Wrestling over nothing
Feb. 9th, 2010 11:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snousleI'm intrigued by the human tendency to wrestle for control over issues that are of no importance.
The more I reflect on this, the more I realize that "of no importance" is a very broad category. Basically, anything that does not threaten the very foundation of your way of life (food, security, shelter, social network) is unimportant. Really, it is. The classic example is surely the Ann Landers issue: which way should you mount the toilet paper roll? (*) The sheer scale of the response to this demands explanation.
I have the tendency myself - I'm not sure when I recognized such things as explicitly pointless, but having done so is a great freedom. The Freedom To Not Give A Shit is the ultimate luxury, and everywhere I look, I find more of it. I suppose many of you have always had this and wonder what the big deal is. You're the lucky ones.
I have a few disconnected and tenative thoughts on the subject. I'm going to put on my Machiavellian hat, and I'm always a little self conscious about that because it comes out sounding kind of cold. But I think it's appropriate here. In no particular order:
- We are genetically and culturally shaped by the difficult, marginal life of our recent ancestors, who lived in a harsh environment where issues like control over the toilet paper roll, if you were lucky enough to have one, actually were life-or-death matters. The intense pressure of life necessitated baroque rituals to establish and maintain allegiances, and those rituals have not left us even when they are totally inappropriate for modern living. Today, they remain viscerally compelling, but drag us down in practice.
- Dominance and submission is not a rational choice decided anew in every situation. It is also conditioned; someone who submits repeatedly to small things has an innate tendency to submit to bigger things in the future.
- There is a counter-strategy implied here, in that fake submission is a source of power. The wife who always obeys her husband's trivial wishes may find him wholly unprepared when she lawyers up and crushes him like a bug in the divorce. Submission is literally "disarming".
- It has been said that the ultimate cause of war is incomplete information; if one could know for sure who would win and who would lose, there would be no point in actually fighting, particularly for the loser. Small conflicts communicate information about power and thus reduce the risk of fighting irrationally and pointlessly in the future. In other words, fighting over trivialities is most useful when it reveals your own weaknesses and points out the situations where it's most valuable to yield.
- Small conflicts are rehearsal for large conflicts; they are games aimed at refining one's negotiating skills.
- More generally, working through small conflicts generates a framework for working through large conflicts. They highlight differences between values and reasoning that are resolved before a large conflict arises. The result is less collateral damage down the road. In this way, small conflicts resolved agreeably can be a constructive force in a relationship even when they are wholly artificial.
I'm sure none of these ideas is original, they're just what has been going through my head lately.
(*) Comments offering opinions on the correct mounting of the toilet paper roll will be cruelly mocked for their lack of abstraction.
The more I reflect on this, the more I realize that "of no importance" is a very broad category. Basically, anything that does not threaten the very foundation of your way of life (food, security, shelter, social network) is unimportant. Really, it is. The classic example is surely the Ann Landers issue: which way should you mount the toilet paper roll? (*) The sheer scale of the response to this demands explanation.
I have the tendency myself - I'm not sure when I recognized such things as explicitly pointless, but having done so is a great freedom. The Freedom To Not Give A Shit is the ultimate luxury, and everywhere I look, I find more of it. I suppose many of you have always had this and wonder what the big deal is. You're the lucky ones.
I have a few disconnected and tenative thoughts on the subject. I'm going to put on my Machiavellian hat, and I'm always a little self conscious about that because it comes out sounding kind of cold. But I think it's appropriate here. In no particular order:
- We are genetically and culturally shaped by the difficult, marginal life of our recent ancestors, who lived in a harsh environment where issues like control over the toilet paper roll, if you were lucky enough to have one, actually were life-or-death matters. The intense pressure of life necessitated baroque rituals to establish and maintain allegiances, and those rituals have not left us even when they are totally inappropriate for modern living. Today, they remain viscerally compelling, but drag us down in practice.
- Dominance and submission is not a rational choice decided anew in every situation. It is also conditioned; someone who submits repeatedly to small things has an innate tendency to submit to bigger things in the future.
- There is a counter-strategy implied here, in that fake submission is a source of power. The wife who always obeys her husband's trivial wishes may find him wholly unprepared when she lawyers up and crushes him like a bug in the divorce. Submission is literally "disarming".
- It has been said that the ultimate cause of war is incomplete information; if one could know for sure who would win and who would lose, there would be no point in actually fighting, particularly for the loser. Small conflicts communicate information about power and thus reduce the risk of fighting irrationally and pointlessly in the future. In other words, fighting over trivialities is most useful when it reveals your own weaknesses and points out the situations where it's most valuable to yield.
- Small conflicts are rehearsal for large conflicts; they are games aimed at refining one's negotiating skills.
- More generally, working through small conflicts generates a framework for working through large conflicts. They highlight differences between values and reasoning that are resolved before a large conflict arises. The result is less collateral damage down the road. In this way, small conflicts resolved agreeably can be a constructive force in a relationship even when they are wholly artificial.
I'm sure none of these ideas is original, they're just what has been going through my head lately.
(*) Comments offering opinions on the correct mounting of the toilet paper roll will be cruelly mocked for their lack of abstraction.
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no subject
Date: 2010-02-09 10:28 pm (UTC)LOL
Date: 2010-02-09 11:06 pm (UTC)Re: LOL
Date: 2010-02-09 11:57 pm (UTC)