If a society looks upon conflict as both friend and foe, it has a better chance of preventing serious and costly types of conflict. Analytic conflict theory has much to teach us about the dual nature of conflict. Simmel observes that social conflict may be as important for a healthy society as cooperation.
All group relations have positive elements of attraction and negative ones of repulsion.
Association and dissociation are facts of social life. The forces of social integration usually tend to eclipse those which force us apart. Society wants to stay together and thus ignores or suppresses conflict rather than acknowledging and using it. Conflict's functions, Simmel would argue, should be as prominent in how a society educates and trains its members as its dysfunctions. The more inventive it is, the less likely that inevitable social tensions will produce high-cost conflict.