Interesting read. I can genuinely admit to having been in every single one of these stages at one point or another. And yeah I have self destructed hard in order to punish someone else also.

God humans are stupid.

I want to win and the solution is to harm the other person as much as I can

Same here. Oftentimes i am enlightened and wise, other times i view mutually assured destruction as an acceptable alternative to defeat. Its very situation specific with me

Wait a minute...where is win-win-win!?!? I want to win also for successfully moderating a conflict!

I love good food. Whenever someone gets under my skin, I do a quick internet search for food served in prison. It keeps me on the straight and narrow.

You should have a read of The Chimp Paradox, it really helps with understanding of a lot of human behaviour.

You might like a 5 minute video called Robbers Cave conflict experiment.

I try my best to be a peaceful person who comes up with win-win solutions.

I desperately want my obnoxious and condescending coworker to lose face anyway.

It's interesting to read this while being in conflict at work. It escalated to stage 3 for no apparent reason, and I retreated into stage 4. Some people who have come to my defense have escalated to stage 5 and 6 in how they talk, which is interesting to see with this chart.

I'm hoping we can manage this with mediation still. We'll see.

That’s some cold water on a revenge fantasy hahaha

“But now we shall both surely drown”, said the frog.

“lol” said the scorpion, “lmao.”

Ant Man is already at the "I don't have to beat you, we just both need to lose" stage.

That is genius!

"Many different kinds of conflict can be thus analysed: divorces, conflicts between colleagues and school children, and also conflicts between states."

Lol I read that as colleagues having a conflict with school children.

If I'm reading this right, I'd put the Republicans and Democrats at stage 6 hurtling towards stage 7.

And that puts them beyond any path to resolution but intercession, intermediation, arbitration, court action or forcible intervention

As there's really no one to do intercession, intermediation, arbitration or court action (at least not anyone perceived as a neutral party) we're staring at forcible intervention as a country.

One could argue that the SCOTUS was designed to do court action, but as they are already on one side that'd be out the window.

Then the scorpion carried a white balloon around her office.

Activist courts do suck...

[deleted]

If you are ready to go to the “together into the abyss” stage right away can you prevent others from risking a conflict with you.