Conflict is Natural and Inevitable

Conflict can be defined as a perceived clashing of interests, actions and aims of individuals or groups, often regarded as a negative process. However, confrontation of ideas and attitudes is essential to human existence and deeply rooted in people’s nature. Hence, it is important to bear in mind that this phenomenon is not inherently evil and embedded into people’s psyche. First of all, basically any relationship involves a conflict and its management to some degree. To be specific, people evaluate their own needs and aspirations within the process of communiction by opposing them to those of another person. For instance, it is human inclination to argue and dispute that drive one into conversation and which serve as motivation to continue communicating. Therefore, social conflict is a fundamental trait of interpersonal and intergroup interaction. Secondly, the clash of interests itself is an innate feature of the society, which derives from our instinct to survive.

Scarcity of resources, being essential to human existence, has always resulted in a some kind of struggle for survival leading back to the times, when ancestors of the Homo Sapiens competed with other species for food and habitat. Consequently, confronting behaviour is connected to one of the most primitive instincts. Last but not least, conflict is an outcome of misperceptions of its participants, while misunderstandings and mistakes are consequences of fallible human nature. Individual’s mind is subjective and presents a point of view on a subject, thus unbiased discussion seems to be impossible. For that reason, individual’s mind is predisposed to confrontation being provoked by wrong judgement. All in all, there exist a number of arguments proving that conflict is an essential part of human existence. First, it is a major feature of interaction between people. Second, the clash of interests is inevitable due to the fundamental problem of scarcity of resources. Third, mind of a person is prone to misperceptions, which are one of the main ingredients of a confrontation.