tl;dr: Social systems are self-similar and partially unpredictable networks of social beings. Mutual trust among its parts is crucial for the well-being and well-functioning of the system. Often the best remedy for conflict or dysfunction is rebuilding that trust, allowing undistorted information flow.
Epistemic state: Influences are wide-ranging and hard to trace back, certainly the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model and nonlinear dynamics need to be mentioned here.
We are constantly interacting with everything around us: The air we breathe, the food we metabolize, the light we see and reflects from us. But more importantly, we intentionally exchange messages with other social beings. With humans we might use language and complex nonverbal signals, dependent on the context and relationship, while with other social animals we might rely more on nonverbal communication. That is, we are part of what I call a social system, a network of social beings interacting with others to meet their individual and collective needs. Real social systems have interesting properties.
Firstly, they are self-similar on multiple levels, vertically and horizontally. Vertically, you might think of a team of a few members at work as a social system, the teams across the organization are parts in an organization-wide system, while the organization itself is part of a system of organizations, etc. Also in the other direction, according to IFS, individual humans can be thought of as a collection of social parts and even these parts are formed from sub-parts. Also horizontally, a person might be involved in a team at work, serve a completely different function as a member in a sports group, and interact again in a different way with their family at home. Due to the self-similarity, it is quite arbitrary how to draw the boundary of a system: Just two people might be considered a social system, as can be a nation or the entire world, including all natural ecosystems. These systems don't exist as clear-cut entities, but rather are useful concepts that match emergent phenomena.
Secondly, social systems are partially unpredictable, or what I would call semi-chaotic: Due to the complexity of the individual parts and their interactions, many properties are virtually unpredictable and sensitive to small fluctuations (e.g. individual encounters) and might lead to widely different developments over time. At the same time, some properties are very stable and might even become more predictable over time (e.g. institutions).
Thirdly, any individual part has to work with very incomplete information about the system, due to limited access to information, limited ability to integrate information, and the inherent unpredictability of the system. And since it relies on the system to get its needs met, it is fundamentally vulnerable. Thus it has to trust the system to use its power over the individual in alignment with its needs. In other words, trust is consentful vulnerability, the assumption that hidden information is aligned with available information, and can thus be broken by evidence of inconsistency between them. At least due to this fundamental interdependence, every part is interested beyond its own well-being also in the well-being of the system as a whole, which in turn is the basis for the assumption of alignment to hold (i.e. to trust). That is, trust functions like a lubricant, allowing effective information transfer, and a bridge to overcome the remaining information asymmetry. If trust is broken or withheld, however, there is resistance for information to flow and be integrated faithfully, often leading to a dysfunction or even total breakdown of the system. In other words, for a social system to stay functional, mutual trust is crucial. For humans in particular it means that we need to both respect their self-care and trust their desire to care for others. (And since the boundaries of a social system are arbitrary, these two are actually the same kind of process.) That is, a healthy social system is based on mutual respect of the individual parts' "humanity".
A social system is the strongest, most flexible, and thus enjoys the most well-being if all relevant information can flow and be integrated faithfully and the capacities of the individual parts are fully differentiated and utilized. In social systems in particular, parts are naturally highly diverse in their natural inclinations, enabling the system as a whole to adapt to a wide range of environments by utilizing these qualities. However, this also means that there is a danger for individuals being suppressed in any particular environment, by necessity or accident, making the system not only inflexible as a whole, but also causing harm to these individuals and by violation of trust also to the larger system, possibly causing chronic dysfunction (more on that below). Any individual subsystem knows best about its own needs, and thus it also needs to have ways to communicate these needs and be heard. A well-functioning system nurtures all available qualities within itself and allows them to find beneficial ways to express themselves. That is, it empowers every part of the system to communicate its needs, to find its own place in the larger context, and to execute its functions consentfully. Then there is intrinsic power in the system, based on strong mutual trust between parts and towards the whole system, because then they can operate as a union without spending energy on unhealthy internal conflict, and respectfully assert themselves towards others outwardly as a part of a larger social system.
How well information can flow between parts is mediated by their resonance. If humans connect deeply, they literally synchronize. They think the same thoughts, they feel the same feelings, take similar postures, their breath and hearts sync, and so much more. A strong natural resonance can give this feeling to know someone already for years (because people learn to attune to each other over time), despite having just met. And if many parts in a system resonate with each other, allowing thorough information flow, they live in harmony. Most conflicts are caused by misunderstandings, which in turn are caused by insufficient connection that would allow reliable information flow. Thus, if there is little resonance between two parts in a social system, misunderstandings can arise easily and — if handled unskillfully — lead to conflict, in particular when trust is low. A dysfunctional state of a social system is resistance against the natural tendency of relevant information to flow, often caused by a lack of trust and often causing harm (unmet needs) to parts of the system. Thus, conflict resolution is usually about finding common ground and enabling reliable information flow between the parts.
However, there is a place for mistrust. If a part interrupts the system's functioning, their impact needs to be contained, to minimize harm and to restore the trust in the system and thus its functioning (this is also known as the restoring force, giving the system resilience). Since a part has a fundamental interest in the system's well-being, a part turning against the system usually signals a systemic fault, a dysfunction that leads to the part's needs not being met, causing it to escalate. The most fruitful way is thus not only to empower the part to take care of itself, but also to investigate the system itself, listening to the part on what changes are needed, and reflecting as a whole to transform the fault to allow even more flourishing by integrating the previously neglected aspects (better known as transformative justice). Conventional approaches like just punishing or even getting rid of the part (punitive justice) or helping the part reintegrate in an assumed functional system (restorative justice) might be effective in an individual case, but might leave systemic fault undetected, and thus potential of the system untouched, and might even lead to more severe repercussions in the future.
Due to such and other dynamics, the high complexity, and incomplete information, dysfunctional states can arise and persist in a social system without any malicious actor and even despite strong forces trying to push it out. In the worst case, this can end in polarization where trust is severely violated between subsystems and thus information flow is highly restricted and distorted. This in turn frequently leads to extreme delusions about the current state of the system as a whole (or its environment) and thus to unrealistic ideas about how to come back to a harmonious, well-functioning state of the system, possibly exacerbating the problem in a vicious cycle. The most crucial intervention to break the cycles in such an extreme situation is to re-establish trust, slowly and consentfully, in order to allow information to flow and to be integrated more accurately again.
The interest in the system as a whole to be well is the least common denominator in a highly diverse community. Thus, love-driven actions are the most likely to find wide acceptance, causing the least resistance and thus being most likely to be executed in almost any social system. This is in particular true in equitable systems, since centralized power tends to be oppressive, i.e. limit faithful information flow from the disempowered, and thus at least hinders the system to flourish to its full potential. In either way, note how the collective can be conceptualized as an agent that can interact with its parts, and in particular in a participatory and trusting system in a loving and constructive way. This, the collective, is the force that keeps a social system together and works to increase internal and external trust, the heart that wants to attune to the other's frequency, the compassion that allows to system to be resilient and well.
This is what gives me hope. We are deeply interconnected and interdependent on this planet. Let's connect to the hearts of the ones we might disagree with and build the trusting relationships we so urgently need to solve the crises we face, individually and collectively. Let's open our hearts to harmony.