War

[some chair]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cch0wrwg4tg

What's up folks,

War and conflict have been increasingly salient in my mind lately. It seems that, wherever I look, I see stories about tension and conflict. People and characters act as agents for some idealogy or another; or manifest the psychological evolution of some higher mind...

If the evolutionary path of the world hints at some persuasive agent, the logical conclusion of the presence of conflict everywhere is that this agent is deeply troubled, or undergoing some sort of psychological breakdown.

However, I think there is more to the story than conflict acting as an attractor. Humans are storytellers, of course, so conflict might simply be my own take on what's going on. I'd like to hear what other interpretations people have of the world in general. Perhaps rather than conflict, there is some process toward unity. Or perhaps I'm conflating conflict and tension. I don't know... go nuts people, feed me your thoughts!

Cheers,
A humble holon...

[InvisibleJim]

War is a good way of deciding who is left.

[kadda1212]

War and conflict have been increasingly salient in my mind lately. It seems that, wherever I look, I see stories about tension and conflict. People and characters act as agents for some idealogy or another; or manifest the psychological evolution of some higher mind...

It's been like this always. But we live in the age of information, so all that stuff literally rains down on us through the media. Same goes for natural catastrophes. Or crimes against children. People get the impression that world is turning into a more and more darker place. It isn't. There were just some things people didn't talk about in earlier times or things you only knew about if you experienced them for your own.

[anndelise]

What kadda wrote:

It's been like this always. But we live in the age of information, so all that stuff literally rains down on us through the media. Same goes for natural catastrophes. Or crimes against children. People get the impression that world is turning into a more and more darker place. It isn't. There were just some things people didn't talk about in earlier times or things you only knew about if you experienced them for your own.

And the storyteller concept...about conflict-resolution and tension-release.

And.."what the seeker seeks, the finder finds". Which basically means if you're paying attention to conflict, scanning your environment and newsfeeds for conflicts, then that is what you will find. If you spend some time looking for more positive events, such as a fireman rescuing an animal, or a family giving thanks to a nonprofit group for helping them in their time of need, or anything where someone(s) has helped someone(s) else,...then you will find those, and begin noticing those kinds of stories. And the world won't seem so dark.

[kadda1212]

And.."what the seeker seeks, the finder finds". Which basically means if you're paying attention to conflict, scanning your environment and newsfeeds for conflicts, then that is what you will find. If you spend some time looking for more positive events, such as a fireman rescuing an animal, or a family giving thanks to a nonprofit group for helping them in their time of need, or anything where someone(s) has helped someone(s) else,...then you will find those, and begin noticing those kinds of stories. And the world won't seem so dark.

This is cute. But I agree with that. I often like to watch a show on German TV called "Aktenzeichen XY ungelöst" ("File reference XY unsolved"), where they deal with real unsolved criminal cases the police needs help with and is still searching for witnesses and so on. While I watch that show I really get angry, because there are many, many really evil people out there. I have seen things on that show that depressed and scared me so much I could not sleep for the night. But they also always award someone on that show with a price who has stopped a crime from happening, e.g. a man who helped a woman who was about to get raped or some guys who intervened when a teenager was brutally beaten up by some bullies. And then I still have hope, that there are also heroes out there.

[some chair]

I'm not getting information about conflict from the media (I don't follow it). It's more abstract than that. To reiterate the example, most stories seem to involve characters who act as agents for an ideology, with the bad guy representing a flawed one, hence why he, in the authors eyes, must lose. The only textual example I can think of which is conflict free is a manga that takes place after the apocalypse. As another example of conflict, nature is ferociously violent on seemingly every level. Trees grow tall to steal all the sunlight for themselves and deny it to the competition. While symbiosis does exist, it is simply an example of reductive thought applied to a holistic organism, which seems to work all the way up to a "cellular civil war", if you will, between the human world of assembled Euclidean solids (just look around you, seemingly everything we work has a very simple spatial arrangement; the contrast between cities and nature is stark if you know what you're looking at), and the fractal reality of greater nature; or alternatively pockets of barely surviving humans at the complete mercy of the jungle.

Any strife between individual humans, or between civilisations; or examples of harmony and goodwill, are mere reflections of patterns of supportive symbiosis and conflict that happen everywhere else in nature.

On the other hand, there does seem to be some kind of "Tao of unity" rather than a "Tao of conflict". On the levels without nature, like the quantum and the cosmic, atoms and molecules form without any kind of obvious strife, and the stars and planets coalesce and fade. Maybe that speaks for a troubled holarchical organism having formed on Earth, and we're just really bad at being mushrooms. Perhaps organic life is inherently troubled, or it's just chaotic and Earth happened to get pulled into the conflict attractor at some point.

I also don't see the conflict as "dark". My question isn't so much "is there light in the world" as "I've noticed there's an awful lot of green everywhere, but maybe someone's seeing a lot of blue?"

[MisterNi]

Tension and conflict is everywhere. Put two people with vocal and opposing viewpoints and there will almost certainly be conflict between the two. Going forward, rather than resorting to open conflict, an increasing amount of mediation and conflict resolution will be necessary. There are really no more "bad guys" to villainize and persecute. Rather, there are pockets of discontent that must be addressed.

[Kill4Me]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cch0wrwg4tg

What's up folks,

The moon.

War and conflict have been increasingly salient in my mind lately.

War is action.

People and characters act as agents for some idealogy or another; or manifest the psychological evolution of some higher mind...

huh

If the evolutionary path of the world hints at some persuasive agent,

It doesn't.

the logical conclusion of the presence of conflict everywhere is that this agent is deeply troubled, or undergoing some sort of psychological breakdown.

Sounds like a novel.

However, I think there is more to the story than conflict acting as an attractor. Humans are storytellers

I'm not.

of course, so conflict might simply be my own take on what's going on. I'd like to hear what other interpretations people have of the world in general.

I live in the world. I don't interpret it.

Perhaps rather than conflict, there is some process toward unity.

Sounds like wishful thinking.

Or perhaps I'm conflating conflict and tension.

I wouldn't know. I'm not you.

I don't know... go nuts people, feed me your thoughts!

Punch somebody out.

Cheers,
A humble holon...

Be arrogant.

[Esaman]

If the evolutionary path of the world hints at some persuasive agent.

It does?

As for conflict.
If you take it that wide then there is no story without conflict. Even one being dealing with non-living environment can be said to be a conflict between the will and environment.
Also even thoughts and perceptions inside a mind can be said to be in conflict.
The opposite of conflict is harmony.
Overall trend is harmonious order through conflict(not necessarily violent), while going upstream against entropy with unreliable success.