Dr Cees Hamelink | Conflict is Inherent to Humanity, But How Can We Stop It Escalating into Violence?

Hamelink’s research seeks to elucidate how conflict escalates and ordinary disagreements can transform into deadly confrontations. His analysis of historical records, social-psychological research, clinical observations and even dinner-table conversations reveals consistent patterns in how conflicts move from ‘safety zones’ to ‘danger zones’.

Conflict escalation follows a predictable four-stage progression that Hamelink terms the ‘spiral of escalation’. It begins with anxiety, a mixed emotional state of fear, anger, and humiliation that makes people feel they’ve lost control over their lives. This anxiety then transforms into agitation, where manipulative leaders provide direction for people’s fears by identifying scapegoat groups and using inflammatory rhetoric. The third stage involves alienation, where ordinary people become psychologically disconnected from their intended victims through dehumanization processes that remove empathy. Finally, the spiral concludes with ‘accusation in a mirror’ – reversing blame so that planned aggression appears as necessary self-defence.

Hamelink identifies two fundamentally different approaches to communication that can either fuel or reduce this escalation. The first is ‘uncompassionate communication’, which includes absolutist speech that claims certainty, violent speech that judges others, and aggressive speech that imposes solutions. Uncompassionate communication can also involve deficit speech that assumes others lack understanding, polemical speech that treats conversation as combat, instrumental speech that uses others as means to an end, and synchronic speech that fixes people’s identities.

In contrast, ‘compassionate communication’ involves reflexive speech that admits uncertainty, nonviolent speech that shows empathy, and assertive speech that respects others’ rights while standing firm. It also includes swap speech that recognises everyone has contributions and deficits, dialogical speech that emphasises listening, relational speech that sees others as unique individuals, and diachronic speech that allows people to change over time.

Hamelink’s research offers hope while remaining realistic about humanity. He concludes that, while we cannot overcome evil permanently, we can learn to tame it through compassionate communication practices.