Human and its tendency of conflict
Even in the most peaceful period of mankind’s history, conflict will always present on the darkest alley.
“Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum”
- Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus
Humans are a social creature that more often than not start to unite and forming a collective group called society. It is easy to assume that in all the gift of sentience where we either evolved or granted by the higher power (depending on your belief), we will come to be a saint-like creature that oversee the earth and led its inhabitant. By the nature of how we are able to utilize a lot of things and incorporate other creatures by domesticating them, of course we human would promote peace towards everything that exists in this earth, are we not?
Then let me ask you a question. Are you someone who reads Bible? or Quran? or are you someone who read the Vedas? Whichever belief you decide to align yourself with, one topic will always present, conflict. Yes, despite all the potential towards being the peacekeeper of the earth, we human has this innate problem since the beginning of time.
First thing we need to understand about human and its economy, we have limited amount of resources. Second, we are always consuming other being (living creature or non-living object) in order to sustain our life and our lifestyle. Third, — and I dare to say this is one of the most important aspect of it all — we are a greedy creature who never feel satisfied with even the most abundant of resources on our coffer, we always wanted more.
The combination of those three sparks the fire of conflict when two opposing sides want the same thing that is unclaimed or belong to either side. This reality then coined by Karl Marx as the “conflict theory” on his communist manifesto. In which that from the sociology of human’s society, conflict is innate and embedded on human’s nature. His theory mainly focused on how human’s struggle are conflict between groups competing for limited resources.
Though the theory does make sense, yet it is important to note that Marx’s conflict theory is flawed. By framing it into an exclusive struggle in between classes (the working class vs the owner class) which does happen but not the entirety of the story, it creates a lot of limitation and further misconception towards human’s tendency for conflict. This issue was then further analyzed and refined by Max Weber, he added emotional factors towards the idea of conflict. Further down the road, there are more developments towards this theory where it adds the complexity towards the issue of conflict.
“What we don’t understand, we fear. What we fear, we judge as evil. What we judge as evil, we attempt to control. And what we cannot control…we attack.”
- Unknown author
Conflict is primal, that concept has long predates the existence of human’s society. Since the beginning of times, conflict had existed as the natural course of things when two or more sides contradict each other and created a struggle towards an outcome. This is not so much a good analogy, but even physics on newton’s law has proven dualism of force would result in a conflict of power.
Most of us God believers believed that God is fair and just, that all men created equal. While I am not going to doubt that statement since it has its own philosophical and metaphysical meaning behind it, there is one thing to point out that not all of us born equal. The circumstances of our birth differs and that would affect the future stemming from it.
The so many inequalities that exists on our sphere creates an innate desire for things to be dynamics, for the entropy is always at work that creates many degrees of randomness which in turn sparks many events on life. This dynamics, like most of what exists in this universe would trigger contradictions that would result into something as one overcame the other. That is also the reality of things in human society.
As the fact that humans are most certainly homo socius, we have to bear the fact that it only get us so far to a certain degree. As what Amy Chua said on her Political Tribes, humans are not born racist yet unnervingly develop the trait of racial preference so early on their life. Group recognition and favoritism, and in regards of some theory which stated that we kept our part of lizard brain that is proposed by Paul D. MacLean, we develop the traits of tribalism from it which further fuels inter-tribal conflicts. In turn, those tribalism tendency together with xenophobic narrative on their group would pit them against each other, though this is not always resulted in a violence form of conflict. This exact reason is also why even on modern times there are subtle yet systemic racism at play even when civil rights is a thing.
A politician who could find this subtle enmities in between those two opposing power might be able to siphon its power. By appealing to the primal response of fear within society, in which garnering populist cause might be a feasible option to take. This kind of behavior has been found since long ago through various historical records of human conflicts. This is why the recent occurrence of the new wave of modern fascism could easily gain momentum among the uncertainties of our current economical situation.
Though, based on Georg Simmel’s Sociology of Conflict, conflict in itself might be the resolution of tension between two contraries with two common contrast. Furthermore, this so-called “unification” in order to achieve harmonious and centripetal society is not only empirically impossible but also brought no essential consequence of life process towards social structural stability. Since there is this innate strong desires for some individual to incite chaos as a way to invert social structure and gaining social status, especially when they are standing on marginalized position in the society.
Human’s society apparently — while I still am and would never condone violence on behalf of this fact — is not entirely detached from that concept, in which human’s society progresses with each conflict they have been through. If you had realized, many technological, philosophical, and cultural advancement were done in the time of conflict. Humans are creative bunch with a built-in problem-solving feature that would analyze their resources to overcome what ails them, with that they’d advance further.
Conflict is pervasive and most often unavoidable in the structure and social sphere of humankind. Therefore, it’d be wise to regulate — though as useless as it may seems — the way us human carry out our conflicts towards social evolution into what seems to have the least harm inflicted and the biggest gain possible. Disruption will always be present, so it would be up to us to led it towards beneficial future we might attain.
Bibliography
Arceneaux, Kevin, et. al. 2021, “Some people just want to watch the world burn: the prevalence, psychology and politics of the ‘Need for Chaos’ ”, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, DOI 10.7910/DVN/MCFN1Z.
Chua, Amy, 2018, Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations, New York: Penguin Press.
MacLean, Paul D., 1990, The Triune Brain in Evolution: Role in Paleocerebral Functions, New York: Plenum.
Simmel, Georg, 1904, “The Sociology of Conflict I”, American Journal of Sociology , Vol. 9, №4, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2762175.
