A Diagnosis for Social Conflict That Gets Lost Along the Way

Weddings, famously, create conflict.

Before I got married, my parents and I fought over the guest list.

A friend of mine struggled with adding some of her husband’s Protestant traditions to their otherwise Jewish ceremony.

Another friend had to decode, and then manage, complicated tensions among her future aunts- and uncles-in-law.

All of these issues got resolved, and according to the conflict-resolution facilitator Priya Parker, the process of figuring them out made our weddings more successful expressions of our values.

Parker explored the group creation of meaning in her 2018 best seller, The Art of Gathering .

In her new book, The Art of Fighting , she writes that arguments are crucial to a group’s ability to do just that.

What’s more, in American society—which Parker describes as both conflict averse and low on big rituals—high-stakes events such as weddings are among the “last remaining collective mechanisms to help us have the fights we need to have to figure out who we are now.” The Art of Fighting is predicated on Parker’s conviction that without confrontation, no group can work well.

“Fighting,” she writes in her prologue, “is not the death of community.

It is its lifeblood.” Parker considers Americans far too willing to focus on themselves rather than their communities, in large part due to a widespread fear of confrontation.

A lot of loneliness, in her view, originates from the all-too-common decision to exit a challenging situation instead of dealing with its simmering disagreements.

It’s a smart diagnosis, one that’s as relevant to small-bore social scenarios as it is to interactions within religious organizations, schools, and workplaces.

The choice to hide from conflict is, to Parker, in many situations, a choice to be alone.

Parker’s idea that conflict is inherently a social good is intriguing and counterintuitive.