When human capacity is exceeded and emotional regulation begins to falter, what does that mean for our capacity—individually and collectively—for peace?
That is the question at the centre of this month’s Peace Notes.
And there is a reason for asking it now.
The tinder is amassing.
Around us are grievances, fears, inequalities, competing interests, economic pressures, political and social divisions, uncertainty and profound differences in how people understand what is happening in the world. None of these is new. Human beings have always lived with tinder.
And small, contained fires seem to be emerging everywhere. We see them in families and workplaces, between neighbours and communities, across societies and between nations. Disagreements ignite quickly. Anger travels easily. Positions harden. The distance between difference and rupture can sometimes seem remarkably small.
That makes me curious about something we discuss far less often when we talk about peace: emotion—and our capacity to regulate it.
Peace is frequently examined through politics, power, justice, economics, history, security and competing interests. All matter. But every one of those forces eventually encounters a human being—a human system that must perceive what is happening, interpret it, experience an emotional response and decide what to do next.
And human beings do not do that with unlimited capacity.
We talk about peace as though it is primarily a matter of intention. We want peace. We value peace. We believe we are reasonable people. Most of us do not begin our days intending to create discord with our families, our colleagues, our neighbours or people whose views differ from our own. And yet intention may be only part of the equation.
There is another question we don’t ask nearly as often: Do we have the capacity for peace?
What happens when we become overwhelmed?
Think about a moment when you were completely overwhelmed. Too much to do. Too many decisions. Too little sleep. One more problem arriving when you were already dealing with five others.
Then someone said something.
Perhaps it was something you normally would have ignored. Perhaps it was a request you ordinarily would have accommodated. Maybe it was criticism, disagreement or simply an opinion different from your own — but this time, you reacted.
The circumstances had not necessarily become more serious. Your capacity to deal with them had changed.
Human beings have limits. We can manage enormous complexity, uncertainty and difficulty, but not indefinitely and not without cost. When the demands being placed upon us begin to exceed our available capacity, our responses can change.
We may become less patient. Complicated thinking becomes harder. We may become more certain of our first interpretation and less interested in alternatives. We react more quickly. Things we would ordinarily tolerate become irritating. Another person’s needs can feel like one demand too many.
Listening becomes harder. So does curiosity. So does seeing a situation from another person’s point of view.
None of this necessarily means we have become different people. It may mean that we are trying to respond to the world with fewer internal resources available to us.
Research on stress and cognitive load supports important parts of this picture. Under significant stress, capacities such as working memory and cognitive flexibility can become impaired. Responses can become more reactive, while our ability to adapt to changing information becomes constrained.
In everyday language, we might simply say that when we are overwhelmed, our world can become smaller.
There is less room between what happens and how we respond to it. And that has implications for peace.
The tinder was already there.
Conflict rarely begins from nothing.
There are always differences between us: different beliefs, needs, experiences and interpretations of what is fair, right or important. There are grievances and disappointments. Historical wounds and inequalities. Competing interests. Things that frighten us and things that threaten what we believe matters.
Think of these as tinder.
Tinder can sit for a very long time without becoming a fire.
The interesting question is: what makes it combustible?
One answer may be capacity.
Consider a disagreement between two people. When both have sufficient capacity, they may be able to disagree and remain connected. They can listen. They can question their own interpretations. They can tolerate the discomfort of not resolving everything immediately.
The disagreement is real, but there is enough capacity to contain it.
Now imagine the same disagreement when both people are exhausted, frightened, overloaded or already struggling with demands elsewhere in their lives.
The disagreement hasn’t necessarily changed. Their ability to hold it may have.
The tinder was there in both situations. What changed was the capacity surrounding it.
What does this have to do with peace?
Perhaps more than we realize.
Peace does not require us to agree with one another. It does not require the absence of difficult issues. And it certainly does not require the absence of conflict.
Peace may require something much more demanding: enough human capacity to live with disagreement without allowing every disagreement to become a rupture.
Enough capacity to listen when listening is difficult. To tolerate uncertainty. To reconsider our first interpretation. To recognize that someone who sees the world differently is still a human being. To decide that we do not have to respond immediately. To ask a question before reaching a conclusion.
Enough capacity, ultimately, to choose our response rather than simply enact it.
These sound like simple things. When we are overwhelmed, they aren’t.
From “What is wrong with me?” to “What is happening to me?”
When we respond badly, our instinct is often to judge the response.
Why did I say that? Why was I so impatient? Why couldn’t I just let that go?
There is another question worth asking: What capacity did I have available when I responded?
That question is not an excuse.
Understanding why our capacity has diminished does not relieve us of responsibility for what we do. But responsibility and our functional capacity to exercise it are not quite the same thing. If the cognitive and emotional resources that support considered choice are becoming constrained, simply insisting that we should behave differently does not restore them.
Understanding what is happening may, however, give us something judgment alone cannot:
Choice.
And perhaps responsibility enters the conversation there too.
If I know I am depleted, overwhelmed, angry, frightened or operating close to the limits of my capacity, what responsibility do I have for what happens next?
- Perhaps this isn’t the moment to send the email.
- Perhaps I haven’t actually understood what that person meant.
- Perhaps my certainty is partly a product of exhaustion.
- Perhaps this decision can wait.
- Perhaps I need more information.
- Perhaps the person in front of me is struggling with their capacity too.
The circumstances have not disappeared. The disagreement has not necessarily been resolved. The tinder is still there. And … perhaps I don’t have to strike the match.
Now make the picture bigger.
What happens when this isn’t occurring only in one person?
What happens when families are overwhelmed? Workplaces? Communities? Entire societies?
We live amid extraordinary demands on human attention and capacity. Information arrives continuously. Technology allows crises occurring thousands of kilometres away to enter our lives throughout the day. Economic, caregiving, professional and personal responsibilities coexist. Social and political disagreements are highly visible and repeatedly reinforced.
None of these conditions alone explains conflict. Neither does overwhelm.
But perhaps we should pay closer attention to what happens when existing tinder encounters human beings who have increasingly little capacity left to contain it.
A society does not have one nervous system. It consists of millions of people continually responding to one another.
Our responses become part of someone else’s environment. Their responses become part of ours.
And conflict itself consumes capacity.
Fear consumes capacity. Uncertainty consumes capacity. Anger consumes capacity. Constant vigilance consumes capacity.What happens when this isn’t occurring only in one person?
What happens when families are overwhelmed? Workplaces? Communities? Entire societies?
We live amid extraordinary demands on human attention and capacity. Information arrives continuously. Technology allows crises occurring thousands of kilometres away to enter our lives throughout the day. Economic, caregiving, professional and personal responsibilities coexist. Social and political disagreements are highly visible and repeatedly reinforced.
None of these conditions alone explains conflict. Neither does overwhelm.
But perhaps we should pay closer attention to what happens when existing tinder encounters human beings who have increasingly little capacity left to contain it.
A society does not have one nervous system. It consists of millions of people continually responding to one another.
Our responses become part of someone else’s environment. Their responses become part of ours.
And conflict itself consumes capacity.
Fear consumes capacity. Uncertainty consumes capacity. Anger consumes capacity. Constant vigilance consumes capacity.
A reinforcing cycle becomes possible: as we become more overwhelmed, thoughtful response becomes more difficult. As responses become more reactive, we can create additional discord. And as discord increases, still greater demands are placed upon already limited human capacity.
Around and around we can go. Unless something interrupts the cycle.
Which brings us back to peace.
Perhaps one of the important questions of our time is not simply whether we want peace.
Most of us would say that we do.
The harder question may be whether we are paying sufficient attention to the human capacities that allow peace to remain possible when we encounter the things that divide us because there will always be tinder.
There will always be disagreement. There will always be competing interests. There will always be moments when what another person believes, says or does challenges something important to us.
The question is what happens next.
If we don’t understand what happens within us when our capacity becomes depleted, we may mistake reaction for considered judgment. We may mistake certainty for clarity. We may mistake threat for difference.
And we may believe we are choosing at precisely the moment when our capacity to choose among possible responses has become most constrained.
Perhaps understanding capacity, then, is not separate from understanding peace.
Perhaps noticing what is happening within us—before the reaction, before the certainty, before the match—is part of how we protect our capacity to choose.
The tinder may not be ours to remove. But, the match in our hand still deserves our attention.