Social Conflict Essay Research Paper Social conflictIt

Social Conflict Essay, Research Paper

Social conflict

It would have been easy to resolve had either one of us wanted to end the squabble. Looking back, it is unbelievable to me that I acted the way I did. Again and again the situation runs through my mind, unveiling new ends to the argument. It was a perfect example of similar scenes playing themselves out all over the world – the most basic level of social conflict we have, the easiest to resolve.

I’d challenge anyone to speak out if he or she has not argued over trivial matters with his or her loved ones and closest friends. These relationships cannot be broken, just like a coastline never really disappears, even though both are subject to terrible pressures. I had been studying for the past three hours and felt in need of some refreshment. I saw that my brother was passing the room and called out and asked if he could get me a drink. He shouted back, “Why should I. Get it yourself, you lazy so and so.” This, for some reason aggravated me quite a lot as I was beginning to be frustrated by the difficulties of the study material. I did not say anything, but my anger smoldered. For the next two days, I did not speak or communicate with my brother, a feat in itself considering we lived in an apartment. I look back and am ashamed of the way I treated my brother. I also look back and remotely see myself as a desperate Green peace kid trying with one last throw of the dice to save his sanity, by throwing his anger towards them, those who obviously couldn’t see the predicament – although that would be a purpose altogether too important to imagine. However, as we all know, this is not an isolated incident. Arguments and fights happen again and again. Just like Kurt Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim and his daughter, I have an ongoing feud with my brother that flares up from time to time. However, of all the social conflicts we face, this should be the easiest to resolve. People with whom we share mutual love and trust are willing to resolve conflicts that do not in the long term mean too much.

That scenario does not repeat itself everywhere. Social conflicts can occur when neither party can see nor wants to see the resolution. Some fights are not based on trivial matters. For example, we have the unresolved black-white supremacy battle. It has not been made any better in two hundred years, when we can estimate the contact between the two to have begun. Efforts have been made, but the conflict between white and black is not something that, I think, will ever evaporate. It is a deep-rooted cultural conflict. This type of conflict can manifest itself in many ways. We see it every day in America’s truly cosmopolitan society: skin color; accent differences and so on and so on. I myself have plenty of first hand experience with this particular category, as I have lived ‘abroad’ for over nine years. One thing that has dogged my family and me is the fact that Indian cooking generates a lot of smoke. Thick, filmy smoke that always fills a room, no matter the length of time cooking was done. Often, cultural conflicts bring about racial slurs in our everyday language. Whether it is the British deriding the foolish Irishman – or the French doing the same to a remarkably ‘Irish’ sounding Belgian – these slurs can become a routine and the conflict can escalate beyond mere remarks and can hurt a person quite deeply. Over time, cultural differences can lead to aggravation at a larger level than a passing comment in a corridor, just as the examples of the Irish and the Belgians have. We all know how feelings of inferiority can lead to insubordination.

In the same way as fights with parents and friends, culture clashes can also lead to better relationships. So you see, both positive and negative aspects of social conflict can co-exist. Social commentators have often claimed that it would indeed be a dull world where everyone was white or black or yellow. However, underneath the facades that we display and the differences that we harbor, we are all essentially the same. Having migrated to different places thousands of years ago, Homo sapiens has created what sometimes can indeed be a ‘positive’ conflict. What if there were nobody to challenge the ideas of the Bolsheviks at the end of World War I. Would Europe be entirely communist. The positive effects of social conflict are to be seen anywhere there is a yang to challenge another’s yin, to use a clich.. There are many times when I reach a stumbling block in some part of my life. Usually, I hurdle said block through the advice of a friend who is not Indian. The difference is in the mindset. I don’t think the same way as an English person, and this has helped on many occasions during my life. I’m sure you have felt that your friend’s suggestion would in no way have come to you in a million years. This is what creates collaborations, innovations. A conflict of ideas is a kind of cauldron, where all and sundry may throw in their newt’s legs, to create something one would not have even imagined. I am glad that I usually have someone there to conflict my idea with their own to create this hybrid entity that just adds to up to far more than the sum of it’s parts. In essence, I am portraying the normal, modern community, with its fair share of conflict, arguments and theoretically impossible addition.

However, there are incidents where I sometimes wish that I were living in In