Word: conflict
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...concepts are startling?and disturbing. Conflict between parents and children is biologically inevitable. Children are bora deceitful. All human acts?even saving a stranger from drowning or donating a million dollars to the poor?may be ultimately selfish. Morality and justice, far from being the triumphant product of human progress, evolved from man's animal past, and are securely rooted in the genes...
...second of seven children, Trivers admits that the problems of growing up in a large family and the arguments he had with his father helped to point him toward his theory that parent-child conflict is biologically certain. Trivers believes that the child shows a selfish interest in itself and seeks to get more than its fair share of the energy and resources of parents. But the parent has only a partial genetic interest in each child and thus is preoccupied with sharing resources. The result, according to Trivers, is biologically certain conflict between the child, who tends toward selfishness...
Another example of the conflict, in a variety of mammals, is weaning. When the benefit to the child begins to be outweighed by the cost to the mother (reduced ability to bear or care for other offspring), the mother will deny milk, though the offspring will continue to demand more. But parents have an edge. (Says Trivers: "An offspring cannot fling its mother to the ground at will and nurse.") So evolution has provided a defensive weapon for the offspring: psychological warfare. Some fledgling birds will scream with hunger?even when they are reasonably well fed?to induce the parent...
Among outside powers, who supports whom in the conflict? To keep track of this, you need patience, a scorecard-and a map. Eritrea is backed by neighboring Sudan, which has long been at odds with Ethiopia and which provides most of the Eritreans' supplies via truck convoys. Radio Ethiopia regularly beams anti-Sudanese broadcasts to Khartoum, threatening to behead Sudanese President Jaafar Numeiry if and when the Ethiopian peasant army manages to roll into Sudan. In response, Khartoum-based Radio Eritrea advises Ethiopians: "We surround your troops in every city they illegally occupy. The war is doomed...
...martinet coach to consider. He is not so much a molder of men as a stamp press, mean and implacable. The role may be overwritten, but Spradlin underplays it beautifully. It is no joke going one on one with him for possession of your own soul. The conflict of wills between him and Benson-though it may be implausible in some of its details-is just the kind of dumb confrontation an eager kid and a rigid systemaniac can stumble into...