Jan 10
I’ll start of with a quote:
Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact.
Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.
— Marcus Aurelius
Nobody is ever right or wrong, everything we sense and witness is simply a perspective, shaped by events, environment, culture, and principles exposed to in our lives. I want to share a perspective on the topic the title states which is why war and conflict is forever inevitable.
Everyone born into this world was born without choosing to be born. In other words, you didn’t exist in some alternate dimension where you decided that you wanted to be born into existence into this world. You came into existence without personal approval of it first. We were all born into this world without our own consent. So we might ask then, what is our duty and more importantly, what is our purpose? Are we instant slaves of the system we immediately were born into? Why should we do anything of significance after being born? What if you want to hit the reject button and opt-out? Of course you have your opinions on this now, but as an individual who was born without choosing to be born why should we follow anyone’s principles of living? Why should some else who came to existence the same way you did, be able to dictate that way you should live?
A person born into this world is not obligated to anything. The world is what it is and they have no onus to adhere to any standards. Think about it, someone might decide that they want to do the most minimal amount of work to survive and that’s perfectly fine because it’s their own lives and they have a choice to live it as they see fit for themselves so long as they don’t directly inflict violence or disturbance onto others. If someone wants to live their lives as a contributor to society, which a lot of people do, then that is fine as well. There are no correct or wrong responsibilities that people need to take. No one is obligated to anything the moment they are born.
Everyone is always pushing their views of what world should be like onto others. Entrepreneurs want to change the world. World leaders want to change the world. Changing the world means changing people. Changing people means changing believes in order to change behaviors. Changing behaviors means changing their obligations to adhere to certain standards. We just discussed that no one is obligated to anything yet many people are constantly trying to change people by making them feel obligated to act and think certain ways.
This is where a conflict stems from.
It’s understandable that societies have a set of principles that people within that society must adhere to be a member of that society. As an individual you are free to leave it and join another society but we know that lots of people, including animals, don’t have that option. They are forced in to living a certain way that a single person or group of people see as being the ‘proper’ way to live by. You can say, sure, people have the option to opt-out via suicide if they don’t part of this world which some do execute on that option but fundamentally there is always that internal drive in most of us to survive and breed. There are more suicide attempts than successful ones for a reason.
Just as how we can program a machine to perform a task over and over again because it’s all we’ve programmed it to do, is essentially how humans are wired to reproduce and live. Computer software is composed of binary machine code that gets executed in a processor. The processor executes what it is fed. The computer software in humans is the DNA and the processor is the electrostatic interactions which are forces of nature that tell enzymes where to go to read DNA strands similar to the CPU powered by transistors triggered on and off by electrical forces that enable it to read a line of instructions. It’s a chemically induced biological process that goes in our body and internal systems that behave like an automatic programmed machine.
It’s like a game of Sims where the game creator made the objective of the game to see how many generations the characters can continue on to. The conflict arises when someone thinks they have a better way of achieving sustainability and growth of the human race. Everyone has opinions but no single opinion is correct or wrong. They are simply different perspectives. Opinions can seem ‘more correct’ than others based on the context but they’re still opinions. Things go negative pretty quickly when an elitist or group of elitist want to execute their plan but they need more resources to expand. Countless wars have been due to trying to conquer land to expand their vision of what the world should be like. People in power and authority positions are essential a form of elitists because they exercise power to support their opinionated view of what the world should be like. Elitism has a negative connotation but by definition it is indifferent to being good or bad in the same way that a Shepard is an elitist to a herd of sheep from the sheep’s perspective.
Language itself is subjective to interpretation which causes conflict. As an example, what does the word ‘freedom’ mean? Some say freedom is the ability to roam freely without consequence. Some say freedom is the ability to speak as you please without ramification. Some say freedom is the ability to act without restraint. As you can see everyone has different meanings based on their own personal experiences, background, environment, memories, and believes. Many arguments simply start because of misinterpretation of what a person said. How many times have you heard “That’s not what I meant”, and then the other person says “it doesn’t matter if you meant it, it makes me feel this way”. Now we’re in a gray area territory because even stating certain things means people will take offense to it. It’s nearly impossible to say things that will not ‘offend’ everyone. Anything deemed as going against a person’s believes and principles will be considered offensive when not seen from the perspective of the other person when this person didn’t mean it to be interpreted a certain way.
Stoicism teaches us that you should react indifferently to emotion when faced with uncontrollable outcomes, which are essentially all events that is a not product of your mind. In other words, your thoughts are the only thing you do have control over. “You hurt my feelings” is an irrational thing people tend to say because the person personally did not hurt their feelings; what hurt their feelings was their interpretation and perspective of the matter that they processed in their mind and found it to be against their own expectations. Stoicism teaches us that people can be happier if they took responsibility for their emotions. As you’ve seen, people tend to blame other people for how they feel towards certain statements, which is again how conflict arises. As long as vague language that’s open to misinterpretation exists there will always be conflict in this regard and not to mention people understanding things from within their own perspective without giving other perspective a chance.
As long as there are people born with a drive to live there’ll always be conflict. People have principles they follow by and believe everyone should follow them otherwise it’s a risk to their outlook of what the world should be like. Tribe mentality helped groups of humans survive for many millennia because they were all under a set of principles you must adhere to in order to be not be omitted out of the tribe. Being attacked by a wolf while being alone means you’ll die vs being attacked by wolf and having your fellow tribe men defend it off and you live. It’s in the best interest of people to survive due to human programming so being part of a tribe is what’s best for them. Tribes developed their own set of principles depending on what they’ve been exposed to, their environment, and believes that have been passed down generations of what it means to be a proper human. History shows us that when there are collisions of tribes, there is battle because of conflict of principles and ideologies.
A tribe is a social division consisting of people linked to things such as social economic, believes, and common culture. They have always existed and exist today often referred to as groups, nations, cults, parties, classes, etc. As an example, the Bible was written by a tribe of people. The Ten Commandments written in the Old Testament is a set of guidelines and principles to follow that the writer of a tribe thought was the way to live by. “Thou shall not steal” is one of the principles listed. This indicates that stealing is bad. Is stealing always bad? What if a pharmacy was holding the only medicine that’s able to cure a dying child, but this antidote was not for sale? If the parent steals the medicine to give it to the child in order for it survive then was the stealing justified? But I thought we agreed that stealing was bad based on those principles? So are certain bad things good then? Was this action justified because it meant human survival? Are principles that are broken for the sake of human survival deemed justifiable? What would the reaction of people be if the pharmacy sued the family? After all, not stealing was a principle to follow by which was deemed as ethically good by this society.
As you can see, not all things are black and white. Conflicting interpretations and opinions will always exist. Exceptions to accepted rules will always exist. What are known as facts are simple what a society deems to be as irrefutable truth.
A fact is a perception of reality.
Mathematicians have agreed that 1+1=2 and therefore that is a fact in the world of math. If the consensus of mathematicians in the world concluded that 1+1=3 then that would be a new proposition that is accepted as fact in the world of math. For centuries the earth was believed to be the center of the universe as fact. This geocentric model was a fact in that time period because that was what the consensus of astronomers deemed it to be since that was their perception of reality.
History also tells us that conflicts between tribes result in violence when convincing is not enough so resulting to force is the feasible option in tribe mentality. If something has the potential to pose a risk, do you let it be, or try to eliminate it? When you see a poisonous black widow spider on the wall, do you kill it to avoid the possibility of being bitten or do you let it be and risk being bit which may or not happen? What if you relocate the black widow spider but it comes back to the same spot? Do you keep relocating it or get frustrate it and end its’ life? Do you see the spider as a trespasser to your home? What if the spider was born in what you consider your home? That spider personally didn’t have a choice, it was simply born into existence there without a say. Are you as a human more entitled than the spider simply because you are human and value your own species more than other species? Of course, because it’s similar thinking to the tribe mentality. A spider will not defend you or help you during dangerous events and can even injure you to death so you see it as a threat that must be eliminated for the sake of your very own survival. You might say, well what if I relocate the spider somewhere really far away from me and put in a glass jar? The ideal outcome would be for the spider and human to coexist in the same space but they both have views on how the world should be. The spider might want to make the entire house into it’s own mansion of webs which conflicts with the man’s view of what his home should be like. Why should the spider relocate when its family has been living in the house generations? It sounds absurd, sure, but replace the spider with a different tribe or person. Then the relocation solution for humans instead of a spider becomes awfully similar to a concentration camp. As you can see there’s no easy outcome for both parties that want to share the same space. Compromise must exist but typically one side has to give up more than the other.
Conflict is inevitable.
Living creators are hard-wired for persisting their continued existence so which they create and follow a set of principles to create order and reduce chaos. These principles are configured based on their environment and cultural believes. Clashes of principles result in violence when compromises cannot be made because it goes against self-interests and personal views of what the world should be like. These views of what the world should be like is based on believes acquired over time, which takes us back to trying to achieve power and authority in order to live the most comfortable life imaginable as an inhabitant of the world. This is the endless loop of conflict and war.