FORUM VOŠ Domažlice

And here few sentences in English about psychology of humans, about their small private wars, etc. I have written my ideas in German and here is a small part of it in English.

Remarks to psychology of humans

We, humans are constantly waging small private wars, small fights. Some time ago these fights were lethal, just think of knights and their sword fights; think of French musketeers and their duels, as well as Russian officers, more American cowboys, and gun heroes. All these persons were famous for solving their problems with a weapon, be it a sword or a Colt. Nowadays this type of waging small private wars is not up to date. Today these fights are carried out in a “word fight”, words are the new weaponry used by modern people.

In the old times, fighting the old type of fights, the fights with weapons, the result was easily obvious: either one of the opponents got hurt and was bleeding, which could be seen, might mean the end of the fight; or one of the opponents was hit so badly that he died, in which case the result was also clear. Nowadays, being involved in a “word fight” does not bring about the danger of being badly hurt and crippled or even killed. But we face a problem: how do we recognise who won the fight, when there are no dead and no severely hurt people? So what makes us believe that one of us won that fight?

I strongly assume it is similar as in the sword fight, the last hit. The one who makes the last hit is the winner. In our times the last hit means the last word, the last remark, the last sentence, which the opponent cannot “beat” with his words and his wit. Such last sentence can be witty or just a threat, which the opponent believes might really occur. Pretty much everyone has for sure experienced such a situation. Just imagine the words of the boss telling the employee:” If you continue like that I will fire you immediately.” This sentence, this threat can be easily believed as it makes no problems to the boss to keep his word.

Now we face a problem: regardless the type of fight, be it a “sword fight” or a “word fight”, why do we fight anyway? There is strong evidence that every social animal, thus humans too, have a certain system of hierarchy in their society. Within this society many members want to be “above” other members, as this gives them power. Recently I have read and article analyzing the types of power exhibit, performed, used and misused in human society. There were listed about 7 types of power: 1/ the power of knowledge, 2/ power of position in social hierarchy, and some more.

No human being likes to be a loser. No one likes being called bad names. But nearly everybody likes to give orders; the possibility of giving orders is the evidence of power. Thus nearly everybody likes to give orders. One can imagine a situation in which both humans want to give orders, they must clear between them who really is the one giving orders and who is going to obey and carry out the other person’s orders.

When such people clash at each other they are not “white spots”, they have lived and experienced contacts with people before. This gave them the confirmation of their actions, if accepted by their fellow humans. The system of power used by different people is different. One might use the power of knowledge and the other one the power of position. When such two humans clash at each other, there will be a problem, as they will fight their “word fight” with different weapons, at different levels.

Usually the power of knowledge is considered as the leading power, and the one who, at emotional level, feels as underdog, then pulls out some other kind of power, usually power of position, if he’s got it. The feeling of being not as good as the other one and not being able to fight at the knowledge level, combined with the will not to loose, force the other person to use the other kind of power. Very often people executing such fight, do it without knowing that. It all comes from their stomach, it comes from their emotions.