Consciousness and conflict

 

Well, this may be it?

So, as maybe noted by many, consciousness is a pretty involved, and possibly somewhat convoluted line of thought.  Many people have fairly specific thoughts on this and much has been written and discussed on the topic.  In particular there is currently a whole branch of medicine in which consciousness figures prominently.

So, the question sometimes arises as to whether we may consider the natural world as conscious.  By that I mean mostly those inhabitants of the natural world, like other mammals, birds, plant life, etc.  Some would affirm the " consciousness " of the animal kingdom but often note there is a categorial difference between human beings and other animals.  Certainly it is easy to make a distinction between other animals and say plant life.  Well, obviously it is a deep topic, and one of concern to us all in various ways.

As to the issue of conflict, is conflict inherent in consciousness itself ?

Well,  when you consider the animal kingdom, generally, there is definitely a quite high degree of conflict. And so, if you conclude that human consciousness may not be the same, but may be similar to animal consciousness, you might conclude that there is something inherent to consciousness that will inevitably lead us to conflict.

Well, simply, I am going to disagree with that, but I will note that there are features in our current environment, which will, for all intents and purposes , lead to both vicious and aggressive behaviors.  My feeling is, if we can not rid ourselves of  some these " features " , we should at least try to be somewhat aware of them, with the minimal hope that we can curb some of our  least admirable qualities.