[Martin Taylor 960220 16:50]
Rick Marken (960219.1150)
I think the problem is not that some
people _want_ conflict but, rather, that most people don't recognize
conflict when they are in it.
For example, I don't think that people in the US or the Soviet Union wanted
the cold war conflict.
The east-west conflict kept going, I think, not because anyone wanted
this conflict,
I think it's possible for people to want conflict -- this is what happens
in sports.
I think, people persist in conflict not because they want conflict but
because they simply want to be in control (which is a good thing,
ordinarily) and they don't realize that, in the process of controlling
(or trying to control), they are creating and/or sustaining a conflict
situation.
I'm sure you are right in most cases, but do you not think that the
generation and maintenance of conflict is a controlled perception in more
than just sports? I think, for example, of the last resort of a failed
government being to provoke a conflict with some adversary. Gangs exist in
conflict, I suspect, not so much because the gang members are trying to
achieve some perceptual state that the other gang is inhibiting, but because
the conflict itself helps each gang member to perceive something they want,
related to the friendship and support of the other members of their gang.
The gang leaders need the conflict to sustain their perception of being
in control of the others. The conflict itself is important to sustaining
those perceptions. It might get the gang member killed, but until then,
life might be very dreary without the other gang, and even worse if the
gangs became friends.
It is probably true that the gang members would be better able to control
their perceptions in an environment without the gang conflict, but how
do they get from here to there? "Going up a level" is hard enough for
one person, but as Kent pointed out (and I may say, so did I in a different
way in Durango 93) the conventions are solidified by the reciprocal
relationships within a group. It is very hard for any one member of the
group to change them, most of the time.
I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just suggesting that there are circumstances
other than sport in which people really want the conflict, and don't care
so much what the conflict is about so long as it seems to be about something.
Of course, in the Cold War, most people would have been much happier to
live and let live, on both sides. But for some people, the loss of the
conflict would have been (and was) very difficult to deal with. Some other
conflict had to be created. I would add this to your reason (with which
I agree) for:
[Note: I think the current small government,
unregulated capitalist zeal in the US may be the result of having
one the conflict with communism; when your opponent falls you don't
stop pushing instantlty; all the energy that when into defeating the
opponent is now unresisted; ergo, Newt Gingrich and the anti government
surge in US politics since the fall of communism].
Martin