War – any kind of fighting is when people have given up on using communication

I’ve always believed that any kind of fighting is when people have given up on using communication. Of course communication is barely happening at this depth of the ocean, which is pitch dark, freezing cold and littered with dead detritus floating around.

If listening is a large part of communication, then that immediately shows how bullying is a low form of communication as listening does not happen. People get confused between hearing and listening. When people say ‘I hear you’ they (sometimes unwittingly but the words give them away) are actually saying ‘words are going in my ears but I am dismissing them.’

If you listen to people talking, you might hear someone telling another person something as if to say ‘you should think this way too.’ What they are not doing, perhaps, is displaying what they think in a way that the other person can consider it.

Look at the word communication. It speaks for itself. Commune. Uni. One. Becoming one. What I find damned funny about language is how much it gives away, which the speaker may not be aware of.

Take the definition of war as described above and put it back into the school yard. Can you see all the similarities? Can you see the patterns? Here are the school yard scale, war posturings typically used by playground or office bullies. Just for fun, write out versions of these phrases below as if they were sent between diplomats or ambassadors from two different countries.

“You should copy me.”

“Give me your lunch.”

“He prefers me to you.”

“He told me he doesn’t like you.”

“I don’t like the way you do things.”

“You’re ugly.”

“You smell.”

“No one likes you.”

“You can’t go there.”

“You can’t play on that, it’s saved for someone else.”

And don’t forget. Bullies often pick fights that they have no intention of fighting. Governments form armies to go and kill other armies full of people paid to go and fight each other. When they are done, dead or injured, they are dismissed and neglected as soon as is possible. It is unlikely that suitable treatment to recover them from their experiences and rehabilitate them in civil life will have been forthcoming. Promises made to them for giving their lives are often not kept. Look at how many ex-military people end up homeless.

Doesn’t this remind you of the cowardly school bully and his or her gang who are forced to do any of the dirty work?