of broken bones, and more. And in a different study, researchers found that contemporary children's television programs had about five violent scenes per hour, while read-aloud nursery rhymes had fifty-two.
Even nursery rhymes tell us story is better with conflict. No one tries to poison a baby's mind with these stories intentionally; instead, it's a foreshadowing of a long life enriched with stories of similar themes. From the time you read Green Eggs and Ham to when you watch Game of Thrones, everything in between is obsessed with the story. The following is the number of critically acclaimed genres in each category of media:
The one consistent theme is conflict through every hero, villain, love story, breakup, triumph, fall, comedy, or Korean-influenced drama around surviving the "squid games." The movie Step Brothers is a raunchy comedy, but if you were to describe the theme, it's two 40-year-old men wanting what is best for their respective parents by getting them back together. A similar theme occurs in The Parent Trap, where two long-lost twins set out to get their parents back together. The route to get there could not be any different, but the remains the same: Getting their parents back together.
Game of Thrones was the most-streamed show in 2019 when the series came to a disappointing conclusion. Does that make the TV show a failure? To some, maybe. But to most, it's still a top show. You can attribute that to all the brilliant conflict portrayed over eight seasons to keep people engaged.
On top of the media we intake, everything we say and do is storytelling. But there is good storytelling and bad storytelling. A very unexciting conversation is when someone is describing their travel stories to you. Unless you had to harpoon fish after capsizing a boat off the coast of Mykonos, I'm not that interested in the "exquisite Mai Tai's" you had during the sunset. What makes a good story is a conflict portrayed. Tell me if you would see this movie:
There was once a woman named Ann. Ann had an outstanding job. Suddenly, Ann got a promotion. It was a great year for Ann. Scene.
No way you would see that. Within that story, Ann would have to overcome insane circumstances even to consider reading the description on Netflix. The best storytelling is when fiction and the real world meet, and lucky for us, we see that everyday.
Fictional Conflict
Society's obsession with conflict is evident with the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), which was in Nashville last week. I could have spent my Monday night on a ticket to watch massive adults oil themselves up and strenuously perform a fake wrestling match. It's degrading when worded like that, but WWE has a market cap of $4.4 billion. There are a lot of die-hard fans of professional wrestling.
Why do people immerse themselves in the WWE? The same reason you would in any fictional character. I saw the new James Bond movie No Time to Die this weekend. Throughout the film, I thought, "Gah, how cool would it be to be James Bond." Meanwhile, the movie is two hours and forty-five minutes, consisting of him escaping death. If you had asked me what the business world was like in 2018, I would have painted a picture similar to Don Draper in Mad Men.
If the storyline is good enough, our mentality is willing to abandon any regard for logical truths and follow the conflict. There is a veil we pierce when we enter the realm of fiction, and on the other side, we create the rules.
Lessons in Gaming
In my youth years, I played countless story mode video games. These games introduced me to conflict. It was an opportunity where I could immerse myself as any character in any world and complete missions. Nothing has produced as much anger in my life as failing missions in video games, but, and I'm serious, nothing has created a sense of accomplishment like completing one.
Today, we love to romanticize wars. Especially in America, we have made them almost fairy tale endings where the U.S. wins, and we rise to power. Ask anyone even remotely involved with the war, and they will tell you the opposite.
One time at Christmas, my cousins and I were playing Call of Duty. My grandfather came into the room and was immediately disturbed by what he saw. Why? Because, in his words, "They make war look fun on the TV screen, but boys, it was not fun." It was a defining moment for me - even if it has taken 15 years to realize it.
If video games teach us something about conflict, we love it when we know we're the hero in the end. I will voluntarily put my mind through uneasiness during a game because I know I'll succeed in the end. We can't say the same for real-life conflict where there is an unknown element.
Real-World Conflict
A right of passage of humanity is post-breakup interactions with ex-relationships. There are not many anxieties in life comparable to this one. The two instances this happens are the known meetup and the unknown meetup.
The known meetup I like to call the "hallway how-do-you-do." In this case, you know you'll see the person at a specific time, so you spend hours dreading this interaction. Whether it's literally in the high school hallway or for adults, this would play out at a mutual friend's birthday party or the like. Before the event, you spend hours agonizing over every scenario.
The unknown interaction is randomly seeing the other person out. Usually, the biggest double-take of your life happens to confirm what you just saw. Next comes a rush of adrenaline that would rival jumping out of a plane. All the emotions you build up in the known meetup combust at once in the unknown.
Regardless of how the interaction happens, there is a wide range of emotions from meeting an ex because conflict exists. When your friend leans over and asks, "How did the relationship end?" The juicier the details, the more tension that forms at the moment.
Assuming you can relate to this, conflict is cruel when it requires direct action from us to solve a problem. In the instance of my grandfather watching me play a war video game, I was on the outside enjoying the conflict of others while he was a direct participant.
Media
Mainstream media has perfected the practice of conflict storytelling. Remember the events that took place in Afghanistan? You know, the utter outrage of people a little over a month ago? The facts have not changed; it's still a dark spot in our country, but everyone has moved on.
The passage of time doesn't change the emotions we feel in the moment. But how much of those emotions were direct results of the media? Even though the events unfolded halfway around the world, somehow, you were the center of the conflict. You should be angry/sad/sympathetic/confused because of *insert conflict*.
Hold on; I thought we did not like being the center of conflict? We don't. Even though the media tries to throw us into the conflict, we know we can't change the recent problem in Washington. I can't show up on the floor of Congress and push my agenda; I can't go to Afghanistan and save everyone under oppression; I can't eradicate an airborne virus with 300 million people roaming around a country.
Thus, it's more like putting us in this distorted artificial conflict. The exact nuance that the media deploys is what has created the success of social media.
Social Media
The de-facto platform for life announcements is Facebook, and at this stage in my life, my social circles are full of them. I love seeing most of them, and it's incredible to watch my friends develop purposeful lives. But that's not the reason I keep scrolling on Facebook. I come for the life announcements but stay for the overall sheer conflict Facebook brings (mostly wine drunk political takes).
It's no secret why conflict is ingrained in social media. It's the lifeblood of every other aforementioned media we consume. The new feature of conflict with social media is it demands an immediate response. We happily oblige in these responses because it's an artificial conflict. If it were real, we wouldn't hit the reply button.
Much like the friend rooting for the messy breakup story, when we encounter a scenario that doesn't require action from us, we can kick back and enjoy the chaos. Social media requires no human interaction, so there is no actual conflict. We can dress it up like a fictional story where anything goes.
Finally…
"We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories." Jonathan Gottschalk, The Storytelling Animal
"Addicted to story" is something you've probably never described yourself as suffering. But you should. I didn't finish the story of Philip and Macy in the introduction because we got the conflict out of the way. The concluding resolution, as the couple gets off the train, could be several things. Perhaps it is relationship counseling, a split up based on the night before, a confession, or simply a continuation of the story. We've seen this story of infidelity play out all of those ways. However it ends, the resolution never trumps the conflict itself.
But, as much as we love conflict, we avoid it at all costs in our own life. A messy breakup is fun to read about, but most people can relate to a relationship struggle and know it's hard when that is you.
"What's your story?" is a trap question. The other person wants entertainment, and you'll only achieve that by fictionalizing your struggles.