you hate politics yet i still want to ask you how you think we can avoid conflicts personal conflicts against other people in society? it is a very competitive world and there is so much conflict you can see it
Yo, I almost didn’t answer this one because subjects like this can prove themselves as quite a minefield of contentious thought when approached from any conceivable angle. I get that you’re trying to ask about personal interaction with others, socialization, that sort of thing. And as strange as it is for me to conceive of somebody out there actually cares to hear my opinion, I’ll do my best to explain it.
First, it’s probably important to grasp the idea of “we” as you put it in your message, as a concept potentially meaning so many different things depending on who and where you are. My nation’s “we”, depending on your city, background, neighborhood, and personal circumstances already carries a diverse variety of meanings, and much of the social conflicts I’ve observed seem to originate because of this diversity, not because of a lack of it. It’s not the diversity itself I consider to be negative, but rather a sort of group thought which seems to be ignorant of diverse nuances which make people unique. There are so many of us, and so many individuals with varying backgrounds, those infinitely complex variations of who is who and what people want, their agenda, their attitude, their history and beliefs, their dreams, their fears; these are all things that feed into the concept of a “we” as the group which inhabits wherever you happen to live. Common rhetoric has a habit to oversimplify our view of these complexities.
Consciousness of these differences - rather than assumptions and generalizations that everyone’s rooted in a similar average thought process and ideology - can be beneficial to anyone’s dialogue with other people. The dude who was sort of rude to you earlier, maybe he cut in line and wasn’t very polite to the cashier, but maybe he’s also experienced a recent tragedy, maybe his little kid’s in the hospital or something. That girl who called me a patriarchal pig and accused me of racism, maybe she was abused by a man and now associates men with violence, or maybe she just keeps meeting men who are assholes, it’s not coming out of nowhere. It’s tough to really know, because even surface level behavior isn’t fully indicative of who someone is in their entirety, and thus judging someone on surface level behavior alone isn’t wise in my opinion.
But since surface level behavior is often all we have to go on, many of us have an urge to create snap judgments in our heads about other people. “That dude’s at a Democratic National Convention, he must hate the military”; “that lady’s a member of the NRA, she must be pro-military and have no regard for human life”; “that dude is drinking out of a polystyrene cup, he must hate the environment”. We all do this, in some way shape or form, to varying levels of severity. Not all of us act on these judgments, but they inform our behavior more than we realize, and I think much of that stems from the fact that we assume most people either should think a certain way or assume that most people already do think that way. We rarely stop to wonder what other people actually think.
This sort of ignorance, I think, is the root cause of many social conflicts, and fuels the fire of many a polemical political group, social commentator, and fanatical activist who believe they’re effecting a constructive change in the world, yet are realistically creating far more division than that which already exists. Like I told that one dude, perhaps it’s best to start with what you have in common with someone before you get to anything else. This, I think, ought to begin by starting with the fact that, whoever you happen to be talking to, you’re both mortal humans, and thus highly flawed. Maybe you’re smarter than them, maybe not, but you can be sure you’re both little limited humans in a wider universe. This kind of humility makes it much easier to flow with a conversation, and keep it a conversation rather than some sort of verbal gunfight where all opinions are as munitions in an ongoing struggle. Not everyone believes this, some people are just out to scream at you, but I still think it’s a good way to approach these scenarios.
In this way, I believe you’ll find that conflict may be inevitable, but it needn’t create acerbic struggle or ongoing contest. If approached wisely, any conflict with others can be ultimately magnanimous, actually bringing people closer and nurturing a deeper understanding of your rivals and ideological opponents. It’s like sparring, you find value in both defeat and victory, but victory isn’t the point, you discover how to interact with your opponent on a deeper level, you learn of openings in your techniques and how to better them. Any martial art, or ancient discipline, even the very concept of kung fu as proscribed by the original monks who generated such concepts, there is an honor in mastery of one’s self. That doesn’t seem like such a bad place to start. The aim should not be to win or conquer, but rather to learn.
