To offer just two examples, some of President Trump’s supporters genuinely believed that the election had been stolen; others genuinely believe that the COVID-19 vaccine is either not needed or potentially dangerous. Part of the problem is the degree to which individuals identify with a social group, pick up the beliefs and concerns of that social group and reinforce them through sharing messages, for example on social media. To change ones view is therefore to change one’s group identity and sense of social belonging.

Compassion plays a crucial role in trust-building and finding mutual solutions, paving the way for sustainable resolutions. Remember, fostering compassion is essential to managing conflicts effectively and creating supportive environments for resolution. Eisler and Fry (2019) suggest similar, but with a different focus on what they call a domination system, with a four-component system that links evolved motive with cultural practices. Second is the tendency to see one group as superior to another and fair game for exploitation, suppression or even removal. This is close to the concept of SDO, which again is about control Secretmeet Instagram account and hold strategies for resource competition (Sidanius et al., 2017). Third is the cultural acceptance of the means to maintain the social hierarchy, typically through power plays, acceptance of the elites and the use of violence and the threat of violence.

Millionaires can be driven to compete because others have got more millions than they have; this is competition out of envy and fear of inferiority (Basran et al., 2019). Second, when it comes to taxation, wealthy folk (understandably) seek to defend their position and resources and pay the least including trying to hide what society requires them to pay (Jetten et al., 2020). So in creating a world of riches, rather than making us feel safer, it has a paradoxical effect of making us more threat focused, socially comparing to our local reference groups, and as a result, callous to the less well off (Piff et al., 2018; Basran et al., 2019).

It may mean taking responsibility for our part without collapsing into self-blame. This stage is powerful because it shifts us out of blame and into responsibility. Not responsibility for the conflict, but responsibility for our inner world, for our feelings, triggers, narratives, and behaviors.

Paul Gilbert

Due to built-in self-organizing algorithms, social media users tend to encounter messages that are similar to what they already liked or viewed. Since the cognitive costs for attuning to counterparts in conflicts are much higher than those for sticking to one’s own ideas, the likelihood of attuning to people with different views is diminishing. Embracing compassionate conflict resolution nurtures healthier connections with others—and with ourselves—paving a path toward greater peace in our lives and communities. Compassion mitigates this by validating feelings and reducing perceived threats. Recognizing someone’s pain makes them feel seen and heard, which naturally defuses hostility.

In the case of sheep, for example, it can be very difficult to get a mother to adopt an orphan. While adoption does occur in mammalian species, it is rare; humans, who foster and carry out other forms of caring, are exceptional in this regard (Spikins, 2015). The evolution of the genetics of caring predisposes us to focus on those closest to us. For example, imagine we go to maternity to have our baby delivered and they take our baby away to weigh it and come back and say, “we have some good news and some bad news.” The bad news is we have lost the name tags and are not sure whose baby belongs to which parents. But the good news is the babies born this morning are in perfect health, so please feel free to choose the one you fancy.” Clearly, this would be a source of immense distress because we are programmed to care for our own genes, not strangers.

What this paper has sought to do is to indicate processes that can be traced back to the evolution of resource competition strategies, and how different social and cultural contexts regulate these strategies. Neoliberalism has produced contexts that create minds and brains that are not well suited to the challenges of humanity, that needs urgently to move toward caring and sharing and intensify cooperative communities, nationally and internationally (Wilson, 2019). We have seriously allowed freedom to control and hold at the expense of social responsibility and indeed any form of responsibility including for our environment (Perry et al., 2013). What COVID-19 has illuminated is the extraordinary importance of context and focus in enabling different (i.e., invigorated caring) strategies to flow through communities. We are still basically hunter-gatherers who have a great interest in caring and sharing and are biologically capable of the most extraordinary acts of courageous and wise compassion, but also these can be easily turned off.

This paper began by highlighting the realities of life; that all biological life forms are vulnerable to injury, decay and die. Human suffering is greater, because we know that we suffer, we know that we die, we know we can be in pain, we know that everything is impermanent and in a constant state of flux and change. As individuals, as societies and as a species, we need to seriously consider how we address the reality that biological life is about suffering and how this challenges us. A civilized society must first and foremost seek to address suffering and not cause it.

Many anthropologists believe that hunter-gatherers were averse to physically punishing or threatening children (Music, 2014; Narvaez, 2017, 2020; Ryan, 2019). Yet in post hunter-gatherer societies, and not very long ago, slave, wife and child-beating were allowed and legitimized and even promoted as a method for control (Gilbert, 2018). One obvious implication is that human males evolved to interact with infants and children differently to other primates. Therefore men should be provided greater opportunity to care and interact with their children and other children and interact with supportive female networks, as would have been typical for many hunter-gather groups.

• Whether it arises in personal relationships, workplaces, or communities, conflict can lead to misunderstandings and prolonged distress if not addressed effectively.
• Embracing forgiveness—whether for yourself or others—can be a powerful tool in building resilience amid disagreements.
• If it were a matter of basic beliefs, then providing people with clear evidence that caring and sharing will create a better world for all of us, change would be easy.

Individuals who express dominant behavior need individuals with evolved mechanisms for submitting themselves, who are willingly to do so rather than fight back. Control and hold strategies need to create a climate where a number of individuals have those strategies stimulated and engage them, and as indicated above, stimulate fear for one’s own livelihoods. Hence, these strategies will (simply because of how they are built, not because of any conscious intent) try to stimulate minds around them to create an information “flow between minds” that supports them. This information flow does not need to be accurate, it just has to ‘push the right buttons’ in the minds of others.

The hippocampus is crucial for pattern differentiation and contextual frame completion. The neurogenesis in hippocampus is crucial for the resilience in chronic stress and mood regulation through enhancing cognitive flexibility (Anacker and Hen, 2017), and social experiences can modulate the hippocampal neurogenesis (Dranovsky et al., 2011). Conversely, the impairment of hippocampus will compromise contextual frame processing, e.g., allocentric spatial framing, (Langston and Wood, 2010). In human twin studies, the weaker capacity of hippocampus-dependent allocentric framing is a dispositional risk factor for developing posttraumatic stress disorders (Gilbertson et al., 2007). Accordingly, it has been postulated that stress ensues when an organism’s existing working models fail to minimize free energy under challenging circumstances, i.e., uncertainty that threatens one’s prior models (Peters et al., 2017).

In effect, it is necessary for a large power-coalition (the rank and file of a band) to dominate the group’s would-be “bullies” if egalitarianism is to prevail – otherwise, the group will become hierarchical with marked status differences and strong leadership. Many women today do not have access to these important kin/community supportive networks that would have been available 24/7. They are more likely to have midwives that visit them occasionally or deliver their children in impersonal hospitals by strangers. After birth if there is no close family nearby, women will lack extensive female support and may spend many hours alone waiting for partners to return from work; and not all partners are that supportive or adequate replacement for female kin networks. This is grossly abnormal and robs both infant and mother of important, multiple sources of support (providing both with a secure base and safe haven).

How Art And Creativity Can Enhance Compassionate Connections

An example of this was a surge in interest and donations after images emerged of a young Syrian boy who had drowned and washed up on a beach after he tried to flee the conflict. Slovic notes that because of that photo, donations to the Swedish Red Cross went up from $8,000 to $430,000 within a day, and general interest lasted for a further month. However, this is not the blanket solution to our psychic numbing when it comes to conflicts, as there are plenty of examples where this doesn’t work.

JS co-wrote the manuscript and supported the research involved in the manuscript. Although an adaptive system must possess many layers of Bayesian Networks, Friston described a heuristic model with only four nodes, namely Active State (Node A), Sensory State (Node S), Internal State (Node I), and External State (Node E) (Friston, 2013). Every biological organism is a Bayesian Engine, which consists of Nodes I, S, and A, to perform Bayesian active inferences of Node E from the environments.

Haslam and Reicher (2012), however, argued that compliance is complex because it is not just about fear of authority or passive subservience. It is also about identifying with values and goals and at times, being prepared to carry out harmful behavior. There is a shopping list of reasons from compliance, protection-defense, coercion, greed, vengeance, personality, enjoyment, and physiological processes (Baumeister, 1996; Staub, 2003, Zimbardo, 2008). Consider that some religions have worshiped gods that required people to sacrifice their own children (The Aztecs). In 1978, Jim Jones, a famous cult leader, got more than 1000 people to kill themselves and their children.

While we can understand these as individual and personality issues, it is important to also see that cultures stimulate these phenotypic potentials quite automatically; these are not chosen. In addition, one can see the theme of SDO as a form of social, cultural narcissism. Even before Freud, we knew that the mind was riddled with conflict, with some motives and emotions able to suppress others. This is because different motives have different priorities and different physiological systems of activation (Ornstein, 1986; Huang and Bargh, 2014).

Importantly, as some spiritual traditions encourage, we can train our brains to conceptualize humanity as part of our “kin group” (Bailey, 2002). Right wing politicians however are more interested in splitting and setting one group up against another. Conflict is an inevitable part of human interaction, whether in the workplace, community groups, or personal relationships. When tensions rise and disagreements emerge, strong leadership is essential to navigate these turbulent waters. Effective leaders understand that leading with compassionate unity can transform conflicts into opportunities for growth, understanding, and collaboration. In this article, we will explore the principles of compassionate unity in conflict resolution and practical strategies for leaders to implement these principles.

Pair bonding in hunter-gather society is uncertain and males would often not know who their children were (Diogo, 2019; Ryan, 2019), but many showed high interest in and care for children, although the ecology influences this (Gilmore, 1990). Today, we are still exploring the important role fathers have on child maturation. The idea that a male should be absent for most of a child’s upbringing, returning home from an office tired and grumpy to an isolated mother and child, is a gross abnormality (Narvaez, 2020). For some fathers, COVID lockdown has given them new opportunities to interact with children and discover new ways of relating.