We've all seen Covens fall apart, or larger umbrella organizations torn by internal strife. Sometimes, this is simply part of the natural cycle of creation and dissolution, an outworn group dissolving to make room for new growth. But at other times, a group with much promise can be damaged or destroyed while seemingly still young and healthy. And not only are groups destroyed, but vibrant and dedicated Elders can find themselves disillusioned, wounded perhaps beyond healing. They go into self-imposed isolation, and their potential gifts to the Craft are lost forever.
The process by which this happens sometimes seems mysterious and incomprehensible. At times, it's impossible to clearly see what went wrong. Looking at the tragedy after the fact, it seems as if everyone did everything right. There were, perhaps, misunderstandings and miscommunications. But most of the people involved honestly and sincerely tried to understand everyone's point of view, and they did all the correct conflict-management and conflict-resolution kinds of things. But somehow, everything they tried simply made matters worse. And the people who were the most ethical, the most dedicated to finding a win-win solution, the most patient and understanding - these were the people who got burned the worst, the ones whose strength was sapped, the ones whose idealism was destroyed, the ones who wind up walling themselves in and cutting off their ties to the community.
It's almost enough to make you paranoid, and wonder if there's a cowen plot to break the will of our most dedicated and ethical people.
A while back, Isaac Bonewits published a review of a book which explored this subject. The book is called, Antagonists in the Church: How to Identify and Deal with Destructive Conflict, by Kenneth Haugk (Augsberg Publishing House, Minneapolis, 1988). Isaac highly recommended this book, in spite of it being written from a Christian perspective and intended for a Christian audience of ministers and lay leaders. He claimed the book makes clear much which otherwise seems mysterious and confusing. He was right.
For a modern Witch or Pagan, reading Haugk's book frequently gets tiresome, because Haugk honestly views conflicts within Christian groups as ultimately being the work of the Devil out to destroy the True Church. But putting aside the Christian apologetics, there's an amazing amount in there which is useful and incredibly insightful. If you've ever seen the sorts of destructive conflict described above within a Coven or other Pagan group, Haugk's book will provide an illumination beyond hope. The book needs to be re-written, though, from a Pagan viewpoint (a project in which I am currently engaged), because there are strengths and problems peculiar to Paganism and the Craft which don't impact the Christian audience Haugk wrote for.
Here's a very important insight: Such conflicts don't "just happen." The really destructive ones, the really vicious fights which tear apart Covens or larger groups, conflicts which break the spirit of the most dedicated Elders, these conflicts aren't accidents, and they aren't the consequence of simple misunderstandings or miscommunications. No; they happen because particular individuals made them happen. There is a class of personality traits which makes certain individuals crave conflict. There are people who need conflict the way most people need food. When one of these folks gets going, no form of conflict-resolution process is going to work, because such a person is not interested in resolving conflicts. Indeed, the more understanding and patient you are, the worse things will get, because such a person uses your patience and understanding as opportunities to prolong the conflict.
Fortunately, such people are few and far between, and they can usually be recognized before they start causing damage. The personality traits they possess can be identified, and their techniques can be thwarted or rendered ineffective. To handle them properly takes prior knowledge and preparation, however. It also requires a willingness to take firm action, and to freely exercise your legitimate authority as a Coven Leader. Unfortunately, unless the problem becomes recognized on a wider scale and is appropriately dealt with in the Pagan community at large, damage can still be done in wider arenas. You can make your own Coven or Grove almost immune to people like this. But keeping such people from tearing apart larger umbrella organizations, or spreading malicious rumors through a local or regional community - that's quite a lot harder.
In a series of articles, I'll describe the personality traits involved, ways to recognize them, warning signs to watch for, and techniques which do and don't work in dealing with them. Future articles will give reasons why Pagan groups can be particularly attractive targets for such people, and what can be done to make your group less targetable. Since this is a religious context, I'll also give some thoughts on the theology of it all. Regardless of how Haugk views the matter, as Witches we needn't see it as a conflict of good vs. evil, but rather as a case of treating the people around us in the ways which are appropriate to each individual person. Nor is it a case of a cowen plot, but rather of processes which are entirely natural, though discomforting - in the same way a plague or a flood or an earthquake is entirely natural. Though the Gods of Nature throw such disasters at us, we needn't stand passively and merely accept the destruction. If you live on a floodplain or geologic fault, you can, and should, make proper preparations to minimize how badly you'll be hurt.
Take all this merely as advice. If you know of better ways to deal with the problems explored here, by all means, use them - and share them with the rest of us!
By Any Other Name...
A future article will provide a list of warning signs and telltale personality traits. But to start with, let's begin with a basic understanding of what we're dealing with.
Really destructive conflict is caused by people who are driven to engage others in unwinnable contests. Such people generally have very low self-esteem, little regard for those around them, often a rather loose grip on consensual reality, and frequently possess a fair measure of paranoia. Their low self esteem makes them want to tear others down, in order to make themselves look better by comparison. Having little or no regard for others, they won't care about the damage they cause, and frequently won't even recognize they've caused any. Being unable to distinguish reality from their own rich inner fantasy lives, they will be very convincing liars, because they honestly believe the incredible things they say. And their paranoia is often justified; when they act on their inner drives, they start causing damage, and people stop liking them. Paranoiacs frequently do have many enemies, and few friends.
All this makes them very guarded and closed-off and secretive, though they'll frequently hide behind a carefully-constructed mask of outward friendliness. One such person was overly fond of the most famous quote from Machiavelli: "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer." That kind of deceit and duplicity is something to look out for.
The word Kenneth Haugk uses for these sorts of destructive people is "antagonists." The word was chosen to remind his Christian readers of the antagonism between Satan and the biblical god. In a Pagan context, it wouldn't be appropriate to use this imagery of Eternal Conflict. We'd do better with an image more in keeping with Pagan myth and symbolism.
Something like "Shiva" or "Kali" would be an improvement. After all, destruction is a natural process, though one which we don't want to stand too close to, if we can help it. But then, destructive people get most of their strength from the fear and worry they can inspire in their targets, and putting on them a label like "Kali" gives them far too much power. Better still would be a term which, while not minimizing the danger, doesn't give them more respect than they deserve. The Books of Raoul say, "Every ecosystem needs maggots," and so I've heard the term "maggot" used effectively, though that seems to go too far the other way. A word I've chosen to use is "troll."
In much of European mythology and folklore, giants, trolls, and ogres are embodiments of the forces of Chaos, natural forces which often batter at the walls of civilization or even at the orderly forms which Nature Herself creates. Chaos is not an "evil" force. It's simply the flip side of the creative impulse. Seeing destructive people as chaotic rather than as evil helps to place them into a useful and meaningful Pagan context. Of all these chaotic embodiments, trolls are sometimes among the strongest - yet they also have an unintentionally comic side, as we're reminded by fairy tales such as the "Three Billy Goats Gruff," or modern stories such as Tolkien's "The Hobbit". Trolls can be easily outwitted, if you know something about them, for sunlight turns them into harmless boulders. An understanding of the true nature of destructive people is the sunlight which renders them impotent and ineffective.
Inner Drives
Trolls can't help being trolls. It isn't that they want to be destructive, exactly, any more than a plague-carrying flea wants to cause death, or a flood wants to destroy a town. It's just in the nature of the thing. Floods simply spread over the plain, and if you happen to be in the way, well, too bad for you. Nothing you did either caused the flood, or could have prevented it. In the same way, destructive people have inner drives which make them act as they do. No action you take will make them behave differently. The best you can do is to not be around when the dam breaks.
Frequently, trolls are unaware of the damage they're causing. A cornered mongoose doesn't really want to rip you to pieces; it just wants to get away. So too, a destructive person will usually deny wanting to cause pain. Such people really want something else, usually the things which all people want and need: self-fulfillment, validation, a feeling of security, and so on. It's just that trolls have extremely unhealthy ways to go about getting these things. And when they do get them, their insecurity convinces them it won't last, so they'd better get more. This is the key in a nutshell: trolls are not healthy people, so they can't be expected to act in mature and healthy ways. And treating them as if they were mature and healthy is like treating a cornered mongoose as if it was a beloved housecat. The results are not pretty.
A mongoose or a plague-carrying flea is not likely to change into something else. Neither is a troll. Unless you are very, very skilled as a counselor, nothing you can do will help a troll get healthy. In fact, things you'd normally do to help other people will just make matters worse. If you are understanding and patient in response to a troll's dishonest or destructive acts, what troll learns is: dishonesty and destructiveness is rewarded by patience and understanding. This encourages the troll to continue being dishonest and destructive.
Trolls need conflict, the way healthy people need food. If people are responding to them in any way at all, this provides them with a feeling of having an impact on the world around them. Since they have very little self-esteem, any reaction at all is far better than none. And since fear and hate are powerful emotions, if they can inspire fear and hate, this makes them feel powerful and effective. Further, being hated feeds their paranoia ("See? I was right! People really don't like me!") and encourages more of the acts which inspired the fear and hate in the first place ("... so I have to get them first!"). But being loved and embraced won't stop those actions, since what they crave is excitement and conflict, not love. And being somewhat paranoid, they'll think your acts of love are intended to fool them into feeling safe and comfortable; they'll be convinced your kindness is part of an elaborate trap. ("I know people don't like me. So why are you pretending you do? What are you up to?")
Because trolls need conflict, they are very practiced at it. Experience is a good teacher, and most trolls will have had an enormous amount of experience by the time they are old enough to join a Coven. If you wind up being the target of a troll's attacks, fighting back is not a good idea. Trolls are very, very good at turning any frontal assaults to their advantage. They are even better at finding and manipulating more subtle responses. One of the most powerful defensive tricks they have is pretending to be the victim. Once you respond - in any way, regardless of how measured and controlled your response is - they begin telling everyone they know about how mean you are, and how cruel and vicious and vindictive you're being. It's a good way to turn your own friends against you, and begin making you feel isolated and paranoid. This tactic has the additional advantage of turning attention away from whatever unethical acts the troll was doing in the first place.
For a healthy person involved in a misunderstanding, a careful explanation of what went wrong can go a long way toward resolving the tensions. But this doesn't have the desired effect if the person isn't healthy. Don't explain things to a troll. If you sit a troll down and say, "This act led to this damage; this statement caused that argument; you misunderstood me in this way, which caused this difficulty," it verifies for the troll exactly what worked and what didn't. Such an approach tells the troll precisely which strategies can be used to prolong the conflict. If you say, "We can resolve the problem by doing this," you've told the troll what to avoid. Trolls are willing to make any promises which are needed to lull you into a sense of unwariness; then they're good at finding justifications for breaking those promises, or finding ways around them, so the conflict will go on. Particularly if other people are involved, they are also very good at deflecting any discussion away from the central issues involved - such as the troll's own actions.
So, patience won't help; retaliation won't help; love and support won't help. Explaining the situation won't help, and neither will proposing solutions or compromises, nor will mediation or engagement in any sort of dialogue. If you wind up in any dispute or argument with a troll, doing any of these things will simply make matters worse, and will probably result in incredible pain. Yet these are exactly the approaches you should use with most people who are not trolls. Most people are healthy. Trolls are not, and should not be treated as if they are. Trolls are not healthy; they won't get healthy, they don't want to get healthy, and keeping them near you will eventually let them harm you.
The only effective way to handle trolls should be obvious. It's also very simple, in theory at least. Don't associate with trolls. And if one gets into your Coven, he or she needs to be ejected as soon as you recognize that it really is a troll you're dealing with. And you don't want to get involved in detailed discussions with the troll, explanations of why you're taking the action you're taking. You want to just do it, and be done with it.
But obviously, you don't want to treat a healthy person this way, someone with whom you're simply having a genuine disagreement or misunderstanding. So the trick is not so much in how to handle a troll. It's in how to recognize one.
Next time, I'll present some ways to recognize trolls.
Copyright (c) 2002 David Petterson
May be recirculated as long as this information is included
