A couple weeks ago I was at our local gym. One of the policies in the COVID-era is that after you use a piece of equipment, you need to wipe it down with a disinfectant. There was one young man, however, who was not following the policy, and an older man confronted him about it. The younger man ignored him, infuriating the older man. 

A second older man, witnessing the episode, confronted the first older man, challenging his right to say anything at all to the younger man, and that he should “stay out of his face.”

A third older man – me – now finds himself getting mad at the second older man for hypocritically getting angry at the first older man, but thankfully knows better than to get involved.

Ignoring, for just a moment, that this story involves only men, I want to make a different point: It’s a great example of what Amanda Ripley, author of High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out, calls the La Brea Tar Pits scenario.

You may or may not know about the La Brea Tar Pits. It is, Amanda told me in my latest podcast interview, a natural asphalt spring in Los Angeles that’s been around since the last ice age. Interestingly scientists have found “more than three million bones trapped in the depths of these pits.” That includes “mammoths, sloths and more than two thousand saber-toothed tigers.” So how did they get there?

“Research suggests,” Amanda said, “it must have started when a large mammal, maybe a bison or something, wandered into a tar pit and got stuck. And then the Bison probably started making noises of distress, attracting other animals who were delighted to find a giant bison just sitting there. So they go for the bison, and then they get trapped. So now they're howling, which draws the scavengers in, and the next thing you know, you have thousands and thousands of these creatures, each one slowly, over a period of time, sinking into the depths of these pits.”

This, says Amanda, is a metaphor for the attractive power of conflict: It pulls you in. I’m sure you’ve experienced and/or witnessed the dynamic in your own life. I find the power of the Tar Pits metaphor helpful. It was in my mind that day at the gym, and was one reason I had the good sense not to get myself drawn into that particular conflict.

The gym story also illustrates another important dynamic that can trigger high conflict. It’s the power of humiliation, which Amanda calls the “nuclear bomb of emotions.” By not even acknowledging the older man, the younger man was humiliating him, telling him he was not even worth responding to. 

It’s interesting to think of the ways we can be the agents and victims of humiliation. I’ve noticed it while playing games. If I beat my wife too badly in ping pong, she starts to feel humiliated and mistreated. I tended to dismiss that as poor sportsmanship, until I experienced similar feelings of humiliation when being trounced in pickleball. Suddenly, I understood my wife’s emotions. 

These are just two of many helpful insights into the dynamics of high conflict that Amanda shares in her book and on my podcast. Some of the things we talk about, in addition to the La Brea Tar Pits:

• The four "trip wires" that lead to high conflict, including "the power of the binary."

• Why often the best thing you can do in a conflict is first "get straight in your own head."

• How finding the "understory" of a conflict can be a source of liberation.

• How to creatively break the patterns of high conflict by "stepping out of the dance." 

• What it means and why it's important to appeal to a "transcendent identity."

• And much more (my favorite: Amanda's "food in the fridge" conflict).

I hope you’ll check it out.