How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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The Meaning of Conflict and Doubt No more interesting problem than the problem ot conflict and doubt presents itself to the student of human nature. There is hardly a human being who has not at some time or another experienced a sense of conflict in his own soul. The “ to be or not to be ? of Shakespeare^ touches us all. Our language is full of the evidences ot this conflict. We hear much of the struggle between good and evil, between right and wrong, between justice and injustice, between capitalism and labour, between the individual and society. If you have ever experienced conflict in your own mind it will seem to you tnat there are really two souls in your body, each striving for dominance. The entire psychoanalytic theory of nreud is based on the assumption of a conflict between the libido and the social tendencies. The subjective truth of the existence of conflict is so universal that it seems to icfute and deny our thesis of the unity of the personality. How can conflict be part of our striving for a fictional goal of compensation, superiority, security, or power ? How can we align this paradoxical character trait with all that we have said about the unity of the personality pattern ? The reader will remember that the final test ot any character trait or any behaviour pattern is : “ What happens after the expression of this tendency ? Who is affected by it? How does it affect the individual’s environment ? ” With this critical yardstick we approach conflict and doubt and find that, like all other character traits, they are exquisitely appropriate for the purpose of the individual personality. Of what possible use are conflict and doubt ? Can there be any pragmatic value in the pain and torture of indecision ; can there be any utilitarian value in the conflict between good and evil ? The reader must distinguish between an objective choice between several possible actions and the subjective conflict which we mean. If you wish to drive from London to Liverpool and have three possible routes from which to choose, a real conflict, in the psychological sense, does