one of the noticeable things about life is the ways
we exist in conflict… I will give some small examples which
can be extended to large things… I may want to have lunch at a pizza place
and my wife wants to have lunch at an sushi place… as we have been together
for over 25 years, we can easily resolved this conflict in the usual way,
we go to the sushi place, ummmmmmmmm…yah…anyway…
not all conflicts are so easily handled… one person wants, desires, something
and another person wants or desires something else and we have some conflict over
whose desires and wants gets met………this is the very nature of human conflict…
one person/group/nation wants or desires something and another person/group/nation
either has it but doesn’t want to give it up or their wants and desires clash in some
fashion…
the very essence of conflict lies within those inner wants and needs and desires
that the human beings are attempting to fulfill in some manner or fashion…
the fulfillment of wants/needs/desires is the basis of conflict……. so to avoid
conflict, do we attempt to follow ascetic and deny and reign in our wants
and desires and needs? that path is a very attractive route, but has it succeeded?
I would say no, if you read the accounts of the ascetics of the Medieval period who
went into the desert and tried to control their urges, they suffered
and had conflicts within themselves during their entire ascetic journey…
even the Buddha tried the ascetic route and turned away from it as being
unsuccessful…… the entire Christian philosophy centers itself around
this idea of asceticism, of denying oneself the pleasures of the flesh…
and you cannot call this call to asceticism by any means to be successful…
so, the answer seems to lie in another fashion… how do we limit conflicts
by somehow handling our wants, needs or desires?
as I have gotten older, I have found myself in less conflict with others because
my wants and desires and needs have grown less…… the passion of youth is
far less in me as I have grown older and with less passion comes less conflict…
but I certainly cannot expect the fire and fury of youth to be contained by any
such lessening of those passions…… so, perhaps the answer is correctly
given by Nietzsche………… we spend our youth fulfilling our passions, we
quench our fires and passion in our youth by answering our wants and desires
and needs…………….the Greeks found this to be an answer in their Dionysian
rites…the set program of holidays in which the people found release in
Dionysian or the excessive and out of control actions of the people………
you find release and you return to being in control…and being in control
is Apollonian… which is harmony, being in control, math and science,
we see in this dichotomy a possible solution to our problem of how do
we solve this question of conflict…………
human beings have energy and the key question, and perhaps the most
important question of being human, is this, how do we engage
in our energy? upon what do we use this energy?.. how do we engage
in our energy which is found in wants/needs/desires among other places?
as I have gotten older, I have less energy and thus the reason I cause
less conflict is I have less energy…… but we cannot expect people to
voluntarily lessen or remove that energy… we need that energy as
a people, as a society, as a nation…… the question becomes, where
do we direct that energy? it could be said that war was created so that
society can direct that energy into useful and beneficial ways for society……
that energy of fire and passion that drives people must be dwelt with in
some fashion and turning it into an a self-denial or asceticism will not
work as evidenced by the many who have traveled down that path…
if we find an answer to this question, we find the answer to this question
of how do we handle conflicts.
or to answer this another way, the Christian solution to conflicts
by asceticism cannot work… so we reject the Christian solution
and try to find another solution……….
this question of conflict resolution is a critical one in our modern day
and age………………
and what is the answer?
Kropotkin