Attica! Attica! Attica!
Outside a bank under siege, Al Pacino faces the police and a curious crowd and shouts: "Attica! Attica! Attica!", to which the crowd erupts into cheer, and the police's efforts to disarm him are momentarily derailed. The actor later clarified that this was just a spontaneous act he performed in the moment, outside the scope of the script. And yet, it worked. It became one of the defining moments in cinema, a testament to the power of bizarre outbursts that alter our sense of space. Life is rarely devoid of such outbursts, from road rage to diplomacy - everywhere there's scope for a disruption. An "Attica!" moment, if you'd like. This is consequential, a relic of the games we play.
Human lives are a constant battle for dominance. A flux of ideas finds you at the intersection, pulled to each idea in a battle for relevance. And the moment you choose to play one game; the others turn against your favor. This Bayesian reasoning is inherent to how we function as a species but is quite distant from our individual behavior. Individually, we want to dance and sing and listen to Bach over endless cups of coffee (am I being too individualistic here?), not indulge in petty fights over metro seats and groceries.
What happens in society is a steady clash of interests. We step out into the maelstrom with remnants of our internal and external battles and let our lizard brains take control of the situation - turning this chaotic clash into one-on-one battles of dominance. So in the market as you get into your battle gear with an "obnoxious" uncle, what you're really doing is taking your unresolved emotions and funneling them into a box. Effectively turning this into a 1v1 deathmatch, you're now Al Pacino with his demands and the uncle is the Police Commissioner. The crowd waits with bated breath, ready for whatever comes. That is the voyeuristic world we're in, unfortunately. Everybody waits for "Attica!", even if they don't know that they do.
What remains to be done? Avoid the conflict and flee with your tail tucked between your legs? Not quite.
What I have noticed, is these games tend to be heavily biased towards eventual breakdown. That's when the ball drops into the society's court to decide the winner. The classic case of competing ideologies and the intersection where you're being pulled. You are now a pawn, the most favorable endgame for the madness of the many. But this is a cue to take a sharp stance and step away from the pull and really analyze what's happening. This is called the OODA loop, and I think it works quite well in these situations.
The way these games are shaped is this: A (usually) small factor that could be neglected otherwise, suddenly turns into a significant tail. This is now used by the aggressor to carve out a 1v1 match from a rather chaotic mess of ideas and accusations. This is real-time decision making that's happening behind the hood. On the surface, the two parties are now engaged in a meaningless ego-driven back-and-forth, biding their time and testing the waters for the efficacy of that one decisive factor. This meta-game then settles into a definitive battle and now you're in the ring. When did you step in?
It wasn't an accident. It was all calculated, and you stepped in right when the engagement of words happened. When the opposite party tries to pull you into a battle of words, you do not react immediately. Instead, start the OODA loop and observe the game. Predict the next move, watch for visual and verbal cues. And then at the right moment, disarm them with your bizarre cue. Maybe a joke, maybe a comment about something totally irrelevant to the debate. Catch them off-guard, and then shape the battle the way you want.
This works on all scales, specially those involving a mass of ideas and opinions at society-scale. Evolving situations are always characterized by these meta-games, and any time it settles into one game, that is your cue for the OODA loop. Make this your own "Attica!" moment.