What the old story about the two wolves gets wrong
You know that story, the two wolves always fighting, one representing light the other darkness. The one who wins is the one you feed. Today we see a growth in the extreme right, and other people saying crazy stuff, getting all the attention. We are feeding them. In Denmark, where I Live, we have a guy, let’s call him RP, with minor brain dysfunction and several charges for racism, now almost ready for the parliament, who wants to throw out all Muslims living in our country with PARACHUTE!
We have to acknowledge the conflicts in our lives, both the internal and external. Not necessarily let them win, but acknowledge their existence and the reality they are born from.
The majority of the attention going in his direction is based on his crazy arguments. And even though he only has support from 2% of the population, he gets 30% of the attention in the media, compared to other politicians. We love to hate him, and we love to hate him out loud! We feed him.
From the old story of the two wolves, we should stop feeding him. Strip him of all attention and let him be angry alone. That would kill his power over our emotions, and his potential of ever getting any real power over the country.
But that is essentially what we (Danes) have done over the past 10 years, where RP have tried to get attention two himself his racist ideology. We have largely ignored him, and his fighting has only increased until now, where he on a weekly basis are burning the Koran in front of Muslims during their Ramadan dinner. People react to him with violence, as they cannot ignore him or contain their disgust for his provocations.
Hence, the darkness has grown in the shadow, and are now meeting sword to sword with all those that ignored it in the beginning. The hungry wolf is back, now more than ever, because no one ever acknowledged its presence.
The Terrorist Line
Inspired by Zaid Hassan, pioneer of the Social Lab methodology and CEO & Co-Founder Roller Strategies, I want to share an idea, that conflicts with the ‘two wolves’ tail. I quote from Zaid’s article TOWARDS A THEORY OF SYSTEMIC ACTION:
Myrna Lewis’ work on Deep Democracy postulates a ‘terrorist line’ which names the stages of disagreement that lead to all-out warfare. The ‘terrorist line’ begins in the unspeakable.When power ensures that the consequences of speaking out are high, dissent begins in what James C Scott calls ‘the hidden transcript’ — in jokes and innuendo, in comments that can be taken both ways, and then escalate as the conflict continues until it ‘storms the public stage’ in the form of demonstrations or strikes, requiring security responses, which then give way to civil war, insurgency and battle responses. Myrna argues that ‘simply saying what needs to be said’ can halt the terrorist line. The practice therefore of operating on contested terrain is to allow dissenting voices in. This dissent serves in multiple ways. The most fundamental is that what is being contested, via dissent, is the shape of our society.
With my own words, it essentially says that we need to be able to address the conflicts and disagreements in their early stages before we undoubtedly end up in an ‘all out warfare’.
I’ve made this small drawing, to illustrate what I mean. The three stages of stress represent how we react to conflict. Stress should not be understood as the mental disorder, but as the state, we are in. The Stress ‘tense’ zone can also be referred to as our stretch zone. And it is often that we encounter the conflicts in this very zone.
If we do not like something, that is only in our stress zone, we often ignore it. When we are in our Overstress zone, we go straight to fight/flight responses — good if your life is in danger, bad and non-constructive in almost any other scenario. The Terrorist Line is when the conflict goes into a critical mode and becomes a life and death scenario. Actual terrorists started within the Stress zone, disagreeing with the system, feeling oppressed. And not being acknowledged by their viewpoints, they slowly moved more and more towards Overstress, crossing the terrorist line.
RP, the Danish racist guy, was in our stress zone for a long time. We ignored him. He was also in a stress zone, trying to voice his issues in his own way. He was tense. No one cared. Now he is in fight mode. And we respond with a fight.
Do you see the irony? It is the same as if you ignore something in your life that is a stress factor for you. Yes, it will not be as bad right now, if you don’t focus on it — but hey, that does not make it go away! We have to acknowledge the conflicts in our lives, both the internal and external. Not necessarily let them win, but acknowledge their existence and the reality they are born from. Acknowledging the conflict will decrease the stress, and move the conflict away from the terrorist line.
What makes RP so mad at Muslims? That reality is extremely real to him, and all his supporters. We cannot ignore away his reality, and neither can we fight it. We need to acknowledge it, in order to create any kind of constructive dialogue around it.
Just as well, as you need to acknowledge the realness in the stress factors in your life, no matter what they are, they are real to you.