The West, Conflict and the Human Condition

Those of us who question why the West seems determined to sabotage the primary values which delivered it so much prosperity, I may have arrived at an answer.

I have long held a belief that it is within the human condition that conflict is required, and in its' absence our collective natural instinct demands we create it. I came across the following theorem recently, I think you’ll find it as interesting as I did.

Eiland's Theory of Compensatory Misery: "As human society gradually solves the problems of basic survival and reduces the amount of other miseries rooted in the reality of the human condition, the fringe elements of that society feel an increasingly strong compulsion to become obsessively angry about ever more trivial causes to recapture the sense that life is a painful struggle.

It is my fear that current Western politics and our obsessional focus upon peripheral topics/causes will only recede when the damage to our economy and our security are such that a real conflict is at foot once again.