"Better Ways of Resolving Conflict"
My feelings are that if that is to happen, people need to stop hating, something we've been doing for thousands of years. The thing is it's such a habit that even "civilized" people hate without realizing it. In fact, they consider it normal behavior.
I don’t know if you saw those awful remarks about Republicans I shared the other day, but they were made by someone who is highly intelligent. This isn’t disagreement, it’s overt hate. If it wasn’t for the fact that our nation is civilized, we’d have the situation of regular violent retributions like we see in third world countries.
We are lead to believe that it’s only low-intelligence “morons” that are hateful, but the fact is that hateful attitudes have no intellectual boundary. Nor is there any direct correlation between intelligence and wisdom.
In my observations the past 20 years, I’ve noticed that some intelligent people have this perception that because they are intelligent, they believe that their opinions are actual fact.
When you add to this psychological issues where people perceive themselves as being intellectually superior as a means to compensate for inner feelings of insecurity, you have more fuel for the fire.
The final ingredients are psychological defense mechanisms that prevent people from understanding the negative effects of what they perceive as acceptable behavior, the incessant denigration of those they view as being inferior human beings.
Whether it be Middle East suicide bombings, or our current antagonistic political climate, the underlying psychology is the same.
It’s easy to understand how the greed and power hunger contribute to the kind of instability that leads to armed conflict. It’s harder though, to see the contributions of the liberators, the “good guys.”
This is one of the things George Orwell wrote about, the Intellectual Dishonesty and intolerance of leftist politics.
Consider that genuine progressive philosophy, born out of socialist idealism, views tolerance as the way to end conflict. All people, Democrat and Republican alike, can participate in the decision process. While there is disagreement, people still respect each other as fellow human beings. Rather then being at each other’s throats, people work out issues together in a truly civilized fashion. It’s also understood that social progress takes time. There are no bloody revolutions, no denunciation of others as being inferior.
To get an understanding of what those who seek to end conflict are up against, consider the animosity that’s happening today in the U.S.
We now have this “Progressive” political party that grew out of the Democrat party in the 1960’s, whose mission seems to be the perpetual denouncement of Republicans.
Rather then the Principle of Tolerance, these “progressives” believe that being “Progressive” means that you are somehow morally and intellectually superior to those with differing opinions. Of course, this creates animosity that makes it virtually impossible for people to come together and solve common issues.
This was another thing Orwell wrote about.
Because of defense mechanisms, it’s practically impossible to get these types to understand that they are a part of the problem. To them, they are the “good guys.” They don’t see their denigrations of others as being hateful.
Some argue that this is human nature and nothing can be done. I feel that something can, but we just haven’t figured it out yet. Rather then a quick fix, I think it will be something more like a seed that will spread once it takes hold.
We’ve already had glimpses of what could possible be our future through the examples of Gandhi, King, and Mandela, and 2000 years ago there was Jesus.
For my part, I share my observations and hope they might have some influence.
To Roger Aldridge on Facebook: 2/2/2016