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Conflict does not necessarily call for gloom and doom, it can be a simple dispute even a personal one. In conflict with oneself.
It is a constant when interacting with each other and conflict resolution is a social skill as well as a personal skill. If an option for conflict resolution is to go to war, then your stuck in human past, with ignorance to human history.
"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."
“If you don't have a strategy, you're part of someone else's strategy.”
“You’ve got to think about big things while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.”
I would say no because humans who engage in conflict don't have to be an intrinsic part of human society.
We, as a society, could stop rewarding competitive and violent behavior any time we want. We could say to ourselves: "Any man who picks up a gun to make war rather than negotiate peacefully is no longer a man and should no longer be considered a hero by anyone..." and I guarantee you world violence would plummet.
If we were to socially equate a man owning a weapon to being the same as him walking down the street in pink panties, the vast majority of men would want nothing to do with a weapon of any kind.
It's all about how we view the use of force and the need for weapons.
From the Coliseum to the Super Bowl humans thrive on conflict real or contrived. They always have and always will. It may take two to fight but it only takes one to steal with violence. Humans have ben working on this problem for about as long as sex, children and inheritance.
Resource scarcity, or the perception thereof, is the root of conflict among all organisms from the single celled to humanity.
How conflict is resolved is another thing entirely. Fortunately humans have the abiity to reason and mitigate the suffering that often accompanies conflict.
Conflict is life. Nature, while quite beautiful, is very unforgiving.
We like to think we're above violence because of our intellect and ability to reason. Well, we've had this ability for our entire existence and it hasn't stopped, at all. I'm sure we've all been violently angry from time to time but pulled back because of the consequences of acting out (road rage comes to mind).
We're still animals driven by instinct but we cooperate to some extent because it's more beneficial for survival as a whole for a given population. If some catastrophic event occurred wiping out most of the infrastructure we rely on for survival, i.e., grocery stores, water/sewer treatment, electricity, gas, etc. You'll see how "civilized" we behave toward each other.
I think Tuckman's Stages of Group Development describes in microcosm what happens in a larger social group. Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing are the natural stages any group which is trying to problem solve and accomplish something goes through.
In other words, while conflict is natural and must be worked through to succeed, becoming stuck in the conflict stage impedes the progress of a group to reach its goal. So avoiding the conflict doesn't seem to be the solution. Rather being willing to let it go after it has served its purpose is the solution.
Perhaps a group which had no goals could avoid conflict if such a thing ever existed.
This particular topic is one of my personal areas of experience. No, I'm not holding myself out to be an expert or anything. I'm just saying this is an area in which I have more than a little experience.
As cb at sea pointed out, conflict is a natural, normal aspect of human society. To build on this, most human conflicts are about HOW to do something, not about WHAT should be done. Most human conflicts are in the area of the HOWs. Unfortunately, most of us do not recognize this; NOT AT ALL.
If we are agreement on the WHATs, we should be able to collaborate on selecting the HOWs. [Did you recognize the major stumbling-block here?]
Last edited by Oldhag1; 02-09-2015 at 04:59 PM..
Reason: Removed colored font
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