Can We See Conflict Positively? How?

Yunizar Adiputera In contrast with common view, conflict is neither absolute good nor bad. In some respect, conflict is aimed primarily to correct unjust social norms and orders, which, if successful, would produce a desired social progress. If conflict is understood as incompatibility of goals among involved parties, then the students demand for civil freedom and the New Order regimes wish to maintain stability in 1998 could be seen as conflict which produced better social progress. In other cases, ethnic cleansing in Bosnia or civil wars in Sudan and Congo show a distinct face of conflict, producing social degradation rather than social progress. It is a mistake, though, to determine the nature of conflict in binary choice, it being positive or negative. Conflict should be judged in a continuum of positive and negative, so as to allow for comprehensive valuation of the degree of costs and benefits. To assess whether one conflict is positive or negative, it is necessary to have certain set of criteria as a yardstick. The first criterion is whether the adversarial relationship is transformable. This is related with the willingness of the opposing parties to reconsider their demands once given alternative offers. Parties insisting to cling on to their initial demand regardless of circumstances would never be able to peacefully come out of the conflict. If, suppose, Israel and Hamas insist on annihilating each other completely and they never allow other alternative outcome, then the conflict is obviously going to be protracted. Such endless conflict would make social progress stagnated while costing the opposing parties in many aspects of life. On the other hand, conflict between Indonesian government and GAM was positive in a sense that there was reasonable confidence that both parties were willing to reconsider their demands. The outcome is not only that there has been no longer violence, but also the establishment of more effective and acceptable local governments than before. The second criterion is related with the means of waging conflict, whether through violence or not. It is inevitable that human psyche is equipped with the sense of enmity, sometimes aggressively, when confronted with other groups with the potency of domination. When this aggressive tendency culminates, it often translates into violent acts. Conflict is positive as long as it could minimize the violent acts. To do that not only requires sense of restraints from the opposing parties, but also an outlet for this enmity in the form of rules and institutions. The conflict between LGBT movement and religious conservatives in United States is a good example of how conflict could be managed in a non-violent manner. The battle is not in the field with guns, but in legislative and judiciary bodies with words and campaigns. In other case, the struggle of Gandhi could also be attributed to this non-violent act. In contrast, although the push for abolishment of slavery in U.S. brought better social progress, the civil war it caused made this conflict less positive in the continuum. To conclude, what is positive about conflict is its corrective ability, without which there will not be any progress for a better society. It challenges the current narrative of every aspect of human relations so that they will not be left unchecked. To do that, though, it needs progress rather than stagnancy, and non-violence rather than violence.