How to handle conflict as Stoic

There’s two things the human being is afraid of in life, of death of course, and of public humiliation. Some are more afraid of the latter than of death e.g. samurais. Fearing of being in embarrassing and humiliating situation before our breedmates is genetically coded in each and every one of us. I’m not sure about the reason of this, but I know this is why the most people are very bad in handling conflict. For most of my life I strived to be better in this field simply by blocking this genetic code before it could block me. We have no reason to worry, knowing that the most people struggle with the same, even those who get in conflict with you. This is a mental game, which has nothing to do with physical strength.

The Stoic approach is not caring what others think of us. Sounds easy but disconnecting from judgement of others can be very tough. I have now reached the level of caring for the opinions of others causes same stress than walking next to snail or hedgehog. How did I achieve this?

With mental exercise against my own ego. Do not get me wrong. Having ego plays very important role in our mental health, but letting it excess certain point is no longer considered healthy. The importance is finding a balance. The appropriate ego helps us to handle conflict, but having too much already achieves the opposite effect. I don’t know about you, but I no longer want to impress anyone. Striving to impress anyone violates the freedom of soul, because we become a slaves of judgement of others that way. For me there’s no social mask can be light enough to not to be too heavy to wear. The social mask or persona belongs to society not to us. It seriously prevents us from connecting with ourselves. The persona is pure vanity and egocentrism, or simply cowardice. If you want to be truly free never let the people make you feel shame. The best way to get rid of this feeling, think yourself in the most shameful situation that you can imagine, and be okay with it. Practice this exercise until you reach the Stoic mental toughness, and no public humiliation will effects on you anymore.

Shame is control like physical pain in a mental sense. It can increase your awareness or destroy you, but as the body’s ability to tolerate pain can be increased natural feeling shame can also be blocked at the same way. One of the reasons no way you can win against psychopaths is that they are unable feeling shame as they’re unable to feel empath and compassion towards others. For some reason this natural genetic code is blocked in them by default. If you’ve ever looked into a psychopath’s eyes, the way I’ve looked before, there’s nothing in them but the big emptiness. Psychopaths can be recognized from the fact that they have no gaze. You can’t win against them anyway if you are a moral being, because they are not, and they always take an advantage of this. Why? Because the psychopaths can’t lose. And for victory, they are able to go as far as a moral being or normal human being would never ever be. Hopefully in most cases you don’t have to deal with psychopaths, and if you use your common sense you never will.

But why handling conflict effectively is so crucial? Because avoiding conflict with others means conflict with ourselves. Which means disharmony with ourselves. The Stoic mental toughness doesn’t only mean slapping our people pleaser personality, so never being that guy who pleases others to like him. Which by the way never works. And we should never expect that the world will be nice to us, and if it won’t as never be, we complain. Because the world is as it is. It will never change for our sake. We need to adapt to it and build a system of protection in our personality against certain people to avoid to be a victim of our naivety. The Stoic mental toughness means being unemotional and unreactive even in the most scaring situation, since the Stoicism is a defensive philosophy, this is why it’s so popular nowadays. What it means? A complete lack of compassion for others? No. It simply means we do not show emotions towards those who didn’t earn it. Because they don’t deserve it. Because they tend to consider empathy as weakness. They did not merit to see our emotional core personality. We should never waste our emotional energy for those who will take advantage of this. We should preserve it for those who really deserve it. That’s it. Being emotionally disconnected from toxic people is required to get this done. They deserve to see only our tough, cold, bleak, sarcastic, shield personality. And we should never apologize for this. It’s better to look like unemotional at the surface and being nice inside, than looking like nice at the surface and being resented inside. This is how the Icelandic volcano works. It’s icy outside, but there is a dormant fire inside. The dormant means infinite tranquility and harmony.

So you can see the difference on illustration above. I hope you already see the importance of having proper protection, and setting boundaries, as we need a fence and door around our properties. The second figure shows the incessantly rebellious because stifled shadow personality, built on constant resentment. In contrast to the first figure, here the outer layer, the persona, is the boss, not the core. So the judgement of others, the social expectations that matters here. There is no peace in a person with such a personality, there is war. In war, personality does not develop but stagnates. In that person there is no core personality that would be capable of compassion, because nothing protects its existence, but bitterness, regret, resentment, and cowardice. There’s no healthy boundary between them and the outside world, but a front line inside them.

The modern approach about Stoicism that the Stoic most be conflict avoider, non-aggressive, compromising, tolerating everything is false. Now I tell a story. A story how I became a dormant monster despite my physical weakness. I remember when I just was starting at the high school I got bullied regularly by an older, stronger, taller, aggressive, arrogant guy, actually a thug. I was an eccentric, weird, loner adolescent, so I had proven to be a soft target. At the time, I wasn’t mentally strong enough to defend myself. My case was certainly not unique. According to Stoic wisdom words of people cannot hurt us unless we let them. My parents comforted me that those words are reflect to that guy not me. But it wasn’t entirely true. Those abusive words and bad treatment are reflected to me either, simply because I tolerated them, and I didn’t set boundaries, which attracts those who are eager to take advantage of human weakness. And I knew this. So many people get irritated by losers. It took a time when I ventured to fight back at the next semester. And something interesting happened. As you begin to face your fears, it will move away and become smaller and then eventually disappear. The fear is a liar. Looks formidable at the beginning, but if you try to touch it, turns out it’s an illusion, a hologram. Once this guy threatened me seriously, seeing I started to stand for myself. He said: “if you do not keep your mouth shut, you’ll get smash.” Then something happened that he did not expect. I looked into his eyes as frightening as I could, with threatening posture to make him see, that I am serious, and asked: “what are you waiting for?” His eyes were similarly intimidating, and I was told, just this:”soon”. But the promised fight has never happened, and he begun to leave me alone, looking for another sucker. However if this fight would have happened certainly I would have been beaten, because he was physically much stronger than me, but it wouldn’t have stopped me to stand for myself. What may have happened is that my behavior has changed and he was getting irritated by it no any longer. He didn’t mess his hands with beating me. So I earned some respect among those who had seen this, and got upper on hierarchy. So how can you deal with those who challenge you with these phrases: “You’re a cripple”, “What’s up asshole”, which is very unlikely in a civil life, because it characterizes the high schools, prisons, and army. But still, what if? The solution seems to be the easiest, but at the same time the worst is to leave it unanswered.

First of all you must realize, it’s not a problem at the first place, it’s only a side effect of an existing problem, or consequence. The problem is that you are mismanaging the conflict even before you would get in conflict with someone, your personality is undeveloped, because you failed to integrate the shadow into your personality, or yet worse, you are a people pleaser. And trust me, it radiates through you. It’s a clear sign of having to develop your character. The abusers don’t risk conflict with mentally strong. They have a gut feeling to filter the human weakness. And they never make mistake with this. They start to test their potential victim. Since you didn’t integrate the shadow, you must set boundaries from loser position, because if you miss this they go even further and further until they hit the wall. If you let them hurt you, you corrupt your own soul with serving your fears. And you are no longer free, you’re a slave of your own fears. And your better self will revolt against it. And if you waste your energy to fight against yourself, instead of fighting against your fears and abusers, you’ll never live in peace. You’ll be your own enemy. It will crush you at fatal way. The first rule here, you don’t want to get away without a fight, do not even hope. You must be capable for brutality, and cruelty. Transform yourself into warrior, and enjoy the benefits of it. Do not fear of pain. And if this is done, you challenge them back, with similarly abusive word or sarcasm, but do never initiate violence. Sufficient enough to be ready to fight, and make them feel it. Then most likely they’re gonna leave you alone, seeing you’re able fight back, because at least dubious fight is not worth to try. Most of them accustomed to abuse pushovers. If you are able to punch, most likely you won’t need to punch. Be prepared for the worst possible scenario, and be okay with it. Being addicted to adrenaline is the best, because that proves you don’t shy away from being dangerous. What worst can happen? I tell you. Letting others hurt you even by words is far worse than losing a physical fight and you’ll be beaten. But I have to stress, in most cases these never ever happen to you in civil life, if you don’t seek trouble directly. But integrating the shadow reduces the risk of getting abused to insignificant low.

Let’s see less stressful situation about how not to get offended. This is an entirely different situation than the previous one, because you’re not under physical threat, so handling effectively this is different either. First of all if you take personal something that offends you, or someone, you’re offended. And if you are mad at that one, who offends you, that one controls your feelings, thus controls you. You’ve lost freedom. The key issue here is distinguishing the intentions. What is the intent of the one who offended you? If the intention is offending you, you nothing have to do, because the goal of all insultations is controlling your emotions, so making you feel bad. In other words controlling you. The insultation is real, so it reflects to offender. The most effective way to handle this is being non reactive to any insulation, or even better, offending them back. And if they’ll be offended, you gain control over their emotions. If the intention is not offensive, well, you nothing have to do either, because they don’t want to control you through your feelings. The insultation is not real, so if you get offended that reflects to you. The most important here, do not let your emotions control you, because if you let, others will control you through your emotions. You lose freedom, and you’ll be a slave your emotions, hence a slave of others. The trolls developed this strategy to perfection. Let’s troll them back.

If the intention is not offensive, you should consider twice their critique either it’s true or false. If it’s true, do not shoot the messenger. If it’s false, prove it. What if the intention is offensive? If it’s true, why be offended by truth? If it’s nonsense, why be offended by nonsense?

So the reason is why some people get offended by truth, because the truth hurts them. Telling the truth can turn anyone into your enemy. Seneca as Socrates had been forced to commit suicide for telling truth, because it’s easier to destroy the messinger, and crush the mirror than accepting the harsh reality, and facing truth. Telling a truth is dangerous, but living an entire life in lie is even more dangerous. If you let others to force you to live in lie, you corrupt your own soul, and compromise against your own nature. For a short term it saves you, but for a long run you’ll be screwed. Lying to please others makes you a slave. Telling the truth makes you a tragic hero. On your own part you have no choice but accepting truth with humility, and improving yourself. But if you’re not willing to face the truth, you can’t improve. Without diagnosis, all diseases are incurable, as without a mirror every woman is a beauty queen.

But what if you get offended by nonsense? Getting irritated by nonsenses of others is a normal reaction and fully natural, but unnecessary. No way you can fix stupidity. Unfortunately, there is no cure for stupidity. If the stupidity is annoying, break all contact with the stupidity. The biggest mistake only a person can make is to surround themselves with people who have no good effect on him. For example I cut those off my life including even my family members who have absolutely no any positive effect on my life, and my eyes didn’t even flicker. And I didn’t regret it so far. If someone doesn’t want the best for you, that one must have nothing to do in your life. Do not apologize for doing this, don’t explain to them, do not confront them, do not quarrel, especially don’t expect them to change, they won’t for your sake anyway, just cut them without any prior notice, like a cankered branches or necrotic limb. Nevertheless this is the best way to avoid any conflict that unnecessary, and avoid living in lie to maintain an illusion. An illusion of having relationship and connection. The test of all relationships is honesty. If you can’t be honest with someone, you don’t have a real relationship with that one. You are forced to wear a mask that doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to the fake friend. Wearing mask consumes energy, and the life is short. Preserve your energy for those who deserve you.

The reason is why so many people don’t cut off toxic relationships because they fear of being alone, or don’t believe they deserve better. But trust me being alone is not that worse than tolerating toxic people in your environment. Toxic people make you toxic if you let them do that. Besides that if you have a life goal, you’re never alone. But if you don’t have purpose no matter how many people surround you, the loneliness is inevitable. Find purpose and cut those off who hold you back.

There is no point in being offended by anything, and what people think is none of our business. The world is tough, the people suck indeed. But this is not a reason for bitterness, there is no reason to complain, however even more reason to strengthen our protection around our personalities. The fact that the world has no moral gives us no reason not to have it either. The vulgarity of our environment cannot affect our values, on the other hand, we must live with the power to choose the environment in which we want to live, and the people we want to live in an environment with. Perhaps our environment shapes us, but we should shape our environment either. Whatever the world is, we should live that way as we’d live in Plato’s republic. Never let others hurt you, but do not hurt others with no reason. This is the real peace, harmony, and morality. This is the way to become a bodhisattva, or something like that. In other words be a gentleman, but only with gentlemen. Never be a gentleman with rats. Never commit this fatal mistake, or you’ll regret it. Rats should be treated as rats. And that’s it for today.