Why Conflict?

[kokopelle]

Why do people participate in relationships that involve conflict? Why do people play sports? We as human beings get bored with life. Some people argue and create chaos in their lives because it's how they feel alive. I'm not a big fan of competitive sports, but I do watch horror movies. What's the connection? I think I create that inner tension with my psyche through the challenges of watching horror movies instead of the challenges of the football field.

One of the aspects of an astrological chart is an opposition. This occurs when two planets are 180 degrees from each other - on opposite sides of a chart. This is a classic conflict position. Two opponents on each side of a football field or boxing ring. In astrology an opposition creates tension, and from that tension comes potential for creation and action. They are like a rubber band pulled taut, waiting to be released.

The bottom line is that I feel it is important to be honest about why we participate in conflict for conflict's sake. We can have people in our lives we butt heads with because it works for us. The trick is to not be a victim in the process. Keep playing the game if you like it or walk away if it no longer works for you.

Your feedback???

Comments

[iskender.livejournal.com]

I find it interesting that so many people see conflict as essential, as total. We see people we disagree with or dislike terribly. We see state enemies and the like and we posit some total disconnect and fundamental disagreement. And it's really a fiction, most of the time.

Parts of me might conflict with parts of you, but you know what? Parts of me conflict with other parts of me too. So why do we focus on the conflict instead of the agreement? Because we all agree on something.

Some focus on conflict because it entertains them, others because they have assigned moral purpose to conflict, others still because it's wired into their psychology. But we also have conflict because this is a relatively finite world and we have short lives and choices must be made and compromise must be found.

Hmm. But why do we treat conflict differently than concord? Why do we just let agreements lie and focus on conflict? Well, because discord is a different thing. If we treated disagreement as we treat agreement, then nothing would get resolved. No, conflict and our obsession with it is natural. It is the same obsession that possesses someone as they dress a wound or reinforce the frame of a house. It is careful, and delicate, and just as benevolent as that spirit that enjoys similarity and seeks no argument, perhaps more-so. The most peaceful man is not one who's stepped away from conflict. No-one leaves real conflict--it follows you. No, the most peaceful man, even the greatest preachers of passivity in the world, are ones who have won a conflict, not those who ignore it. There are men who will tell you they have stepped away, but they have not. There was a battle within them, they took one side, and now they stand on the body of a part of them now vanquished.

I don't trust men who preach peace while standing on corpses, incidentally. I am much more the type who spars and seeks synthesis. Final victory means stagnation.

But now I'm on a different topic.

[greensh.livejournal.com]

I learned from the "Elric of Melniboné " novels (paraphrasing):

Total law is stagnation with no growth.
Total chaos has no continuity

Either branch has its' own form of death. We human beings seem to seek a middle ground between these.

[apocalypsegrrl.livejournal.com]

Well for me personally, conflict can foster growth. I don't really learn anything new in group of people who all have the same ideas that I do. Encountering new ideas, I get forced to evaluate and re-evaluate my own ideas, where they come from, how they developed and why I continue to hold on to them.

Almost all of my friends have very fundamental differences in their backgrounds and personality from myself and are never shy about disagreeing with me. It's part of why I like them so much. They keep me from stewing in my own point of view for so long that I forget about the bigger picture.

[breimh.livejournal.com]

When I was studying sociology in my first year of college, we talked about group dynamics and how conflict was a way of establishing pecking order. I still feel that is just one of the many ways (and reasons) why conflict abounds, personally.

We all have differences, some more than others, and it is in those differences that conflict takes root. We can choose to band together with those similar enough to our own mindset that we feel more secure, or walk alone. Banding together has one major disadvantage, though, in that it brings out a sense of pride that can be the downfall of the group... whether through the lot becoming bullies (like some view the U.S./U.K./N. Korea, currently) or a sense of hautiness that ostricizes or picks at others self-image for their differences like many within organized religion - read "the x-tian right" - tend to do toward gays, pagans or even other larger based faithes. (Note, I am not saying "organized religions themselves, but those within said organizations.) Because people don't like to be villainized or victimized so much, they fight back and thus you continue to have conflict escalating rather than being defused.

Is there a way to resolve this? Sure, it's always going to begin internally. But by the example of the brave few, we will come to find acceptance and peace... for a time, in a particular place, at least... all we must do is realise that conflict is a reaction to something more primal or base, not an initial act in and of itself.