Perceived Threat
I watched two documentaries today. One was called War Made Easy and was all about the reoccuring narrative of American wars. Pretty interesting but also very anti-war biased; Not much coverage of why war may be nessesary. The other one was Where in the World is Osama bin Laden. It was very interesting and brought up the point that for the most part everyone in the middle of the war on terror doesn’t want to be in war. It also covered many opinions that terrorism is largely created with poor foreign policy. I definitely agree with that.
It brought to mind a couple concepts. First of all is choose your battles and what that means. Choosing your battles is essentially deciding when to make a stand and when to take things in stride. I believe that America could choose its battles better and this would allow us to keep our friends close and our enemies closer.
That’s another saying that I think’s pretty smart. It doesn’t literally mean be closer to your enemies than your friends. Keeping your friends close and your enemies closer means keeping them within friendly smalltalk range. For instance, sometimes there are people that you have to work with who you just have to tolerate and it’s easier to tolerate them than to battle them at every pass. Doing this manages perceived threats.
Once a relationship has a lense of a perceived threat, it changes everything. Being a perceived threat redefines your position in a relationship. For instance, have you ever seen a close friend do something that completely changed your perception of them, and changed how your friendship worked? If you can’t put that past you, the relationship is pretty much kaput. If that perceived threat keeps coming up then the relationship is set back.
So I think limiting perceived threats by choosing your battles and keeping your friends close and enemies closer makes a better strategy than going out bullying the world. You can’t change minds that way and it’s no way to lead in the workplace or in the world. It makes taking a stand, and the relationship in general, much more meaningful.