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Key points
- Grudges poison the well of social discourse and foment long-running conflict.
- Perhaps the most critical feature of a longstanding grievance is that it grows over time.
- Peacemakers' strongest tactic is to emphasize shared experiences, shared interests, or common core principles.
If someone harms us, we might reasonably expect them to do so again. So, hostility can have a defensive function. Yet, grudges often get out of proportion to real threats. They poison the well of social discourse and foment long-running conflict.
Anger is a predictable feature of social life, not just in humans but also in other social primates. This conclusion was demonstrated amusingly in an experiment where monkeys pressed a lever that delivered grapes. Then pieces of cucumber replaced the grapes. Monkeys will normally eat cucumber, but they greatly prefer grapes. When the reward was changed, they became upset, and refused to work the lever.
Lack of Proportion
The intensity of their reaction highlights a key feature of grudges, namely that their intensity is out of proportion to the cause. In this case, monkeys would normally work for cucumber rewards. A rational actor would have simply switched to eating cucumber when the grapes were withdrawn. The crux of the matter was that the monkeys did not get what they expected. They harbored a grievance that they would not have had if grapes had never featured in the experiment.
Human grudges can also begin in seemingly trivial ways. The notorious Appalachian family feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys began over a chance resemblance between two pigs that led one side to conclude that their pig had been stolen by the other.
Lack of Specificity
Such clan disputes capture the flavor of many other grudges: They get generalized in unreasonable ways. Even if a pig had been stolen, this might have involved just one individual. Yet, it was interpreted as a wrong committed by all members of one clan against the other.
This phenomenon plays out in many real-world settings, whether it is conflict between street gangs or wars between countries. Needless to say, it also applies to bitter political conflicts.
Perhaps the most critical feature of a longstanding grievance is that it grows over time. This is because a conflict-ridden atmosphere tempts participants to act in ways that make the conflict worse. Cycles of attack and counterattack have a feedback effect. This is why it is so dangerous to live in cities, or countries, where gang violence is rife.
Poisoning the Well
It is very difficult to tamp down a hot conflict, but history teaches that it is not impossible. After all, even long-lasting wars between nations are resolved in the end, although they frequently extend beyond the lifetimes of the people who initiated them.
In bitter multigenerational disputes, it is difficult to see any conclusion. One thinks of religious conflict in Northern Ireland or the Arab–Israeli dispute in the Middle East.
It is almost impossible to resolve such disputes when there is fighting on the ground. In these examples, the warring factions eventually got exhausted from violence and grief.
Whatever the reason for ceasing hostilities, this is an essential precondition for peace. Hot conflicts place grievances at the forefront and are thus incapable of resolution.
Once active hostility has stopped, the work of peacemakers may begin. Their strongest tactic is to emphasize shared experiences, shared interests, or common core principles, whether it is protecting children, improving the quality of life, or defending freedom.
President Carter was facing abject failure in his efforts to broker peace between Israel and Egypt. Prime Minister Begin was not on board. Carter reminded Begin that they were both grandfathers by giving him autographed pictures dedicated to each of his grandchildren by name.
This cunning gesture reminded Begin that he was not just making peace for himself but for future generations. Thus softened, he signed the Camp David peace accord that ended a history of pointless wars between Egypt and Israel.
The most intractable feature of all grievances is their tendency to get amplified into a tribal conflict where the social landscape is divided into two warring factions, whether it is the Capulets and the Montagues, the Cripps and the Bloods, communists and capitalists, or Republicans and Democrats.
Pushing Back Against Division
The key reason that grudges turn into wars is that those in a different camp get cast as enemies. Research on the origins of civil war found that the mere existence of ethnic differences is unrelated to the emergence of ethnic violence. The key criterion is that ethnic differences are weaponized by politicians who cast people of other ethnicities as enemies of the people.
Having a political forum for dealing with differences of opinion also defuses division. Civil war is unlikely in countries with healthy political systems that allow people to resolve their problems by political means.
Irrational though they usually are, grudges are enormously consequential in politics and international relations. They are the reason that Europe sits on the precipice of global war.
