Unity?

Looking at the rate at which unpleasant events keep on happening for no real reason, I felt a need to study this issue from its beginning. Humans I found, find it easy to derive happiness from one’s own efforts, whether for one’s own benefit, or for the sake of others, or as it is more common, for a judicious mix of both. I think one can say, for humans, this is the only source of happiness. I also found, humans constantly encounter unhappiness, the action and response resulting from one’s interaction with others being the culprit, almost always. So, social life, though does not have a real say, as far as happiness goes, is the prime source of unhappiness. In the light of these facts, I think we need to examine afresh, the hidden benefit that makes the human race subscribe to the idea of living as a society without any worry of the ill-effects.

You see, the human race, though organized naturally into different nations, where positive effort is needed to prevent mutual fights, is a flourishing conglomerate of independent nations. But each and every one of those countries is having many groups that are not at ease with each other. And take any group. There will be many individuals, who are not at ease with the other.

In all nations, forces of divisive and disruptive nature erupts at every trigger, initiating discontentment and ill will. But, barring an occasional catastrophe, the world at large manages to find certain relief and become a better place to live, as days progress. I think what is facilitating this, is nothing but the disunity present in a society, which is mostly celebrated as, rich diversity, great cultural heritage, or an unquenchable thirst for liberty.

Let us see how. Say a group of people feel dejected enough to think of starting a violent movement. But in a diverse society, many groups may emerge that do not share such dejection, or may even be enjoying the current ambience of noise and excitement. Many of those groups would be opposed to the very thought of a rebellion, which effectively nip such activity in the bud. And, only those ones that can enlist the support from many disinterested, mutually exclusive groups can succeed in meeting their aim.

What does this point to? Every revolting group shall be trying to bring as many disinterested people to their side as possible. The easiest, and perhaps the only, way is for the revolting side to demonstrate that they are willing to share the spoils of victory. This would naturally entail closer interaction between people of different aims, ambitions and priorities, effectively moderating any such upheaval.

Thus, the disunity inherent in a rich diversity acts as a balancing force, enabling the society to maintain its direction, in the midst of such random disturbance. (I think this is the reason, artificially generated social barriers thrive in countries that do not have a naturally diverse population. And the ones that did away with such barriers, did not last very long)

One thing should be clear by now. Unity is risky.