Loner's diary – The toughest fight
Lenin Shagolsem *
Every now and then people fight for reasons starting from very stupid to the reasons which might lead to a world war. Even a little child which we treat as an ignorant soul also fight when the condition demands. For example, a little baby though cannot speak properly cries when something is against him/her or to demand something.
If we look at every sphere of life, one would certainly notice that fight is an inevitable if not explicit then implicit. Here, the word 'explicit' would mean a fight where individuals involve directly and is easy to recognize e.g. a verbal/physical fight; and on the other hand, 'implicit' would imply a fight mediated by someone/something i.e. where individuals do not involve directly.
An example would be one of those fights which arises due to ego conflict and the individuals tries to prove their power indirectly. Implicit fight might turn out to be very dangerous as there is a higher chances of confusing more people and later involve them also in the never ending fight i.e. a sort of 'cold war'. But, this doesn't imply that 'explicit fight' is not fatal at all.
Fight in any form ends with either friendship or defeat of the other. Indeed, there are fights which never ends and I am not interested to dwell much on this case because of the very simple fact that there exists no stable solution to it or sometimes no solution at all. I believe that it is appropriate, for the present context, to acknowledge the great Charles Darwin as he was absolutely right in recognizing the very fact of life i.e. "Struggle for existence".
Thus, fight is unavoidable for the existence of an individual being. Now, let's look a bit closely into this statement in relation to the present topic in hand. We humans divided the nature made life forms into many kingdoms of which in animal kingdom i.e. king of the kingdoms, we "the humans" are on top in the hierarchy.
We know, in general, that whenever a system becomes more complex the problems associated also increases many fold. To animals belonging to the lower level in the kingdom the word "existence" apparently has a simple meaning i.e. 'to live' and hence fight for food to survive.
However, for those animals which are higher in the hierarchy the word has got more meaning i.e. it would also imply the struggle to prove the presence of one character word "I". In this effort, often people poke each other's nose irrespective of gender. The more effort we put in we create outcomes which we did/do not wish for; therefore, it is a very delicate thing to deal with this "I".
The very proof of being alive is 'change with time' and nature has its own ways to evolve with time which is not possible to predict precisely. And as a consequence of evolution, now I am in a doubt that animals in the lower level of the hierarchy also started to become aware of this second meaning i.e. "I" among themselves.
Thus, we might have to start thinking of a new way to co-exists for the inescapable future. Fortunately, the doubt that whether we will experience such evolution is out of question at the present as the time window for such kind of evolution is much larger than an average human life time.
A person is driven by a certain set of principles if not his own then follow others whom they admire. There is no need to justify the very obvious fact that many fights are due to the conflict of these principles among individuals. With this in mind if we think of one defeating oneself, its rather a tough job.
As a matter of fact, one doesn't find it difficult to defend one's principles for one can become a stone head, unreasonable/fanatic just for the sake of defending and fail to see the other aspects. There still exists a large group of people who are very happy sticking to the same old outdated ideas without ever realizing that a change would improve things in life or reinforce the already existed social network.
Also many times we make the mistake of not using our faculty of thinking which otherwise would have avoided many unpleasant circumstances. On the other hand, nobody likes to accept changes so easily for people are so accustomed to the old habits; however, it does really good by changing our perspectives sometimes with time.
At times it is necessary and correct to change our principles and believes for a better future. Many great revolutions of the past has proved this point. Let us not forget that there is still something called "Liberty of thought" and your very simple idea(s) might create a new face of the society itself as is done by many scientific/political/economic revolutions of the past.
No doubt, this is easy said than done but, we can try giving an effort towards a proper understanding of the word "I" first rather than simply stressing too much on proving its presence among ourselves. The proper understanding of "I" simply would mean to study carefully one's principles and believes like whether my ideas and believes are correct and fit to the human society.
As we also know, society comprises of individuals with so much of diversity and complexity in itself. We all know that what happens in society is always a cooperative phenomena where each "I" is an important element. Over and over again, we have seen that the root of many cataclysm to be 'failing to understand "I" properly'.
Therefore, I believe that 'one fighting oneself' with the principles and believes for a good cause is the toughest of all the fights and if we succeeded in doing so we would definitely give a positive impact to the society. The fruit of it will be shared among the individuals of the society because every individual is connected in social network and what happens in society is a cooperative effect.
* Lenin Shagolsem contributes to e-pao.net regularly . The writer can be contacted at slenin2001(at)gmail(dot)com
This article was webcasted on March 21st 2010.
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