Some years ago, when I worked in the tense and grinding world of television news in New York City, I began to unravel. I went to see an analyst and she prescribed valium for my fear, which kept me from sleeping. I took valium for 30 years, became addicted to it, and then stopped taking it about five years ago.

Today, I do not sleep well but I live with little anxiety or fear. For much of my life, I was also often in conflict. I had troubles with bosses, with colleagues, with employees, in my marriage, with my friends. I quit jobs and moved, sometimes twice in a year. Conflict seemed so natural to me I didn’t think about it much.

I do think about it now, and there is very little of it in my life.

My marriage is quite wonderful, I have good and trusted friends, work that nourishes me and does not deplete me. It is a stunning idea to me still that things like fear and conflict are at least somewhat a choice, not a curse or act of fate.

This week, I have  been writing about the Craig Mosher case in Vermont, it has attracted a lot of attention among farmers and animal lovers.  The tragedy of this story is that it forces us to start making choices about what is right and what is wrong. We can’t really hide behind the left and the right.

The Mosher case is a complex case, and there are very definitely two sides to it. Both are powerful –  the history and future of the human-animal bond versus responsibility for an accident that took the life of a human being. Heavy stuff.

In many cases – the Joshua Rockwood case in Glenville, N.Y., last year, I had no difficulty reaching my own judgement after I went to see Joshua, meet him and toured his farm. I could not find two sides. He was unjustly accused of cruelty to his animals when his only crime was to be nearly overwhelmed by an awful winter.

Sometimes, things just strike me as right or wrong.

I also have defended a number other farmers who I believe were cruelly and unjustly accused by ambitious prosecutors and an animal rights movement that no longer helps animals much, but is harming many people. I am not conflicted about it, I see it clearly and feel it strongly, and it well is documented for those who wish to see it.

I believe in facts, not arguments, and I believe in instincts, not emotion. They are different things.

I learned in recent years that both fear and conflict are geographies, spaces to cross. I could train myself to make different choices about them and change the geography of my own emotions.

Both fear and conflict seem natural to many human beings, say neurologists,  they are believed to be related to the left-right brain functions now under so much study. People are instinctively oppositional, that is why there are so many wars, so much conflict.

Oppositional thinking for example – the impulse to judge and be in conflict, so prevalent in our political and social media cultures – is believed by many psychologists to be a condition, a function of the brain. In fact oppositional thinking is often called the “condition of conflict.”

When a politician makes a statement or takes a position in our contemporary culture, there is no contemplation, discussion, mediation or negotiation. There is instant opposition and conflict, both on the “left” and the “right.” Every facet of political discourse becomes an argument, not a proposal or discussion or common understanding. I came to understand this as unhealthy, for me, and for the wider world.

Arguments create stress and anger, they are uncomfortable and disturbing. They often lead to religious conflicts and wars, stale-mated political systems.

New technologies like social media promote conflict, and also spread fear. Our politics are no based on oppositional thinking. Negotiation and compromise are considered moral failures,even treasonous.

They are not soothing or calming, they claim to connect us, but more and more, they seem to be connecting our fear and  anger, not our sense of common purpose and community. Of course, many people use social media to find hope and meaning.

I work on that. “For someone who struggles to stay positive in what often seems like an unrelentingly negative world, you are often the kick-in-the-pants I need,” wrote Ann after she initiated a voluntary payment for the blog this morning. This is good to hear, it is somewhat the point and purpose of the blog.

Pope Francis has written eloquently about this pervasive sense of conflict, fear and pessimism. The social dimensions of global change, he writes, include the effects of globalism on employment, social exclusion, a sense of alienation and victimization, an inequitable distribution of energy, social break down, increased violence and new forms of social aggression. Some of these signs, he believes, are also symptomatic of real social decline, the rupture of the bonds of integration and social cohesion.

Furthermore, he writes, when media and the digital world become omnipresent, their influence can stop people from learning how to live wisely, to think deeply and to love generously. The great sages and historians go unheard amidst the new overload of fear and conflict.

I am flooded with messages this week thanking me for seeking balance in writing about the Craig Mosher story and of being uncertain about it. Buddhists believe there is no black-and-white, good journalists understand there are two sides, at least two, to every story. Our political system and corporate media embrace oppositional thinking. And it is successful, say the psychologists because it is a natural state and people are drawn to it.

What is aberrant, they say, are the periods of calm and co-operation..

For me, the goal is not to be without opinions, I have no wish to castrate my own intellect. But the moral human being also learns to wait and listen.  And reflect. I see in the Mosher case that people are anxious to judge. He was irresponsible. It was an accident. He should be punished and go to jail. He does not deserve to be punished and go to jail.

A reporter asked me yesterday what I thought. Was Mosher guilty? The voice in my head was very different than it used to be. “I don’t know,” I said, “I wasn’t there. He’s in a process now, and the process will have to decide his fate, not me.” And that the shrinks say is liberating, it does help me to think and see clearly. I do not have to judge.

It’s curious, in a way, because this is the point of having a judicial system. Judges and juries get to answer these questions, not people on Facebook. Why do people insist on taking rigid positions when no one is asking them to and they don’t have any real basis for doing so? I think it’s because it is, in fact, a natural human condition, a function of one part of the brain. Social media and politics didn’t create it, they just feed and enable and encourage it. This case is not clear to me.

The more aware I am of the human tendency for conflict,  the less I do it, the better it feels, the more thoughtful I can be, the more I get to know. I don’t have to shut out one side of the other, or refuse to consider things I don’t wish to hear. This is healthy and affirming, not destructive and disturbing.

I didn’t go to the Rutland Courthouse yesterday to argue with anyone, and I don’t write about it to argue with people either. But I respect myself now too much to sit in judgment of other people.

I don’t engage in conflicts about Donald Trump or Hilary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, there is no reason to do it an I am not compelled to do it. Stating opinions or having them is not arguing. Arguing is arguing.

I realize belatedly that this is a somewhat new state of mind for me. A friend was outraged with me for not arguing politics with her on Facebook. “What’s wrong with you?,” she demanded. “Don’t you care?”
My life is not an argument. Like fear, that is a geography, a space to cross.

Because the world beyond me, and the technological universe I traverse, is in perpetual conflict sometimes doesn’t mean I have to be. In fact, every time I decide not to be or refuse to be is an affirmation of the self, a step towards spirituality and towards becoming the person I want to be, not the person other people are making me.

What the mind learns to do can be undone.  We can change. I don’t have panic attacks any more either, and I have no desire to ever take a valium pill.

I used to argue all of the time, it is distasteful to me now. I did this by trying to be  more self-aware. Many people actually get angry with me for not being angry, it seems to be something the human brain craves. But I can’t go back there, at least not very often.

I see oppositional thinking as a disorder now, not a political statements. If people cannot hold passionate beliefs with anger and conflict, then something inside of them is broken. You cannot have a healthy disagreement with an unhealthy person.

This is one of the most important things I have learned in my life, it has evolved from something I was completely unaware of to something that has radically improved my own sense of spirituality, my ability to listen and to try to be thoughtful. That, I see, is when people can begin to listen to me.

Even tragedies like the one befalling Craig Mosher and Jon Bellis are gifts in a sad and awful way. They force us to think about who we are and who we wish to be.

Or don’t wish to be.