The Conflicts in Human Nature
Human beings have some well-known conflicts in their natures. One obvious one, for example, is stability and change. We all want some stability in our lives: stable family, stable house, stable job, and stable friends. That is why the wedding vow includes words like “… love each other forever until death does its part”. People then forget that you can’t emphasize stability alone without considering changes. If our marriage life is constantly the same all the time like a clock, the marriage is in danger. That is the same as the employment. When we are looking for a new job, job stability is one of the most important factors of our criteria. After working at the same lines of works for a few years, many of us feel that the works become routine or boring. We then may start looking for a new challenge in a new company. On the other hand, we really don’t like instability. No one is getting married if he or she knows that his or her marriage is going to fall apart soon. A job without any security for long-term stability is usually a negative sign. We all want stability in our lives. But we also like some changes within that stability.
What causes this conflict? Looking around, it seems that stability is common theme on earth. Birds have their routine routes year after year; fish like to stay at the same place unless the environment changes; certain plants always spout the same kind of flowers at a certain season; and many many other cases. Except human being, we don’t know any animal that is actually actively looking for a change. Animals and plants change, of course, but that is due to the environment they live in changes. In other words, they have to adapt to their changed environment, otherwise, they will not survive. There is also a small percentage of changes in animals and plants causing by genetic aberration. But that happens rarely and usually caused also by outside factors such as a new breed comes in. In other words, all animals and plants would have no problem to stay the same for as long as they last. They would not change voluntarily. Human being, on the other hand, seems to have an internal mechanism to continually push him to change. Some people are much more stable in their character than the others. But statistically, people have a unique nature: they get bore sooner or later by doing the same thing over and over and want to do something different.
We can argue that all the advances in technical and living standards we are enjoying today are the results of this “looking for change” nature in us. We like the stability in our lives, which brings the security and safety in our mind and daily lives. We also like to do or get something different or better than routine staffs. We break out our routine pattern by traveling to a new place and trying some different foods in a new restaurant. It doesn’t seem to have an answer to why we do this. It is in our DNA: maybe God makes us this way.
So how do we deal with this conflict? For most people, it seems that finding a right mix or balance is the key. For some people (interestingly, these are usually the most successful people or most misfortunate people, depending on specific cases), they are constantly looking for changes. They never stop. As the old saying: if you want to be different than normal people, you better do something that normal people wouldn’t do. We owe to these ever-changing type people like Edison, Lincoln, and many inventors and social revolutionists. Without them, we may still sitting at a dark cave and happy eating our hunting foods.
Why would people want to change in today’s society? Well, basically, they dislike what they have now to some degree. They have internal desire to have something different, more, better for themselves and their families, or for the whole society. Typical examples like: they want more money for themselves and their families so they can be financial free, better education systems for the whole country, etc. These desires to achieve the specific goals motivate them to get out of their comfort zone and try new things. Lots of them fail, but the ones succeed becomes road models for the other people. All the self-motivation books basically tell you the same thing: set up a goal that is out of your comfort zone so you can keep trying via different methods. The truth is, you may not get to the goal in the time frame you previously set, but we will probably end up somewhere better than you currently have. Of course, you might end up in a worse place.
There is a common issue for middle-class people (like myself) in a developed country: we are too comfortable with our lives and living patterns. We lack of strong motivation to get out of our comfort zone and put extra efforts in our works or life to get to what we really dream of. We need to be unhappy about our current life to certain extend. In order to succeed, you can not be lazy. And the problem is: we are all too lazy because we are pretty satisfied with our lives. The balance need to be shifted to the greed/unhappy side.
