On the matter of Morality, Conflict…or You
I have written earlier that in the face of conflict we must select our options depending on our position and ultimate desires. It is also useful to distinguish between the conflicts we might be able to win and the conflicts we will invariably end up losing. Often, beforehand, it is impossible to tell in which one we have entered so we must increase our awareness and pay attention to the slightest detail in the process of selecting our strategies and corresponding moves. In terms of chess, always leave room for a swift withdrawal of your pieces. Other times the difference is obvious and the outcome of a conflict predictable to a reasonable extent before one even enters the struggle. At that point, should a loss be evident, it is only required of you to select the loss you’re most comfortable with.
When we combine the notion of conflict with the notion of morality then we open for ourselves a new path of seeing the world in terms of wins and losses. It is not so much a higher level as it is a different one and with a different path invariably comes a new set of oppertunities. With the understanding that morality is a subjective notion, finding its foundation in the chemical processing of the individual brain, we must accept how personal the phenomenon actually is. Many people have tried to solidify the concept into sets of rules and succeeded to various degrees…the most succesful obviously being the founders of the more modern religions. And although some people might argue that morality is, at least partially, learned this does not change the personal nature of the conception. After all, this learning process in itself is a direct consequence of the brains interacting with the surroundings. Aside from that, it is plausible to assume that a basic set of characteristics necessary to come to a system of personal morality is evident in the individual. There are those, after all, who grow up in homes in which such moral awareness is completely absent and come to find their individual understanding of right and wrong all the same. Empathy, probably, plays the biggest part in this.
If we decide to pursue our understanding of morality then this is an extra piece of the puzzle in our conflict position. Depending on how relevant we find our morality, and most of us tend to find it extraordinarily relevant, it is a piece we must protect both within conflict and beyond that particular setting of human existence. So it is up to us, at times, to select which loss we wish to experience. Were we to know that following our understanding of right and wrong will occasionally lead us to getting beaten down we have roughly two options. We can sacrifice our morality and remove ourselves from the scene of conflict, or we can enter the conflict and risk physical harm. The latter is what has happened throughout the ages of protests (both peaceful and violent) and has been a valid method of provoking eventual change. There are those who prefer their physical safety, and the wellbeing of their children who need a father. They are directly opposed to the idealists who believe that their children, above all other things, need to experience a better tomorrow. Neither of them is wrong in the traditional sense of the word once we come to the understanding that prefrences are personal. But we cannot negate the notion that both types eventually lead to different consequences. It is useful to notice that we can divide our conflicts into long term and short term categories. In terms of protests violence used by the opposing forces is often only a short term solution which ends the immediate, short term, conflict. But a larger conflict remains and can seldom be overcome through the use of violence alone. The changes people make through protests and open discussion are typically victories in long term conflicts.
All of this seems very simplistic, and it is. But the execution thereof is quite a different matter. In its most basic from this writing suggests that we must identify our priorities and then define them to the greatest extent of our abilities. We cannot simply say that we value our sense of right and wrong the most and then protect it to the best of our abilities without actually understanding to the greatest extent what we believe is right and wrong. Without the latter (the understanding) the former (the claim that we value our sense of right and wrong the most) is a collection of empty words for we do not even truthfully know what they mean. Only if we understand ourselves and our desires, which is a process as long as our existence, can we make the moves to protect and uphold them. To do otherwise is what constitutes a mistake. Be prepared to make many of them. With every situation you encounter you will invariably end up asking yourself what the right course of action is, and as your decisions follow and you grow as a person, so will you intimate understanding of who you are what your represent. There is no wrong path to take beyond your personal disssatisfaction, so it is advisable to move in a direction you are comfortable with.