Man is a spiritual being (and before Vagabond jumps up in arms about some bullshit), all that means is that we are rational creatures, possessed of both will and intellect - we are PERSONS. — Agustino

Sure, we're spiritual beings if that means we are rational creatures possessed of both will and intellect. Sure, we are PERSONS. however...

Evolution did not start from scratch with new species. It always (has no choice) incorporates last year's design into this year's model, with additions or the occasional deletion. The basic kernel of human sexual drive isn't all that different from other animals. For instance, you don't have to decide to be sexual. Sexual is baked in. You don't have to figure out how to get sexually aroused. The circuitry of arousal is pre-installed. You don't have to figure out how to thrust. It's part of the program.

Human sexuality, the sexuality of embodied persons, however is more complicated -- as you point out. But it is in the complexity of human existence that we get screwed up by bad/stupid/evil ideas.

I don't want to just fuck a woman like a dog. — Agustino

I would hope that you would fuck a woman rather better than a dog would. >:)

Well yes, I do understand that celibacy is more complicated than a neurotic repression of sexuality (or anything else).

self-controlled - your own master, captain of the ship — Agustino

It isn't celibacy that makes one self-controlled, it's self-control that makes celibacy possible.

poor Freud — Agustino

What poor Freud thought was that we sublimate our sexual drives to produce civilization. We don't repress, we redirect. Celibacy is an institutionalized form of sublimation. The celibate sublimator doesn't deny his sexual urges, he redirects that energy to other goals.

Most of us are sublimators. We forgo the time and energy it takes to acquire lots of sex and instead go to work every day, we write books, dig ditches, build houses, cook, clean, mix concrete, change diapers--all the stuff that it takes to build and maintain civilization.

Sexuality is important, like all other factors of our existence, but not the absolute central bit — Agustino

No, sexuality isn't the sin quo non of human development. Sexuality, along with physical development, cognitive development, personality development are also central. The importance of sexuality derives from our physical embodiment. What the child experiences first are the pleasures and pains of physicality. Sexuality is central to our development because it is such a strong, evolved drive, common to many other species.

Most animals don't have the cognitive ability to screw up their off-spring's sexual development. It just unfolds and that's that. Humans, on the other hand, do have the cognitive ability to screw up the sexuality of their offspring (and much else), which they do with regularity and aplomb.

Okay, how is this possible if I have no emotional response at all to exposed torsos, especially for man? Growing up this was a VERY common sight for me. There's no emotional reaction. I still think it's wrong. — Agustino

Keep digging.

Thinking something is wrong may be only the result of educated morality. If you think tax fraud is immoral, then that is probably the result of educated morality. But because sexuality is central to our personality and physical development from infancy forward, (and one doesn't have to cite Sigmund Freud for support) the morality of all things sexual are probably strongly influenced by experience and emotions.

Also, you are presumably straight, so you probably wouldn't find a male torso arousing. But still, too much nakedness (uncovered breasts! Oh, no! Save us from concupiscence!) is immoral.

We will always care about it because people are born with a sense of decency, that has to be then overcome through education. — Agustino

Baloney.

If there is one thing that infants don't have, it's a sense of decency. It takes education (and screwed up experiences) to develop warped values--or values which aren't warped.

No, I'm not "bothered" by seeing it at all, it's just that it's not decent, and it would be better if it didn't happen. — Agustino

It's quite possible (even probable) that your emotional response to exposed torsos led you to view it as indecent and (if carried to far) immoral--rather than morals being the reason for your emotional response.

If you are an atheist, EDIT: isn't there some burden of proof for you to bear?

When God is the topic, specify what you think God is or is not. If your God is unknowable, say no more. If your God has attributes which you can not explain to the rest of us, say no more.

Confess what your source of knowledge is about God. If you have personal evidence, great. If all you have is hearsay evidence, admit it. Religious books are hearsay evidence.

Before you say anything, decide whether your God has to be Perfectly Nice. Maybe your God isn't. God could very well be inconsistent, contradictory, arbitrary, and capricious, peevish, periodically unloving, unkind, indifferent to your problems, etc. If God is not nice, that would explain a lot.

History started about 5,000 years ago, when the first writing was developed. — T Clark

Oral history existed prior to written history which began about 5,000 years ago. Oral history captured sequences of events that were important to a people and could be packaged in an epic format which was easier to remember and pass on than just a collection of assorted facts. Natural history, of which we are a part, began relatively recently -- in that we started to read the physical record more carefully. In the last few hundred years, and in the last few years (or months) we have pushed the beginning of natural history ALMOST back to its beginning -- something like a few trillionths of a second before it began 13.82 billion years, give or take 15 minutes, either way.

I think, for example, mankind and our achievements are in some way eternal. — gunner

You could go further and say that the physical history of life on this planet (of which we are a small part) is eternal. Life, in one form or another, began perhaps 4 billion years ago on earth. That's about 33% of the age of the universe itself. We are here because 4 billion years of life preceded us. Life is the major achievement.

You go still further and say that the physical history of the universe, and everything contained within it, is eternal.

How long is your "eternal"? Infinity?

Staying cool on a hot day requires clothing. — Agustino

Why does he want to appeal sexually and attract attention? — Agustino

I probably would have done so if I had the abdomen that I used to have. — Sapientia

Based on observations over several years, it is apparent that some (many? all?) of our philosophers here have body issues, and that some have mixed their personal hang-ups into their morality.

First in line we have Agustino wondering why someone wants to appeal sexually and attract attention. Agustino: You are Exhibit A in the Case of the Prudish Philosopher. Why are people prudish? Because they have a problem with being an embodied being. One suspects they have rejected their own body, and then generalized this rejection to others. If they thought being a body was really a good thing, they would celebrate it instead of constructing barbed wire fences and visual screens around it.

People who are physically and mentally healthy NATURALLY want to appeal sexually to others. It's NORMAL. As it happens, some screwed up people find a shirtless male as risqué as a topless female. Maybe where you come from that is so, but I doubt it. At least in many places, the male torso isn't as eroticized as the female torso. Exposed and eroticized torsos (of either sex) bother people who are uncomfortable with eroticism.

Then we have Sapientia suffering from the heat (of the UK -- not to be confused with the heat of Alabama) in his black polyester-cotton mix T shirt because his abdomen isn't adequate.

Sapientia: For your own good, (and as a sign to the rest of humanity) take your T shirt off and walk down the street--insouciantly--regardless of your less than perfect Rectus Abdominis muscles. Maybe you are 3 pounds over weight, maybe you haven't done your usual 500 sit ups, or whatever... Tough. As you are is just fine. You don't have to measure up to some ideal of physical shape. (Of course, you can if you want to, but there is no point of dying from heat stroke in a black T shirt because your six pack is fading.)

The Philosophy Forum really should arrange a 2 week meet-up at a nudist colony so everyone could, once and for all, get over these body-neuroses.

Get naked and get over it, once and for all.

Um, well are you saying that she's ugly because she's a black woman? If so, then I think you might be guilty on both counts. — geospiza

Shirley, there are black women who are ugly, just as there are white women who are ugly. The beauty or ugliness of a woman will probably have at least something to do with her racial make up. Would one be a racist for saying so? Or a sexist?

when it comes to suffering, snakes never cross my mind — Marchesk

"Snakes" was a cultural quote that missed the target.

In the libretto of Candide, music by Leonard Bernstein, Pangloss is explaining why this is the best of all possible worlds. The students are raising objections, like "What about snakes?"

MAXIMILLIAN:
Objection!
What about snakes?

PANGLOSS:
Snakes!
'Twas snake that tempted mother Eve
Because of snake we now believe
That though depraved
We can be saved
From hellfire and damnation
(Because of snake's temptation!)

If snake had not seduced our lot
And primed us for salvation
Jehova could not pardon all
The sins that we call cardinal
Involving bed and bottle!

Now on to Aristotle. — Prince & Bernstein

A little bird told you that, I suppose.

Bu bu but Geospiza, some women are "airbrushed, photoshopped distortions of reality".

I really hate it when fat old women on bicycles pass me. It's just intolerable.

What's your views on things like personality disorders and how they might affect social interactions in particular? — schopenhauer1

Clearly, a personality disorder can affect social interactions. This is always true because personality (good bad or indifferent) is that with which we interact in the world.

... what looks like just someone who has abysmal social skills might have an underlying personality disorder. Of course, it may be that someone just has abysmal social skills. I guess when does one look deeper and when does one say that it is just a feature of this person but no underlying issue? — schopenhauer1

Oh, I don't know. It depends. I knew a guy, Eric, who was a paranoid schizophrenic. When he was feeling well, he was smart, charming, perceptive, and a pleasure to be with. BUT, when he was not feeling well (when he experienced intense fear and delusions) it was instantly obvious--even to a casual observer--that this fellow was not doing well on any level.

I don't have as much knowledge about personality disorder as I would like, and I don't have well developed theories about it.

We develop our personalities over time, along with all our other personal resources. Some disorders seem to be built in -- like schizophrenia -- while others -- like PTSD -- are a response to experience. Eric had developed a very pleasant personality and a brilliant mind as a young man. He was well educated and well read. I don't know when his symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia emerged -- I didn't know him as a young man.

Some people develop odd, eccentric, weird behaviors and affects from childhood on up. "Why?" is hard to say. I don't know. Determining when "oddness" or "weirdness" is diagnostically significant requires more knowledge than I have.

Granted. Was that meant as just a comment or as an argument against something I've said? — Sapientia

You had commented on belief in god(s) being like belief in extraterrestrials. "the claim that one has experienced the presence of God in their life is analogous in ways to the claim that one has experienced the presence of extraterrestrials or ghosts in their life."

I assume you meant that experiencing the presence of extraterrestrials or God was a bit nutty.

It could be nutty. Sometimes it is nutty. But IF one had been taught that it was the case from childhood up, it would be natural rather than nutty to claim that they were present in one's life.

Whether it's nutty or natural would depend on the content they put forward. Christians are suspicious of Christians who hear God making outlandish requests, or who seem overly involved in this presence. It's a different story if a Christian feels called upon by God to help someone out of a very bad situation. (But there are limits, here.) St. Francis deciding to lick the sores of lepers might have gone off the deep end. Similarly, one could think one received messages from extraterrestrials, and that would be OK, more or less, as long as what the ETs were saying wasn't too outlandish--like shoot the prime minister or something.

My claim - and I maintain that this was quite apparent from the start, and in retrospect you might be able to see this - is that the claim that one has experienced the presence of God in their life is analogous in ways to the claim that one has experienced the presence of extraterrestrials or ghosts in their life. — Sapientia

It wouldn't be at all bizarre to claim one had experienced the presence of extraterrestrials, ghosts, spirits, devils, angels, or any other spooky phenomena IF one had been taught that these beings were real and that one could experience them.

Look, some people see in P.M. May and President Trump splendid, thoughtful, and effective leaders. I don't know why they do; it's probably the work of the devil. But whatever the cause, rational people can believe all sorts of things.

If my memory serves me right, you grew up without any significant religious education, and didn't feel any need to go out of your way to get any. Under those circumstances, it would make sense for you to not believe in God, and to be at least somewhat unsympathetic toward the idea of belief. What would be far more remarkable than your disbelief is for you to experience a spontaneous conversion. God could certainly arrange a bolt out of the blue and turn you into an ardent Jehovah's Witness or Southern Baptist, but hasn't seen fit to do so.

I was taught/trained to believe in God. First parents and siblings, then the influence of Sunday school and church, and peers. By the age of 18 I had not come across anyone seriously urging me to cease believing in God, and I had not heard any sustained arguments against believing in God.

I did not believe in God as a way of meeting psychological needs, any more than saying the pledge of allegiance or learning the Minnesota state anthem met deep psychological needs. It was just something everybody did.

I was taught that I had direct access to God through prayer, and that God had direct access to me through omnipresence and omniscience. (Those words weren't used in Sunday school.) It was more like, "God knows what you are doing and thinking all the time" so there was no escape.

Also if Jesus didn't exist or if he never claimed he was the son of God, than I'm pretty sure that would be a major flaw with Christianity. — dclements

If Jesus had not existed, there would be no such thing as Christianity, never mind it having a flaw.

I am certain Jesus existed. Whether he was the Messiah, whether he performed miracles, whether he said he was the Son of God, I don't know and can not know with certainly.

Why not?

Paul is our first source (but Paul never met Jesus) and the Gospels (formed up and finished later than Paul) are the "authoritative" story of Jesus. There wouldn't have been a Jesus movement for Paul to first resist then join if Jesus had not existed.

What Paul learned about Jesus was apparently powerfully persuasive, and Paul did have access to people who knew Jesus first hand (like Peter and James). What people of Jesus' time experienced of Jesus must also have been persuasive, else there would have been no Jesus movement.

The Gospels were formed up and published by editors in the nascent church several decades after Jesus, the Disciples, Paul, and the first or second generation of witnesses had died. The editors were at a temporal and geographical distance from the time and place of the Gospel narrative. This nascent organization, the letters of Paul, and the pieces of text, oral tradition, and liturgical practice that existed are all testimony to the fact that Jesus had existed, and something remarkable happened in his person.

But what, exactly, happened -- we do not know, and short of Jesus coming to us and telling us all about it, we never will know.

My skeptical view of Jesus-as-God incarnate took quite a while to form up--becoming clearer when I was about 40 years old. From skepticism I settled into a frustrating on/off belief/disbelief pattern.

If now, 30 years since becoming skeptical, I feel a pull towards God, it is the need to resolve cognitive dissonance between the deeply held belief I once had and the skeptical-verging-on-or-being-disbelief position I hold now.

I see your pain, but to what, exactly are you responding?

↪Bitter Crank Neither. It just shows that your telepathy skills suck. — Mongrel

I'm sure my telepathy skills are worse than sucky. Like non-existent. Same for you. It doesn't exist.

For a lot of people in the late 20th, it's like the ghost of the patriarchy was around.. maybe from childhood observations. — Mongrel

"Wooooo moooooan" the vaporish ghost of patriarchy howled, "I have come to haunt you now, and I will haunt you forever... We're coming for you, Mongrel..."

Telepathy, ghosts, the imaginary patriarchal social systems -- I don't know when I've been attacked by so many spiritualistic terms.

But the real world was chaotic when it came to gender roles, family structure, etc. Sometimes a lot of energy would go into trying to deal with that chaos. One imagines past generations weren't burdened so much with that? — Mongrel

"Real world was chaotic"... like how far back are we talking? 1995? 1763? 1066? 1000?

I'm Gen-X. It just occurred to me that the gap between my experience and yours might be a barrier to communication about it. — Mongrel

BS. I am older than you, but not by centuries, after all. Any two people might find it difficult to communicate, but most likely the cause will not be from being born 20 years sooner or later. Things just haven't changed that much. Gender roles and family structure have been changing under various economic and social pressures pretty much since the Industrial Revolution began.

It does seem to me that the lives of many families have become more chaotic in the period following the end of the baby boom and the beginning of the alleged X Generation.

here's a song from 1926 reflecting gender fluidity (and here the progressive POMOs thought they invented it!):

Anyway.. I wasn't talking about anthropology. The OP wasn't either. If he had been, he wouldn't have abandoned this thread to waltz around this forum randomly congratulating and complimenting posters. — Mongrel

The fucking nerve --handing out compliments randomly. Do I hear a waltz?

↪Bitter Crank You answered my question as if you're a consulting anthropologist. — Mongrel

I'm trying to work out whether "consulting anthropologist" is a positive or a negative.

And a warm "thank you" for attending to my attention needs.

I came along when there were prescribed roles. Maybe you swore you'd never step into that sitcom, but due to the power of archetypes or whatever, you did it unconsciously... And the fun continues.

You didn't deal with that kind of shit too much, did you? — Mongrel

Yeah, well, so did I. b. 1946. Other than siblings, friends, and co-workers, I haven't had that much to do with women, whimper or whopper. Mostly just gay men. But among the women I've dealt with, the distribution holds. And it holds among gay men, too, On one end the wise and gentle angels, on the other end the vicious sons of bitches.

Or maybe people have had it up the ying yang saying "up the ying yang".

Where is the ying yang located, exactly -- like when people say "up the ying yang"?

Could somebody explain why asking if all women are submissive is not demeaning but asking if a particular woman is...is? — Mongrel

Why should the question be limited to women? Men range between whimpering submissive to bared teeth, big-hard-dick dominant. From experience I know that women also range between whimpering submissive and bared teeth, (well, not big-hard-dick dominant, but) enraged scorned-woman dominant. How people manifest their relative position in the social hierarchy varies -- among men and women alike.

Maybe women's mean score on submission/dominance is lower than men's, but we're not talking a world of difference here.

Because the ethics of men reduces to looking the most awesome, and being the most dominant. — Wosret

Men who reduce ethics to a robust ability to use force, or look like they could/would/will use force think that way, no doubt. A much larger number of people -- both sexes -- have rather more complicated ideas about right and wrong than you average goose stepping Prussians.

I don't believe in progress. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I seems really unreasonable of me to say this, but I doubt very much that you have no belief in progress. Why so?

a) One has to do a tremendous amount of disassociating with the world one grew up in (the modern world) to really have no belief in progress. That much disassociation would make it difficult for you to operate in this world -- which it appears tp not be a problem for you.

b) I would guess that you expect certain benefits of progress, which you recognize as superior to what you could get in the past. For instance, you know that if you developed an infection in 1850, there was a fairly good chance you would die from it. Take your pick: tuberculosis or streptococci, or whatever you might get. In 1950, there were effective treatments for TB and strep infections. Why? Progress in medicine, bacteriology, micro mycology, and industrial production of antibiotics.

I don't see how you can deny the progression of events that has taken place since you were born. Even if you are only 18 years old, there has been a progression of speed in digital processing, digital memory, and communication since your post-modern nativity. You saw the photos from the Pluto Fly-By, didn't you? The latest pictures from Saturn and Jupiter? Fake news?

If by progress you mean "progress in the nature of human nature" well, sure -- there's not much evidence there of progress in the last 18 years (or however long either one of us has been on earth).

c) Your view of progress is itself the result of a progression and promotion of ideas. Post-Modernism didn't step out of a scallop shell like Aphrodite.

d) I don't know you, can only guess about this, and I don't mean it as an insult (and many of us do the same thing for practical reasons) but I suspect this is a position assumed for the time being.

How would Plato feel about modernity and the Enlightenment? Well, when you opened the door of the time machine and he stepped into 21st century Manhattan, he might very well have a stroke, and you would never find out. At the very least, he'd probably faint when you turned the lights on.

It's people like you who turn otherwise thoughtful, kind, generous, thoughtful -- all round NICE people -- into cantankerous argumentative assholes. If you weren't so fucking stupid, it wouldn't be necessary to beat you over the head again and again.

We get very tired of trying to pound common sense into your thick skulls.

Some significant part of human behavior is encoded in the operations of DNA and another significant part of human behavior is learned. We don't know precisely how much and what of either. Sorting out what is learned and what is genetically inherited is difficult.

Take for instance the difference in the way parents handle male and female babies. Both men and women tend to handle male babies more robustly than they handle female babies. Is this learned or inherited?

That men wear pants and women wear dresses is clearly a learned behavior and is culturally determined. My understanding is that Romans wore tunics and togas while the barbarian Germans wore pants. It's cultural.

The idea that males and females are essentially the same (except reproductively), or are essentially different in many ways is clearly cultural, and will remain debatable until the evidence is in, one way or the other.

My bias is in favor of essential differences, though it is obvious that there is a significant amount of plasticity in our behavior.

This may all be totally unhelpful to you. I don't know.

Human culture certainly has a history. We (humans) started accumulating culture because very long term biological evolution (which is long, but not quite eternal) enabled us to do that. Eventually our cultural accumulation became "civilization" and we invented writing as a way of capturing spoken language. We started recording our ideas VERY recently in our species' history -- only 5,000 years ago (give or take 15 minutes, either way).

"Concepts" are a language thing. Prior to our development as a species with language (much further back than the invention of writing) there were no concepts. So, everything in our cultural accumulation, including everything written and passed on through word of mouth (language), has a history.

since Ancient Greece, a major philosophical enterprise has been to define reality in terms of immutable, eternal concepts. — Brian

Things get a bit tricky, partly because of the historically very recent post-modernist idea that "reality is constructed". Let's not go there.

There certainly are real "immutable, eternal" things which are part of reality -- like matter and energy, which have behaved more or less consistently since the universe came into existence. What we think about matter and energy, however, is strictly historical. DNA has been around for a long, long time (billions of years) but we have developed the concept of DNA, genetics, evolution, etc. only recently in our history.

The same goes for all of our thinking about behavior. Our "human, animal behavior" has existed far longer than our collection of concepts (which arose, presumably, with language). It is likely that people behaved "kindly", "cruelly", "mercifully", "bravely" -- maybe even "morally" before there were "concepts" of morality. We didn't invent kindness when we invented language. We gave it a "sign" -- a word.

The history of concepts apparently extends back into a time before we have history, but it is "historical" none the less.

Gender is absolutely not a social construct. Gender is biological. — Agustino

Deep, deep, down, down, in the bottom of my heart I feel gender and sex are more or less the same thing. BUT it is, nevertheless, the case that some roles which males and females carry out deviate from what is usually thought of as their normal role. For instance, some women drive trucks and some men take care of babies.

We could just say "sex roles" which is what people used to say. Some women performed normally male roles and some males performed normally female roles.

Well, it bothered some people that anyone should think of truck driving as male and caring for babies as female. I mean, people can be anything they want to be, right? That can change from day to day. Some days the woman drives the truck, some days she takes care of babies. "Don't fence me in!" they sang.

Modern women wanted flexible plastic roles which weren't tied to penises and vaginas. Some men did too. So, here we are. Gender Theory Triumphant.

Sorry, I didn't see that clarification. Pardon.

It depends where you place the moment of birth. If you place the moment of birth at conception (and I would probably agree with that, or at least I would place it close to conception) then yes of course a lot of harm can happen while the live baby (who is hence already born, otherwise he couldn't be alive) is in his mother's womb. — Agustino

Your use of "birth" is not idiomatic. "Birth" describes the moment when a fetus leaves the womb. Conception doesn't mean "birth". There are other words describing the significance of conception such as ensoulment, personhood, etc. that can be applied to the unborn fetus (or baby).

There are plenty of ways to incentivize healthy lifestyles, reduce costs by eliminating paperwork, etc. But we are too obsessed with insurance to consider other possibilities. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

There are, indeed, ways in incentives healthy lifestyles. The difficulty is devising sufficiently attractive and affordable incentives which actually change behavior.

One good incentive are the shared bike programs, which place bikes at numerous kiosks where they can be rented using a vending machine-type system. The bikes can be returned to any kiosk. The incentive is that you can decide to use a bike for a small fee, for a (practically) limited period of time.

Eliminating free parking at strip mall and supermarket parking lots would be a way of encouraging people to bike to the store, walk to the store, or park in a less convenient location and walk the rest of the way.

Building exercise opportunities into parks and walkways. Some parks have 'circuits' which provide simple equipment at intervals which encourage people to walk and do strength exercises.

Rather than funding sport teams for a few students, high schools should fund exercise programs for all students.

Eliminate the middle man. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

The insurance companies are the parasitic middlemen in this industry. Their administrative role has become bloated, counter-productive, and self-serving.

Households could purchase, or employers could offer, affordable insurance for only the most catastrophic illnesses. The policyholder would make the claim, not the provider. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

It doesn't take catastrophic illnesses to bankrupt a family. The purpose of insurance is to spread risk across the widest possible group. Insurance companies have demonstrated their uselessness in this area. In fact, the enterprise of health care insurance has become useless.

The solution: liquidate the health insurance industry (This would amount to a huge savings in useless cost). Establish the Federal Government as the single payer of health care costs, and allow the government to collect premiums from each citizen. As single payer, the government would be in a position to control costs in the health care industry, like it does for Medicare, and providers would have no escape from regulation.

The fact is, hospitals, medical employees (administrators, doctors, specialists, nurses, etc.), pharmaceutical companies and all kinds of medical suppliers, are all passing on high rates of pay and profit onto the patients in the form of high premiums and added payments. Medicare caps fees. Let the single payer do the same thing.

In fact, for the the first time in decades, life expectancy has actually gone down in the U.S. last year. — Rich

The reason for this is

prescription opioids have killed over 180,000 people — Rich

and you can add in the added mortality of methamphetamines and shared needle use for any recreational drug.

Add in higher suicide rates among middle-aged and older men.

The conflicter may be a bad person and have false perceptions, but also occupy a position from which the conflicted can not reach them. For instance, the CEO of the company might dislike homosexuals and harbor all sorts of false views about them, and might frustrate their desires to advance. The conflicted homosexuals in the company may not be able to arrange any sort of significant face-to-face confrontation.

The conflicted and conflicter may have both true and false impressions of the other, which more than a little negotiation will be required to sort out.

The conflicter may not care what the conflicted thinks, and be in a position to ignore the conflicted's objections.

The social structure of organizations can wrongfully disadvantage some people (conflicted) without any one worker (conflicter) being responsible. If organizations intend to disadvantage some individuals, they will have no redress.

Sometimes the conflicted need to combine their individual strengths and address conflicter(s) as a group.

Seems pretty contrary to human nature to me — T Clark

Human nature, according to modern Marxist thinkers is constructed. The older view is that it is essential. Of course, it's both -- some parts are learned, some parts are encoded. I'd reveal all the details of the secrets of life right here and now, but I have to go to the dentist first.