On Emotion-Fueled Conflict and the Mind.

We spend a great deal of time posting on the publications of others and noting the mental tools revealed within that particular article or scholarly paper. The reason we do so may not be clear. We believe that better use of available thinking tools will eventually resolve unresolvable global conflicts.

Despite any difference in race, gender, culture, religion or any other factor that comes to mind, each member of our Global Human Family works out of a strikingly similar mental tool box, choosing the appropriate tool for the way they personally perceive and conceive their experience.

The mental tools used by people all around the globe gives us a unifying language to circumvent the long-standing traditional tensions and violent conflicts between feuding cultures, States and peoples.

Conflict occurs entirely within the mind of the conflictor's and there are no physical-world aspects, no matter what either side says, until physical theft, death, violence and/or rape is inflicted upon one by the other.

Expectations are mental structures we carry around and those expectations can drive an argument into violence. A black male or female American, a resident of Mumbi, a tribal villager from Afghanistan and a lilly-white Wall Street banker all use the same mental equations and tools to assess the world.

We don't care what our enemy thinks...big mistake. We don't care what our brother or sister thinks...big mistake. We don't care what our children think...thats their business...a truly tragic mistake. We don't care what our customer thinks...utterances of dying dinosaurs.

Meanwhile the vast majority of people do not know how their mind works, do not understand how their mind shapes their experience and believes the World acts on them without their having any control and and does things to them.

All conflict is a mental phenomenon until 'my bad attitude leads to throwing a punch, or someone elses bad attitude leads them to shoot their gun.'

Both sides for instance in the Arab/Jewish conflict with Palestinians squeezed by opposing sides, use the same mental tool box for understanding their plight and engaging in conduct they hope will achieve justice. Yet, neither side cares what the other thinks or how the other side feels.

Solving global conflicts will begin in the minds of men and women, and developing this socially adaptable trait will not come from the barrel of a gun or just killing those who disagree with us.

We must develop public policies that recognize the role of each individuals mental assessment of their world and their experience in perpetuating several thousand-year conflicts that are still boiling on the Global Stove-top, killing members of our Global human family.