The Word to End All War

As emotional creatures we tend not to think of conflict etiologically. Quite the contrary, when it comes to bellicosity or temperamental belligerence the offender is almost always stuck in context; when trapped within the frame of confrontation we tend to have trouble seeing the big picture, as evidenced by the scarcity of effectively expunged contentions. Here, I present an alternative to this merry-go-round of spite.

Strength, by its very nature, is relative. One can only be strong at the expense of another’s weakness. To be powerful is to be more powerful than a foe, with no baseline objectivity whatsoever. It is from this precarious inevitability that conflict arises.

To assert strength is to ensure survival. Yet, the preponderance of quarrels in today’s world, great or small, yield no consequence to our wellbeing. All but some are merely egotism, an ancient drive belied by nuanced curves in our expectation of supremacy… all but wasteful incontinence, to put it mildly.

The premise: if we can satiate the ego of the two that tango, we will effectively render the mating dance superfluous.

Essentially, all conflict is entrenched in psychological warfare, or rather, psychodynamic warfare: one ego contesting the next and the next… until a reigning champion is crowned or everybody perishes, and we know which comes first.

Alas, it is our prerogative, nay, our duty to sacrifice ego in the face of adversity. The days of “stand up and fight” are gone, existing only within those who seek to drag war into perpetuity. Lay down your arms in the face of conflict, cede your ego and know that war will no longer exist.

Surrender.

Should you be the arbitrator of conflict, ensure that both sides feel whole and from your aerie watch the conflict dispel into the nothingness from whence it came.

That this is the simplest idea you have ever heard invigorates my waning faith in humanity.

Some restrictions may apply. 

There's a Fox in the Yard.

Freak accidents are, by definition, rare. They seldom occur and are often unflappable, both by their unpredictable nature and by their inability to be circumvented. Fearing the unexpected, thus fearing the indefinable, can and will cause great stress on the very ordinary nature of life. Hence, the anomalous should remain unexpected.

Yet, we thrive on the surprise and misfortune of others, like blood to a nightwalker; we are hungry for constant parades of the anomalous: the more extreme, the more we enjoy the effervescent sting of emotion that accompanies it. Day in and day out we are bombarded with only the largest aberrations that survive in the food chain of news stories. With 7 billion random organisms running around, not to mention their relative species numbering in the trillions, there is no shortage of anomalies, ironic as that may seem.

So what of this inundation of accreting fancies that exists in perpetuity? How, you ask, does this affect me?

I give you the fox in the yard:

“There’s a fox in my yard,” my sister said, clinging tightly to her baby. “Don’t let anyone near it. You must use caution.”

A child in England, an ocean away from our North Jersey backyard, had his finger bit off by a stray fox. Ouch. No more admiring the fox… we must remain behind the window.

When the unexpected is expected, fear is protracted into eternity. What was once just a fox will forever now be a danger. No mention of the millions of foxes worldwide who have never harmed a soul, or the thousands of people who hold them as pets. No! Foxes are dangerous now.

What of the expected? In this feverish frenzy of freak affairs, where do the normal things go? What is our perspective on the expected if we are so keen on the unexpected?

Did you hear the story of the Fox who ate the piece of bread that I gave to him? I didn’t think so… boring.

What is not anomalous is now tediously insipid. We live with the constant need for stupefaction, manic for another taste to keep us moving. And yet, like all drugs, the pill is not sufficient. Our disappointment at the ordinary is not satiated by the extraordinary, albeit for a brief moment of solace that sends us deeper into our own deprecation.

I am not interesting enough.

So what’s the answer?

Somehow, it is the ordinary that ultimately astounds us. No anomaly, great or small, can fill in the gaps left by our quotidian existence.

To stop chasing is to start healing and ultimately enjoy the fundamentally un-anomalous chaos that is life.