To effectively negotiate or mediate, one must have a realistic understanding and acceptance of conflict. Too often, however, conflict mediation is confused with peacemaking. Many mediators accept conflict only grudgingly in theory and are even less tolerant of its open expression in practice.
Conflict continues to be viewed negatively by many people and professionals.
Analogically, conflict is to the body politic what cholesterol is to body physiology. Likewise, some forms of personal and social conflict are peripheral, unnecessary and destroy relationships, while other conflicts are substantive, that is, necessary and useful, encouraging the growth and development of relationships and society. In our Western, techno-rational culture, there is a strong tendency to suppress and dismiss emotion in general and conflict in particular. The conventional wisdom posits that conflict results from the absence of reason and from being overrun by emotion. Many mediators of the rationalist persuasion use techniques derived from that view.