We often believe conflicts are interpersonal and negotiations with others, but all human conflicts begin and end in our minds.
In fact, most human conflicts are internal. Every decision we make is a conflict until we’ve become certain of what we want, but it also expresses when:
- We feel something doesn’t match our intuition.
- We hear of an experience or idea that’s different than we understand.
- We experience something unfamiliar.
- We forecast anything in the future.
If you could examine every conscious and subconscious thought of any person, they’re more in a conflict than not. The only time people are legitimately not in conflict with anything is when they are fully satisfied and completely at rest, but not asleep.
We’re defined much more by our inner conflicts than anything in our environment. Outer conflicts involve the battle between desires and results, but inner conflicts are the battle between desires and reality, with extra battles over morality and meaning mixed in. They’re much more challenging, but also change us much more.
Unaware
Because of how we’re built, we often see the world around us much more than inside our minds. For that reason, we tend to miss faults in ourselves while seeing most faults in others, and require both self-awareness and good friends to point out those issues.
We can internalize multiple perspectives at once, which we are also capable of believing at the same time (cognitive dissonance). Everyone experiences at least some cognitive dissonance in the routine course of their life because we frequently change our understanding as we learn, but will maintain habitual past beliefs when we don’t make a priority of revisiting them.
When we must consciously choose something, we must decide. But, we can do one of two things to forestall that deciding:
- If we’ve made a reliable habit of denial, we can use dismissal and defense mechanisms to force the idea back into the unconscious again and maintain our cognitive dissonance.
- If we have enough willpower and courage against our fears, we can rapidly make a morally good decision, stand strong on that conviction, and not think about it anymore until we feel ready. Quick moral decisions are the best solution when we’re not emotionally ready to handle a challenging string of decisions, and gives us power over the unknown even when we’re still uncertain.
We usually don’t like confronting inner conflicts because it will often require many changes if we must revisit a habit, proportional to how long we’ve had that habit. Typically, accepting a small, one-sentence fact can rearrange our entire perspective of the world and disrupt our way of life.
These conflicts represent in literature, and embody 9 relatively separate domains:
- Man vs. Nature – specifically, the non-man environment around us
- Man vs. Society – specifically, people in groups
- Man vs. Technology – man-made objects
- Man vs. Man – specifically, one-on-one encounters
- Man vs. Self – the domain of one’s understanding
- Man vs. Reality – the distinction between understanding and observed nature
- Man vs. God – the domain of the unknown
- Man vs. No God – the domain where the unknown is certain, and bleak
- Man vs. Author – a meta-concept where the character addresses their literal story creator
Pleasure
Not all inner conflict is endless misery. More inner conflict gives us a more powerful reward when we settle ourselves on a decision, especially if it yields good consequences.
Not all conflict is unpleasant, and we tend to have fun and identify ourselves against our environment. We find tremendous meaning through how we combine what we imagine and reality.
Good
Not all conflict is bad. Many things in the world appear to be paradoxes, and full understanding requires that we maintain every potentially true image at once until we have a more thorough grasp of it.
Further, the inner battles of our mind determine the external results we create. Without an inner struggle, that struggle will become others’ suffering (and also make them responsible to act on it).
Environment
We are often subjected to inner conflict by others (e.g., salespeople, politicians), and our typical state is already more conflicted than we appear without outside influence.
Most people react to inner conflicts by trying to make a rapid decision and forcing their environment to change, often driven by past trauma. The only way to live the good life is to slow down and consider those mental battles as we are capable of focusing on them, without dragging our environment into it.
Application
If we have any unease with a statement, we must understand why. We might find offense from someone legitimately crossing our boundaries, but our imagination may be unrestrained about things that aren’t reality.
The notion of an action-free Utopian society is flawed because it disregards humanity’s most basic conflicts in their minds. We’re never really “finished” with anything because we’re constantly finding new things to form, adapt, build, remix, discover, unearth, categorize, finalize, destroy, rebuild, or develop. The conflict is a necessary part of the story that creates our sense of meaning later.
To find answers, we must constantly disagree with ourselves. Otherwise, our actions will adapt to becoming habits and stay there long after they’re no longer useful.