21. CONFLICT AND CONFUSION

One of the Cob houses here at KD

People are people and wherever you throw a bunch of them together, you will have conflict at some stage.  Conflict can be good, in the sense that it clears the air, get it out of the system. The problems normally start when there is a repressed bunch of anger\conflict hiding under happy fairy faces. Denial is not the way to deal with conflict.

Fact is just because a group of people agree on a basic idea, in this case the fact that we as a species are heading down a one way, at high speed and at the end of this one way is a brick wall. This does not mean we all agree on the how, what and why to avert the situation. There can be fast differences in believes, ideas and ideals.

Conflict resolution is a part of community living. One of the methods used is the talking stick method.  Whoever holds the stick is the only one that is allowed to speak. This obviously gives each one a fair chance to get his point across. A session like this is then followed up by another session, where everybody comes with possible solutions for the perceived problem.  In other words, in the first session you get all the differences and disagreements into the open and at the second session, we search for and offer solutions.

People also have different truths, my truth is not necessary your truth, we can perceive the exact same thing or situation very differently. 

I might not even mean to offend anybody, but my behavior might be seen as unacceptable by others. I might not see anything wrong with cooking meat for my dog in a vegetarian house, using the pots and pans, but the vegetarians living in the house might have a huge problem here. That is just an example.

Metallic Mushroom growing in a patch or cow dung

The fact is, where there is a will there is a way and the first thing is not to assume somebody did something with the intent of doing harm or offending, sometimes people just don’t think.  Open the communication channels when you feel the first signs of irritation, do not wait until you are ready to explode, the latter is just a note to self….

Then there was this little incident that was really confusion and upsetting. Niki went and told Kevan that we used his car while he was away. This is simply not the truth! She also told him that we (Riaan and I) are taking things from the other houses. There is a lot of petty theft in the area and thing have been disappearing from some of the houses, I spoke to Anne and with her permission I took some stuff from empty houses up to the Communal house, where we can use these item (which we do not have) and at the same time keep them save. When the truth came out, Niki burst into tear and ran off. I am still very confused about why she did this and it obviously means that she has been watching our every more.. a bit freaky!