Cooperation and conflict, or peace and war are human behavioral polarities that smaller groups or larger societies have dealt with through prehistory and history, all the way to today. Dr Demartini shares details on what initiates extreme escalations of these polarities, as well as wise solutions to transform and calm down the polar extremes in modern collective society.

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Each side has done both things. ,

2

they're both teaching each

other the lesson because we

only resent things on the

3

outside that represent parts of us

on the inside that we're ashamed of.

4

Well, if we pay close

attention to the media today,

5

we certainly see a little

sensationalism is going on.

6

And a lot of high polarities going

on dealing with the war and peace

7

issues in the Middle East and

possibly Ukraine and Russia.

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And there's other parts of the

world that this is happening too,

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but they're not necessarily in the media.

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Whatever gets the most attention

ends up in the media, right?

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That's the one that gives the most,

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whatever will sell the media

is the one that's focused on,

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Ukrainian war and the Russian War is a

bit diminished now because the Israeli

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and Palestinian wars got more

media worthiness. But anyway,

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it's interesting about human behavior.

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I would like to make a comment about

it because I see the same things in

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individuals as I see in collectives.

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When an individual is living by priority,

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doing something deeply meaningful,

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doing something that's fulfilling and

feel like it's achieving or they're

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achieving their objective in life, they're

more stable, they're less volatile,

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they're more fulfilled,

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and they're able to withstand

emotional vicissitudes and they

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don't react. But the second,

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they're not feeling that

they're fulfilling their

objectives and not feeling

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fulfilled, they tend to go down

into their amygdala response,

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the subcortical area of the brain, and

they go into survival. And imagine this,

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if you're at work and you

prioritize your day and you're very,

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very inspired by the day,

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and you really knock it

out of the ballpark and you

get everything done on your

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agenda and your list of

priorities, and then you go, wow,

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I'm on top of the world

today, things are great,

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and then you come home and

there's all kind of chaos at home,

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you can manage it and handle it because

you're still in your executive function

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and governed.

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But if you go into work that day and you

got bombarded by all kind of things and

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put fires out all day and

never got to the agenda,

38

never got anything priority

done, you come home,

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you're going to be part of the problem.

40

You're going to be emotionally reactive

and you're probably going to go to

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extremes and emotion. Well, the same

thing goes on in societies, collectively.

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When a country or people in the country

feel that they're fulfilling their

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objectives and achieving their

aims and feeling grateful for life,

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they can handle lots of changes and

challenges that go on in their life.

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They're more resilient and adaptable.

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But when they're not and they feel that

they're not fulfilling what's meaningful

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or their goals and objectives,

whether they're fantasies or real,

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but when they're not doing it,

they get emotional, they get angry.

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And when they do, they

go into their amygdala.

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And when they get in their amygdala,

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they start becoming subjectively biased

and misinterpret the information around

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them and react instead of proact.

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We have kind of a two types of thinking

process. We have systems one thinking,

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which is emotional

reaction before we think.

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And we have systems two thinking where

we think objectively before we react.

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Well, right now you can see that

there's a bit of emotional reaction,

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not as much thinking going on sometimes.

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A lot of people are just reacting

impulsively and instinctfully,

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and they are setting up fantasies

of world peace and nightmares of war

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and they're highly polarized.

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Whenever we're highly polarized and

blind with subjective bias or any of the

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biases there are, there's 180 of them,

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we tend to make decisions that aren't

necessarily thoughtful .

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And then what we do is

we get an individual,

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usually if you look at

the collective society,

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the majority of people are

kind of neutral. Just like

in Palestine and Israel,

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the majority of people, Palestinian

or Israeli, live by each other,

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they're friends with each other,

they get along with each other.

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But there's always a few

that are more radical,

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they're a little bit more in their

amygdala, a little bit more emotional,

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a little bit more systems one thinking.

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And they're usually the

ones that are outspoken.

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There's usually the ones that

get sensated in the media,

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because that's what sells. That's what

gets you attentive and watch the media,

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the sensations and polarities.

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And I watched this in New York .

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There was an Iranian controversy

back, way back in the 90s.

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And my wife and I were walking down

Madison Avenue and there was New York one

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interviewing people on the street about

what was going on in Central Park on the

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demonstrations on the Iranian controversy.

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And there was Dolph Lundgren and his

wife were walking right in front of us.

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They lived next door and they were walking

in front of us and they interviewed

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them. And he was very rational,

very reasonable, and very objective.

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And I listened to his interview as we

stopped for a second and it was very

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sensible information.

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Then they interviewed me and I gave

what I thought was sensible information.

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And then a wino came up that was drinking

something out of a bottle in a paper

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bag and was drunk and they came up and

they interviewed him about it and he

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said, nuke them all. And

he was very volatile. Well,

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when they watched the TV that night,

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neither one of us Dolph and I didn't

get on, but the wild guy got on,

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because that's what sells,

that's what sensates.

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So then people watch the

media and they see that,

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and they think that's

what's real out there.

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The average person from Israel and

Palestine are loving individuals,

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trying to raise a family,

trying to survive,

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trying to do what they

can to get ahead in life.

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And they're sometimes great friends.

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But then you've got the few that are

more polarized, that are more volatile.

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And then of course, the politicians

are voted by those people,

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and then they have to live up to

fulfilling some of those people and it

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escalates. There's a law called

the Law of eristic escalation.

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And the law of eristic escalation is

an interesting thing in chaos theory.

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Anytime you have an ideologue,

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which is an individual who basically has

an ideal about what they think should

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be done, it's usually proud and, you

know, not necessarily globally thought,

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but usually individualized,

narcissistic kind of projections.

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If they think 'if everybody

would be doing this,

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we would finally have a great positive

outcome.' And so they come along with a

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bias view and project that bias view,

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and an equal and opposite bias

comes in to counterbalance it.

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And the more this one is addicted to

right, which is an amygdala response,

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the systems one's response,

the other one becomes right.

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And this thing escalates until there's

a little war into a bigger war,

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into a possibly global war .

And this thing can escalate.

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And when you do, you're

not listening to reason,

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you're listening to subjective bias,

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and there's no executive

function overruling it.

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And when an individual does this,

they get outta whack, they get,

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they get outta control, and they lose

it. We've all had moments like that.

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And the same thing sometimes

goes on in a collective society.

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Even governments do that.

They're like an individual.

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They can get out of their executive

function, go into their amygdala,

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go into subjective bias,

get into high polarities,

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want to be addicted to being right,

project their values onto others,

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then the other escalation occurs that

projects their values back and you get

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black and white thinking;

'they're evil, I'm good.'

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They think you're evil and they're good.

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And all you do is get a battle.

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And the battle is there as a feedback

mechanism to let you know that you're not

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seeing both sides. Actually,

and if you study philosophy,

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there's a thing called the dialectic.

The dialectic was, I have a proposition,

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then somebody comes with

an opposite proposition,

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and the purpose is not a debate to

make you right, that's foolishness.

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But the benefit is that you learn a

little bit from what they have to say and

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maybe change your view and they learn

from what you have to say and change your

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view, and eventually you come

to a synthesis of the two. Well,

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the law of eristic escalation is basically

when somebody throws something out

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there and somebody debates

and fights it back,

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and both want to be right and it escalates

into something that's just a conflict

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and neither one of them grow from it.

But if they go in there with a dialectic,

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not the debate, but a dialectic,

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and they go in there with the objective

of finding the truth between the two,

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because both sides have

a bit of the truth.

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If all of a sudden we come

from the executive function,

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we're more likely to

be dialectic oriented,

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more than being right and debate oriented,

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we're more likely to find out and

grow from each other and listen.

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If you look very carefully,

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there's an old biblical statement from

the New Testament that says in Romans

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2-1, whatever you judge in others, beware,

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you do the same thing. Now,

I don't know about if you,

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but I've certainly studied enough about

history to see that every one of these

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people in the conflicts, collectively,

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have done everything that the

other ones are judging .

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I have a teaching in my

Breakthrough Experience program,

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method I call the Demartini Method,

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where I hold people accountable and I

ask them, what specific trait, action,

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or inaction do you perceive

this individual displaying

or demonstrating that you

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despise most?

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And then I have them now go to a moment

where and when you perceive yourself

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displaying or demonstrating

the same behavior.

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Well that not only occurs individually,

but that can be collectively.

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If one collective group that's fighting

with another collective group asks,

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where do I do that in my collective

group? Where have I done that?

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You'll find out,

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very carefully if you're honest and get

off your high horse and actually look

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honestly and deeply, you will find that

each side has done both things, ,

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they're both teaching

each other the lesson.

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Because we only resent things on the

outside that represent parts of us on the

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inside that we are ashamed

of. When we point our finger,

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we're pointing our

finger back at ourselves.

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And what we do is we go into a

dissociate from what we're ashamed of,

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to go into pride and pretend we're too

proud to admit what we see in them inside

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us. And this is where the law of eristic

escalation escalates further into

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rightness and wrongness.

Instead of actually owning

the trait, calming it down,

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taking on what you have condemned.

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And when you actually realize that

whatever you condemn in others,

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you tend to breed,

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attract and become until you eventually

get humbled and realize it's you.

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So each side is doing the very thing

the other side is claiming .

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And I try to teach that to my students,

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and I've shown that in thousands and

thousands of people around the world,

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and it works on a collective scale also.

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The sociology and the laws of sociology

are reflections of social individuality.

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So my advice for these

conflicts, as an individual,

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you teach best by exemplification.

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If you get escalated and get all

emotional and want to take a side,

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all you're doing is adding to the very

conflict that you think you'd like to

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stop.

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But the reality is that we grow most

at the border of support and

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challenge and the peace

and war you might say.

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So just know if you calm it

down yourself within yourself,

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and each of the individual takes on the

responsibility to calm down their own

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emotions and not take an exaggerated side,

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you're likely to assist us in resolving

the conflict and moving forward in both

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growing and maturing and seeing the both

sides and coming up with some sort of

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objective, real, real solution.

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You're solution oriented

when you see both sides,

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you're problem oriented when you

see one side. And that's all it is,

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is missing information.

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So just wanted to share a message on that

just in case that might be of help to

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your perception. The greatest

teacher's exemplification,

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if you exemplify a more stable life and

be willing to see both sides and realize

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that all the people involved

are just human beings,

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they want to be loved and

they want to be who they are,

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and they want to fulfill their lives.

Don't put labels on people. ,

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you know,

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Palestinians and Israelis and Russians

and Ukrainians are all loving individuals

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doing what they can to try to

survive. They have ideologies.

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And if you get staunchly addicted

to being right in your ideology,

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you escalate the equal and

opposite ideology in order

to teach you the lesson of

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not being proud. When you're proud,

you're not authentic. When you're shamed,

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you're not authentic. When you're

being loved, you're authentic.

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So that's something to consider when

you're watching and taking a side.

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If you take a side and make somebody

wrong and point your finger, it's you,

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look at yourself,

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and then look again and realize that

you're adding to the escalation.

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If you actually take the

time to govern yourself,

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you assist people in governing

themselves. So it's a dripple effect.

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If you love yourself and govern yourself,

you help other people do the same.

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Just wanted to share that message in

case that's useful in your particular

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situation. But just know that

there's deep inside all these people,

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they're not the labels we make,

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they're human beings that

want to fulfill their lives.

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Keep that in mind when you're

thinking about what's going on.

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And beware of the sensationalism that

media does. They sell polarities,

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not necessarily objective truths.