Large Fierce Mammal

“No organism can afford to be conscious of matters with which it could deal at unconscious levels.” ~ Gregory Bateson – Steps to an Ecology of Mind

I am not a psychologist but I do have a serviceable and ever growing garniture of knowledge, both formally and self-acquired, in the field of how Humans and a range of other animals react to two very specific influences:

• stress
• conflict

For purposes of today’s chapter and all that will follow, I will remind you that those two words are among the most dangerously misunderstood and misrepresented in this current era of what passes for Human “thought”. Before you read any further I will not ask, but demand that you resolutely cast aside all you might normally think when you hear or read either. So notwithstanding your personal propensities Goode Reader, I hereby set the bar for all here assembled to absolutely preclude reflexively running with the idea that “stress” and “conflict” are uniquely Human disorders that can be treated, and in some cases even cured, through the right combination of counselling, medication, social engineering, and of course money. Going forward we will stick to the Truth of the matter. The singular Truth everything else lives by, and Humans pretend not to have to. Keep that in the forefront of your mind as you read on, even as you find it necessary now and again to remind yourself of this horrible burden I’ve placed upon you, and how your acceptance of it by reading beyond the period at the end of this sentence binds you for this and every other succeeding chapter of The Goode Fyght.

Organisms in the Wild, in commonality but each in accordance with its Nature, are driven to thrive, and to find, evolve to fit, or create, an environmental niche in which that is possible. They will accomplish that goal to greater or lesser degree in the face of competition from their own and other species, changes in environmental conditions that veer away from acceptable optimums, and in the extreme, catastrophic events and other stressors that suddenly place them in a new and unlivable reality.

On the most basic level and across species, this will usually be expressed as mutations that will randomly exist within a part of the currently successful population, and may be inconsequential when all in the environmental niche is wonderful, but render part of the population more bulletproof in the face of new stressors so that only the bulletproof survive. Succeeding generations create a population veering toward thriving in the new environmental reality, and we can see this at work in such examples as antibiotic resistant bacteria, and historically in Humans with the existence of those of us today descended from ancestors who survived the Black Death.

All organisms existing today are predisposed by evolution to react to both stress and conflict from a foundation built of three platforms: Migrate, Adapt, or Die. Stress may be engendered by conflict every bit as much as conflict may be a reaction to the presence of stress. For clarity in this then, and as I have previously written, with respect to stress:

The way Nature sees it, stress is the motivator for an organism to do something to relieve it. If you’re hungry, find something to eat and eat it. Thirsty? Find water. Too cold? Seek warmth. Too hot? Seek shade or some other method of mitigation. Tired? Find a way to get some rest. Threatened? Flee or fight. Sexually aroused? If you need me to clarify the solution to that, you don’t belong here. The point is that these are real problems shared by all Nature’s creatures, and illustrate one of the reasons why your Dog doesn’t care how much money you make. Stress becomes negative when we embrace living with it in self-imposed perpetuity, permitting our action to be limited or even paralyzed completely by a belief that certain plans of attack will fly in the face of the way things are “supposed to be”, or the way others expect you to conduct your affairs. In truth, it’s not always as simple to define as that, but in far too many cases, it is. The magic lies in knowing when you’re letting yourself fall into the trap.

And as to conflict:

In Nature – including the office I’m sitting in at the moment – the world is abuzz with Conflict, but for the most part with nary a raised voice, harsh word, drawn blade, nor bared fang. Conflict is inevitable when organisms in Nature compete for the same resources, but conflict and fighting are not the same thing. While fighting is an expression of conflict, not all conflict involves fighting, nor even negativity for that matter.

I’ll leave you to meditate on these points until we reconvene to further explore the wasteland wherein lives both Friendship and Fight.