What are the important conflicts that occur in society today?
Conflicts in societies can well come from having honesty, integrity, decency and virtue. Some people disagree with your honest statements in order to offend you and to serve their own self-interests or their group’s interests at mostly your expense. Perhaps the greatest conflict in societies today involves the assumption that the open display of virtue is merely for show, and there is a lack of trust of the continuation of virtuous behavior.
With the lack of trust, there can be no real collaboration or cooperation, which is necessary at the global and international level, more now than ever, to solve these major problems. These include:
Climate and environmental destruction, increasing excessive competitiveness, including growing levels of social violence, war, the excessive manufacturing of weapons of war, excessive consumerism and materialism, the mass production and distributions from around the globe, the failure to use natural building materials, the overuse of air conditioning and heating systems because the existing buildings lack certain geothermal properties, the overproduction and overuse of concrete and other fabricated materials, factory farms and the overuse and overproduction of poisonous chemicals for agriculture
A most important conflict concerns the resource hogs who use up most of the resources and lay massive amounts of waste to our planet or facilitate this, such as billionaires and multimillionaires, high-level political figures and military officials (generals, admirals etc.) and business executives. These resource hogs cause us to compete and fight for resources more than we ever should and more than we ever can if our goal is the sustainability of our cultures, societies and of the living part of the earth.
Nevertheless, there are distractions made by the mass media and major corporations so that our minds stray from these important conflicts and focus on secondary ones, including the conflicts regarding gender, biological sex and sexuality, marriage and divorce, conflicts about religion, science, sports, diets and, of course, politics.
If you walk into a room for a poker game, and the other players are in agreement against you, then they can more easily take all of your money from your bets and split it among themselves when you leave. So, beware of casinos and betting games from groups. Beware of people who work, manage or own businesses or make money in nonproductive endeavors like that. Society does not benefit from one generation to the next for having its citizenry expend its time on such things.
Likewise, if you walk into an office during your first weeks or months, or sometimes even during your first few years, there is no good way for you to know how long disputes have taken place among your colleagues or who is trying their damnedest to recruit you to their side and their cause against the other. Refraining from joining a side of a conflict and upholding high standards of integrity, honesty and openness instead can lead others to attack you in certain cases. However, the whole society generally benefits from your demonstration of virtue.
Conflict as prolonged armed struggles
Some armed struggles are prolonged because of the honesty and decency of one side versus another group that has nothing of value to lose because their side has lost its integrity. The side that has lost its integrity can begin to fight as if it has nothing to lose, or they may even leave before the struggle for sustainable power can be fulfilled. A loss of integrity of one side does occur when soldiers begin dying more from overdoses than from combat, or when soldiers die more from suicide than combat, which has happened with the U.S. led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It has left the American society to cope with vast increases in mental illnesses among others.
These prolonged wars were initiated by the U.S. president and his advisors in 2001 and 2003, supported continuously by the two dominant political parties for two decades of wartime funding, and the American people were merely encouraged to increase their already high levels consumerism to serve as their “sacrifices” for wartime efforts.
In 2021, there has been a withdraw of American soldiers and allies from Afghanistan, which is the opium harvesting center of the world. The opium has been manufactured into opioid medications in China and sold via American corporations to the American public with prescriptions from medical doctors in America. Many tens of thousands of Americans have died in the 21st century from these opioid overdoses.
The Saudi led war in Yemen is another example of prolonged conflict, which has been facilitated by U.S. weaponry of war sold and exported to Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates for war against Yemen. Supplies, such as medicine, have been banned from entering Yemen, and Yemen faces massive amounts of starvation and an organized effort to exterminate the Yemeni people.
Yemen is home to some amazing cultures that have sustainable living practices in the desert with large apartment and supply buildings that people and livestock have lived inside since the 1500s. The buildings, which are made from natural materials, have survived over 500 years. Their buildings in Shabam, Yemen need neither heating nor air conditioning systems. They are made from adobe (i.e., sand, clay, straw and water bricks that are dried in the sun) as well as natural protective paints that last for many years and which are easily replaceable.
The war economy thrives only off of the activities that create and use machinery with extremely high exchange-values, and they create extremely high waste-values. One such process that is used by the war economy is the creation of concrete, which emits enormous amounts of waste and contamination into OUR ATMOSPHERE. This has led to increases in the construction of homes from artificial materials instead of natural ones. Homes have become poisonous from poisonous materials in the walls and roofs.
American homes have also been made in ways that require expensive HVAC systems to heat them during the winter and cool them during the summer, which has led to massive amounts of deaths from heat waves, such as the 1995 heat wave in Chicago when the power grid was overburdened from air conditioning systems. Natural materials, alternatively, have geothermal properties, making the indoors warmer during the winter at night and cooler during the summer during the day without the need for heating and air conditioning systems.
The methods of construction with steel and concrete are a major aspect of the war economy, which has greatly expanded around the world with around 800 U.S. military bases and installations in many dozens of countries, including throughout Europe, Asia, Africa and Central and South America. The Pentagon uses somewhere between 100 and 200 billion barrels of oil per year for the implementation of its programs. These are the examples of waste-values that are extraordinarily high and must be reduced if we are to consider any future generations with any empathy, ethics and morals.
Some major American corporations that have employed tens of thousands of new workers during the pandemic are weapons manufacturers. They make and export weaponry of war that they sell to Saudi Arabia, the UAE and multiple other countries.
Problematically, the American taxpayers fund for massive portions of these corporations because these corporations receive government contracts. The militaries use the U.S. weaponry and ammunition, and more governmental contracts are solidified to “replenish” the ammo and build the next generations’ weaponry of war, such as the 600 nuclear missiles that have a greater kill radius than the U.S. nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945.
Not only the funding for weaponry of war comes from U.S. taxpayers who never decide over the uses of such weapons, but a common culture that has dominated the stock market has led to Americans entrusting their money to so-called “financial advisors and investors.” These conflicted people, who have taken the money of millions of Americans, use it to invest in these corporations that manufacture weapons of war. The American people have put their trust and earnings into the hands of morally deplorable people who only care about gaining higher returns in the short-term rather than considering the long-term, which includes future generations.
Of course, these are not sustainable practices, especially since war is a destructive force that devastates the climate, destroys environments and peoples and has led undoubtedly to the extinctions of numerous species. War lessens the probability of international collaboration from happening, and there is no way to escape any global problem, such as pandemics and climate devastation without international collaboration.
Sadly, the elites of one side of the earth form their groups and agreements, like the poker players who are ready to take full advantage of the new comers, the new elites. The power elites believe that because they have the larger portion of the pie (that is, the ownership and control of the living part of the earth), if they destroy a piece from the other side of the table, then their portion is larger in comparison. This is the unfortunate situation that we face in societies today, and the war economy is profitable for many.
Meanwhile, the rivers, lakes and aquifers are being diverted, used up and contaminated, and water is becoming largely undrinkable. The food sources are loosing their quality as well with pesticides and tainted water for growth. The reasons for this are that the waste-values of the products decided by the power elites are dangerously high.
As a solution, we must expose the tendencies that our political economies have that divert us away from sustainability and drive us toward excessive competitiveness on the international stage. Next, we must demand the continuous implementation of practices that clean the land and water and create sustainable practices like the indigenous peoples of the past but with superior technologies and international collaboration.
Conflict between Labor, Management and Ownership
When the American society had slaves working in the fields, did owners care about their complaints? Nowadays, wage workers make valid complaints, and the owners and managers do not care about making any changes based on rational complaints. Workers are treated as wage slaves. Owners and managers are wage slave drivers.
Wage slave drivers are typically the large corporate owners and managers. The overly wealthy are also involved in another form of slavery, sex slavery, where tens of thousands of sex slaves are trafficked into the United States each year, according to U.S. Department of State estimates during the 21st century.
The people, as wage slaves and sex slaves, experience a clash of wishes or needs. They are required to do what the power elites want in terms of labor, and the needs of the laborers are not being met, including needs of sleep, shelter and nutrition. In some states, such as New York, there are 1,000 homeless people per every billionaire. The situation is dire because the inequality is outrageously high, leading to vast increases in desperation.
Unfortunately, it is extremely unlikely that the billionaires will help our society out of the mess that it is in. The reasons for this concern the lifestyles that the elites live without any family obligations because they have servants to help their family members instead. The billionaires have no communities and no demonstrated empathy for others. They fly from house to house to hotel to yacht that they own. If they pay taxes, they believe they are good people for doing so, but if they find loopholes to refrain from paying their fair share, then they believe they are intelligent.
Elites defend the ways that they live and have done so for many generations. They use Public Relations departments, advisors and spokespeople to cover up their lavish lifestyles and wastefulness. They have some of their thousands of employees attack anyone who is describing their misbehavior, unethical and illegal business practices. The attacks are often smear campaigns against truth-tellers and whistleblowers.
Join the Struggle before it is Too Late!
People are not rewarded for virtue by the world, but virtue is a reward that you give to yourself so that you can live genuinely with yourself as a good person. It is something for which others can be reasonably proud of your legacy.
There can be no hope that is rationally based without strategic resistance against the power elites who are the owners of mass media and who control the politics and law. They are a thousand times worse than the sons and daughters of sheriffs, politicians and judges who can and do get away with crimes and never have the responsibilities of the offices that their parents hold.
The power elites are the main reason for the prolonged pandemic, vast environmental degradation and climate devastation on OUR PLANET. We have lost millions of species from their destructive businesses that kill the trees of ancient growth forests, from the bombs that they decided to have dropped on islands, like Bikini Island, and excessive wastefulness of flying around the world on private jets and shipping unnecessary and cheap plastic products from one side of the earth to the other in order to be sold and distributed quickly to our people as victims of advertisements and ideologies of excessive consumerism.
The power elites are the deciders of how millions will work today, and they mistreat our planet like it is only theirs. They hog the resources and lay waste in oceans, land, rivers, lakes and aquifers. This is what is leading to excessive competitiveness in societies.
What will the elites do when there are not enough people with enough savings, credit and income to buy the products that THEY have decided to have the workers MASS PRODUCE? How long can OUR PLANET manage the waste, contamination and pollution from their production lines and distribution across the earth before it is too late for future generations?
We urge you to join our cause and collaborate with us because of these emergencies for species, natural environments and future generations. Contact us at publications@ethicalconflictconsulting.com. Join our quest for an increasingly just world.
