Hicham Maged's blog Inquisitive curiosity paves knowledge path

Common Grounds in Human Nature

I am always wondering about the human nature and feels like exploring its complexity over my blog. Hence, I started a journey in previous blog entries for achieving this goal; the first phase was wandering in the wonderland of human nature, the second phase was booking places under the sun of human nature, the third phase was trying to understand the language of human nature, the fourth was dealing with sorry in the human nature. Here we reach my 5^th phase where I wonder about the aggression applied by people in whatever situation and how people can reach the common grounds in-between.

Common Grounds in Human Nature

Society and Common Grounds

Any society is formed of collective social groups. If we trace them back, we shall reach the individual. Each person then has his (and her) unique mind that is formulated according to the following three factors:

1. Pedagogy: which is acquired by raising up from parents and relatives;
2. Education: which is acquired by attending formal and informal studies plus own readings;
3. Cultural Context: where we live in and affect us either positively or negatively.

These factors combine together with the soul of every individual persons and the resultant force is “the personality” that you face while dealing with people.

On the other hand, we used to define “good person versus bad person” according to our vision for how this person treats people around him (and her) within the social group. Of course, the relationships inside any society is not only about being good versus bad because this is simplification; it is more complicated since it deals with how people apply their behavior within the whole social group.

In these social groups that gather to form the whole nation, some people applies aggression because it seems they are only fond of their minds which they believe had reached the “ultimate truth” and hence all other people should follow them so if they did not, then they must be forced to do so and be their followers.

In my perspective, this behavior clearly reflects tunnel vision of mentalities and nothing more. Consequently, this might explains the reasons behind conflicts that we see in many situations regardless the case; this is a common attitude which starts with discussions between people in whatever case and end with ideologies itself which start by discussions and escalates to reach the exclusion state either verbally or physically upon others who do not share them their vision.

This trend is notable in many nations generally and in the Arab-Muslim world particularly where you find it reflected in the aggression with its verbal and physical forms that reach its peak value when some groups – especially extremists – who try to legalize this acts either from the right, left or any ideology in the name of whatever: race, faith or culture!

DUH!

Reaching for Common Grounds

Inside every single nation there are some codes that people adhere to since they agreed about or this is how things are supposed to be. If people have problem with, they are called to go through intellectual discussions in order to reach a better state. This means that the integration between people regardless their faith or political ideology is the keystone for achieving this through the two main components of any society: government plus the civil society.

Unfortunately, on contrary to this concept that understands our common grounds, you find discussions usually missed the main goal for any society which is simply its development and rather every group tries to proof that they are the best while others understand nothing in general. Even worse, when they keep on quarreling about topics that are not that urgent if we look to the whole picture of the development process and hence you find every group calls for its own ground.

In the light of my elaborations, we shall discover how they are applicable on two scales:

1. Minor Society Scale: that deals with human interaction between members of same society;
2. Major Nations Scale: that deals with human interaction between members of different societies;

For that matter, members of any society are humans, so our human intellect can pave the road for reaching better understanding when we use our minds in a rational way aside from stereotypes and misconceptions, while working on on de-stereotyping the image both on the minor or the major scales.

In a nutshell, I am shedding lights on the common grounds that are usually forgotten due to an attitude that I see as a core problem in our societies which makes me wonder when we will overcome this!

Related Quotes and Sayings

The highest result of education is tolerance. — Helen Keller

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