I was reading a book the other day on writing and it kept talking about the conflict in a story. I thought that was interesting and tried to think of a story that was not based on a conflict of some type. Every one I came up with contained some type of struggle, an obstacle to overcome, or any other way you want to describe a conflict. Some stories are tragedies which pull hard at our emotions and others are heroic triumphs pulling our emotions in a different direction but they are all based on someone else's hardships. Basically, we entertain ourselves with other people's problems. Some of their problems end well, some end very badly, but we are entertained.
This got me thinking about Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. It has been many years since I've read it so I don't remember all the details, but I remember it talking about humor being based on someones misfortunes. Other than word play, humor has a victim. We laugh, we find it funny when things go wrong for someone else.
This seems to be a universally human trait and can be seen in some primates as well. This may not be a bad thing and since it looks like we're hardwired this way we might as well make the best of it. What we can pull from this is the realization that what goes wrong in life, the conflict we face in everyday life, is what makes life interesting. Just as a movie or book without conflict wouldn't be a story worth telling, a life without conflict wouldn't be a life worth living. I think the challenge is, when at all possible, to be the wise architect of our own conflict rather than a foolish victim of misguided conflict, eg: college education vs. crack.
