CONSEQUENCES OF SOCIAL LIVING, LANGUAGE, AND CULTURE FOR CONFLICT AND ITS MANAGEMENT

Abstract. Human language leads to an open-ended proliferation of human goals and purposes, which make for complex social relationships combining competition and dependence. The resulting ambivalence in social relationships makes the management of frustration and its attendant emotions a central concern of human socialization. The specific loading of emotional problems varies according to how societies are organized, but problems are inevitable. As relations of power and dependence become more complex, human efforts to manage these problems are liable to increasingly explosive and destructive expressions, apparently an inevitable consequence of social and sapient existence.