Conflict Resolution

Sometimes everything seems so clear.

I was listening to an odd podcast about logical thinking, and the podcaster made an interesting point. He was talking about how stories (on TV in his example, but this also applies to movies and literature) need to have some kind of conflict in order to hold people's interest. If a story just blandly describes a typical day where someone got up and went about their normal routine, no one would be interested. He went on to say that normal every day life doesn't typically have that much conflict in it, so these stories are not typical of life, but are typical of entertainment.

I don't really enjoy watching sporting events, which is pure ritualized conflict. With the popularity of sports in college and on TV, it seems to me that I am in a small minority. I wonder why anyone cares what any particular team does on any particular occasion. It doesn't change anything. Next season everyone will be at zero again. A great deal of the public would probably disagree with me, but I've just never seen the sense in it. For me it's a huge waste of time. I feel that getting really upset when your team loses is a waste of emotion. Again, I'm out of sync with the majority and I expect that most people would disagree with me.

But thinking about our love of conflict, that would explain a love of sports. You set up an artificial conflict and everyone gets to be entertained by it. I suppose it beats fighting a war out of excitement seeking, or something like the gladiatorial games in Roman arenas. At least in modern sports, no one is supposed to die.

But there is another popular entertainment genre out there that also appeals to a great deal of people, which I believe is much closer to what I like and how I think. You could call a program that has a riddle or solves a problem a Mystery. The rise in popularity of the CSI series (except for Caruso on CSI Miami - he's just an overacting buffoon) is an example of this other category of entertainment. Whether it's figuring out what's going on, solving for the unknown, or societal or scientific discoveries, I've always loved this type of story. How did it happen? Who did it? What's next?

It's like education or research in science. Life is a cosmic Easter egg hunt, all those hidden goodies just waiting to be discovered, opened up, and appreciated. The fun thing about unearthing knowledge is that there is no limit. Each mystery "solved" spawns questions that generate more mysteries. Every time we think we are at the end of scientific discovery, some new field pops up.

I think religion follows the conflict outline. It deals with God vs. the Devil, good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, moral vs. immoral. Unfortunately, people that are fixated on conflict see everything else in terms of conflict. This is why religious people are threatened by and rise in opposition to scientific progress, new ideas, and progressive thinkers. Scientists mostly don't care about the bible, and if they have religious beliefs, they mostly assume that scientific discoveries fit into God's scheme. Religious people assume that scientists are setting out to disprove God or the bible and that they are under attack from scientists. This is ridiculous, but by the time you realize this is going on, it's too late. Devout people assume that if we discover that the earth is 4 billion years old, that disproves the entire bible. They assume that if people believe that we descended from apes that they will reject the Adam and Eve story and therefore conclude that the everything in the bible is completely in error.

Religious people don't understand something very basic about scientific people. We don't root for one side or the other. We aren't interested in conflict, we are interested in conflict resolution. Nothing is written in stone, you can always enhance, rewrite, or revise any scientific premise with further studies and new discoveries. There's nothing disturbing or disruptive about this, it's just the way it is.

By making a conflict about Religion, whether it's evolution, astrophysics, geology, or even whether or not to say Merry Christmas instead of Happy Holidays, certain religious leaders are discrediting their own standing, they are picking an impossible fight. It's unfortunate, because while religion has some great aspects like the ability to give people hope or the belief in treating people well and taking care of those less fortunate. Religious leaders run the danger of discrediting all religion by attacking science. In the end, we need the best from both fields to get the most out of life.