The Root of Human Conflicts
Human life, human society, is riddled with conflicts. What happens inside an individual is also visible within the society that individual lives in. The nature of conflicts is such that finding solutions doesn’t seem to be as straightforward as you might think. Not only do conflicts have a tendency to drag on but they also grow. One conflict becomes set on top of another, which is, and this is typically a facet of human nature, creating ‘buildings’ of conflicts. Conflicts tend to get structured into very complex constructions in which every side has a point to defend. In other words, there is no possibility of seeing the truth, the one reasoning that everybody can subscribe to. But if human conflict situations are no longer resolvable, how can humanity as a whole have a future? For this it is necessary we investigate the root of the problem, in this case the source of the human conflict.
An individual has a conflict from the moment he/she does not want something that is present in his or her life. Now the individual is in conflict with life, or any specific aspect of it. Wishing for something is the format that is most commonly used by humans. We wish for something that we perceive to be absent in our life at this moment in time. It may be present but if we can’t see it and we want it, we begin wishing we had it. In fact, this ‘wanting’ is the direct result of us being dissatisfied with the way we perceive our life or parts of that life. There is something there that we don’t want and in order to change that, we wish it was replaced by something else. If you already know you have something you do not wish for it. You recognise it to be in your life and therefore you don’t need to wish for it. So wanting something is the reversed expression of ‘not wanting’ what is there, of refusing what is. Very often it is easier for us to express what we want than it is to identify and describe what we don’t want. Both are used to express dissatisfaction.
When we don’t want something that is part of our life we basically would like it to go away, to disappear, to vanish. When we don’t want something that is part of our life there are three possible way to respond to the conflict we have just expressed. There are three ways to deal with this dissatisfaction.
In the first instance, you can feel that you are the victim of what life throws at you and you really would like life to stop doing that. You would like whatever you don’t like to go away. Your outside world, where you feel the problem originates from, should take it away. It is the responsibility of the outside world as it is the outside world that has create the conflict you have, or at least that is the way you perceive the situation. In order to establish a positive outcome to this conflict we are told we have some tools in our possession that can make your wish a reality. We are being advised to think positively, to visualise the outcome we wish for, to pray to a higher power. And although these methods may focus the mind on the conflict, and in particular on the way we want the conflict to evolve, it might be obvious to you that none of these have a direct influence on removing the unwanted from your life. Whether you use any of these methods or none at all, if the unwanted is removed from your life it is done by your environment, for reasons that suit that environment, not because you prayed with the rights word or your visualisation directly manifested your mind’s picture.
A second respond you may have to a recently introduced conflict is to be determined not to be pushed around. You are not having it, and that is that! So now you have declared war on the situation your life is in. In fact, you might say that you have declared war on your own life as it is this decision that establishes that there is a conflict. At this point the fighting starts. You will now do everything in your power to stop the unwanted from further invading or even bothering your life. You will put everything you have into this fight. It will cost you a lot of energy, and sometimes we are even prepared to offer other things in our life simply to try and win this particular one. A conflict and the requirements to keep fighting may extend far beyond its original impact on your life. Ultimately, there are only two possible outcomes.
One is that you manage to actually remove the conflict, the unwanted, from your life. You are able to completely stop the influence it has on your life by either destroying the unwanted or by making it go away. A successful outcome is only one that is permanent. In other words, you need to finalise the outcome, not temporarily defer the unwanted and then having to deal with it again at some later date. Winning means either completely destroyed or been chased away knowing it won’t want to return. A permanent solution is the only acceptable outcome to your own life, leaving you with ‘peace of mind’.
Any other scenario drags into an ongoing, almost never-ending, conflict. This will continue eating away your energies, your reserves, and weakening your life. A long drawn out conflict, war, is always detrimental to the system, even if, in the end, you get the upper hand. The reason for this is that it isn’t about who wins the fight. It is about how much energy can you spare, you are able to syphon off from your system, before its vital functions begin to fail. In other words, a human being is not made, has not been constructed, for a lifetime of fighting. Conflicts are supposed to be short in time and limited in energy input. Humans better be aware of this natural fact. If they do not take this truth in consideration they will seriously, even life threateningly, damage their own lives. It isn’t the conflict itself that creates this effect. It is the way we respond to the conflict. Choosing to fight a physical or mental war is always, without exception, a massive drain on resources. And let’s not forget that the conflict has been created by the individual! It begins with “I don’t want it”.
The last possible response that anyone can have to an newly arisen situation is not to enter into a conflict. One can decide to accept the changing conditions of life and not to put up a fight. So if we decide not to resist the different situation, if we do not enter the war zone, we are able to watch from the side lines. We leave the situation as it is and we observe. Because the situation is new to us - hence the feeling of I don’t want it – by observing and interfering as little as possible we will be learning a lot about this new situation very quickly. With this knowledge and insight we may be able to plot a way through the situation. We may spend our energy on adjusting to the changed environment rather than going to war with it. This response results in a no-conflict harmony inside our system. We don’t complain about it. We don’t resist it. We don’t try and alter it. None of our energy is spent pursuing a ‘want’ or fighting a ‘don’t want’. Rather it is all spent in moving along with environmental changes and making it into the best we possibly can.
Once we realise how much energy we put into dealing with the conflicts of our lives it should no longer surprise us why so many people are tired, are ill and are dying. And it is never the conflict itself that is responsible for these outcomes. These are the direct result of the way we respond to a changed environment. If we insist we want it to be different from what it actually is, we have a conflict. On the other hand, if we manage to make some internal readjustments so we can drift along with it, we keep ourselves conflict free, which translates into good health and a balanced life.
Some of you may now feel that if nobody ever stood up against cruelty and injustice nothing would ever change and it would all get worse. May I first ask you whether you truly believe that all that fighting in human history has created more justice and tolerance within society or less? Furthermore, science teaches us that where energy is directed to that those specific interactions will become more powerful. So when I put up a resistance against another person, another group or an authority, they are going ‘to defend’ themselves by creating a more powerful barrier, to which I then have to react by directing even more energy to the conflict zone. If by doing this the wall comes down and the barrier is removed for ever then it may well be energy well spend. However, if it drags on and the walls keep getting higher and ticker, everybody is getting more and more tired, less and less busy with living their own lives, then the analysis looks totally different. Life itself will be destroyed by not ending a conflict. The problem is having to decide when enough is enough, when you ignore your friends and neighbours edging you on not to give up. You don’t have to face this when you haven’t turned the changing environment into a conflict zone in the first place
From a health point of view, whether this is personal health or the health of a nation, one should be guided by one’s own energy levels, one’s own strengths and weaknesses in order to pick the right response. Also bear in mind that entering lots of conflict zones will disperse the limited energy you have and it will quickly leave the vital functions struggling to perform all the tasks life requires them to do. From that point of view it makes perfect sense to minimalise your time spend in conflict. And there are two ways of doing just that.
Be very choosy in what you want to do battle for
When starting a battle ensure it is a short one
Pick only a fight for something that is of vital importance to your survival. Make sure it has nothing to do with image, status, hurt feelings, revenge, envy, fear, self-esteem, and so many more emotions and standards set by society. Having the right to something that you have been denied doesn’t warrant a long drawn out battle that might even kill you. Only pick a fight when it is absolutely necessary to your survival. And in essence, these are mostly infringements on your life that come from the human structure of life. Our lives are mostly endangered by other human beings and the construction of human society. Being restricted in life by natural circumstances mostly allows us to sense that there is nothing we can do about it. Being restricted in life by other human beings indicates that life could be different and that we can and must do something about it.
Only pick a fight that you can win, and one that you can win quickly. Quickly does not refer to time in this sense. It refers to energy input. If you can remove the conflict out of your life with a few short blasts of energy, your life will not suffer very much as a result of it. In fact, it will be able to recuperate fully once you have moved back into a conflict free zone.
Being in conflict creates carnage and being in chronic conflict creates death. And remember that it isn’t the changing environment that creates the conflict. It is us responding to the changes by refusing them, by not accepting them. So we create our own inner conflicts ourselves, the very ones that will make us ill and kill us. Our environment, nature, does not alter anything simply because we blame it for our misfortune. Nature does not change simply because we want it to. Life, nature, is in constant evolution and we, humans, are an integral part of that evolution. We are constantly being moved around by forces that are even much larger than any human force can ever be, and if we refuse to accept this we are entering a life of doing battle with nature, a battle we have no way of ever winning. Humanity, and all of us are being dragged into this, has decided it doesn’t accept nature as an overriding force, so it is doing battle with it. Humanity is fighting nature because it has decided that it knows best. Humanity has created a conflict and has decided to fight, it appears, to the destruction of humanity itself.
The root of human suffering is conflict. The root of human conflict is the choice we make about how to respond to changes and the adherence to wishes that fall outside of our current reality. The desire for life to be different from what it is, is what is killing us. Both the individual and humanity.
You may find it useful to alter expressions like “I want” and “I don’t want” to a simple “we’ll see”.