[4]: On conflict and cooperation

Picture: Shree Krishna in dialectics with Pandavas, from 1830s book ‘Krishna councels Pandava leaders’

“Competition And Cooperation Are The Twin Laws of a Progressing & Thriving Civilization”

Conflict sets in motion a process of dialectic with two poles. If you remove the conflict the dialectic ends and the progress vanishes. Progress in other words is a result of the dialectic. 

Faced with conflict, people form communities or groups and the relationship between these people is governed by norms. At the outside at least, it would be fair to say that the relationship between the members of a community is essentially normative. And since communities always have a shared goal in mind, and everyone comes up with his own skills to attain that goal in due course there will emerge a hierarchy which is a result of the twin principles of competition and cooperation. 

These hierarchical structures become settled in time and around it, traditions and the whole gamut of class attitudes, and usages developed, which in due time became much settled and rigid. It is natural that this status quo puts some people in advantageous situations who want the status quo to remain. They want to enjoy the comforts of position and power without facing the competition again. And then there is the other class of people who want to challenge the status quo. 

The first variety is called the conservatives and the second variety is called the liberal in definitional terms..the future of the community is decided by the internal dialectical discourse between these two groups. .

A few points follow immediately. The purpose of hierarchy and all the attending traditions was to solve the problem of survival and offer a practical solution to other needs of the community..so the question is simply this : Are our social hierarchies and traditions helping us do that ? Are they serving the purpose ? If the answer is yes then we don’t need to change anything. But if they are not doing that we must change it in a way that makes these traditions more productive. 

The immediate trigger for change in the internal status quo is the change in external status quo. The world is changing all the time..the ethics and the values that were useful in the 4th century have little relevance today. So no community can make any progress with outdated software of values and ethics and traditions. With change in the external world, it is necessary to change and update the community. 

Now it is very important that we shouldn’t get carried away with our liberal zeal and become too iconoclastic. No evolution is possible by casting away the present status quo totally. One has to start from where one is. There must be a right balance between tradition and reform. Any extremism is dangerous. 

We propose a dialogue that can create the right synthesis that will do the task..