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© 2007 Daniel J. McLaughlin Man Made Conflict Nature is pretty amazing. There are prairies and mountains, canyons and forests, lush green fields and dry brown deserts. In spite of the vast variety of habitats, weather and geography, natural interactions are really quite simple. Everything is decided quickly by natural law. A mountain lion is hungry. The deer is grazing, tending to it’s own needs. When the lion decides to make a meal of the deer, there is an apparent conflict, as both want to survive. If the deer is quicker than the lion, it lives another day and the lion goes hungry. If not, the lion is satisfied for another day. With either result, the conflict is over and life goes on. In nature, in reality, there can be no long term conflict. In each instant, the result occurs according to natural laws. In human society, that is not the case. There are conflicts which may not be resolved for years. Why does long term conflict arise, and why only within human society? The fertile ground of human conflict is created by the very fact that humans are intelligent, that they are acting, choosing beings, each with his or her own goals and assumptions about reality, with various views of what is good or bad. Of the many billions of people that have ever lived, no two are exactly alike, yet human thinking and logic is the same for all. We can relate to stories of people from ancient times because we experience the same things and are subject to the same emotions. Technology changes, language and customs change, but people do not. Parents of today grieve the death of a child just as parents did six thousand years ago. People of all nations and cultures make individual choices the same way. They choose from a collection of alternatives, the action that they think will give the best result, based on their assumptions about cause and effect. While the process is often instantaneous and completed without conscious effort or thought, it is the same process as agonizing deliberation over a long time. Each person decides based on making the future state better than the present state. Human cooperation arises when people have common goals and accurate assumptions of reality, a correct road map, so to speak. Conflict occurs when the parties of human interaction hold false assumptions about cause and effect or natural laws. The difficulty in resolving long term conflict, whether it is siblings quarrelling or nations warring, is that assumptions of reality are built up over time, layer on layer, and the false assumptions may be hidden under layers of truth. Because the surface assumptions are true, people cling to their beliefs and resist any attempt which may prove them to be wrong. When people make their own decisions, they know their goals and they have their own ideas about how to bring it about. When someone else makes the decisions, that decider cannot know all that the other person knows, and cannot appreciate all of his or her goals. Different ideas about cause and effect and opinions about right and wrong make conflict likely. The further removed the decider is from the victim of the decision, the more likely it is that conflict will arise. The more diverse the body of people involved, the higher the risk of conflict when one person makes decisions for all. The beauty of a free society, where individual rights are recognized and cherished, is that conflict is minimized. People can act in any way that is in their best interest as long as they respect the rights of others to do the same. If people disagree, they can choose to have nothing to do with each other. When there is interaction, it is only because of choice. There is no conflict. In the United States, and any country with such varied geography and diverse population, centralized decision making is guaranteed to bring about conflict. You cannot make decisions for 300 million people and satisfy all of their needs. The government elite get to choose the winners and losers, a sure recipe for serious conflict and abuse. When decisions are made at as local a level as possible, people have a say in things that affect their lives. The potential for conflict is minimized and the potential for progress is maximized. Ongoing Conflict is always man made. The good new is that it is also avoidable if the rights of all individuals are respected.
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Daniel Mclaughlin
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