Why do people quarrel?

But of course, the definitive answer to this question, if such an answer can possibly be given, will run into thousands of volumes, detailing all possible reasons why people do quarrel. So for example, they quarrel over land, water, food, property, privileges, status, and so on. Such reasons I shall leave to the economists and the sociologists to tabulate, discuss, and write about (and, in the process, quarrel over!). For myself, suffering as I do from the disease of abstraction, the reasons for people quarrelling that I find interesting lie somewhere else. Here is one : people quarrel because they disagree with one another over their perceptions of the 'depth' and/or the 'shallowness' of objects/people. This can be easily observed in numerous contexts. One of the first impressions that we develop of other people (whether or not we are willing to accept this) is that of their depth/shallowness; one of the commonest appreciations/criticisms of a movie/concert/play that we have been to is that it is either deep or shallow; one of the easiest ways to stop thinking more about a specific person or a world-view is to stick a quantitative figure to its depth or shallowness, and so on.

There are, of course, people who try to get around this in interesting ways. Here is a favourite ploy : 'The distinction between depth and shallowness is meaningless. Everything around us is equally deep or equally shallow.' And this, I must admit, is indeed a breath of fresh air into a room overcrowded with cynics trying to stamp objects or persons with measures of depth/shallowness. But this will not really do beyond a certain point. Is everything really equally deep or equally shallow? Do we actually base our lives on that assumption of 'equality'? Do we not set up, implicitly or explicitly, 'gradations' of equality or depth so that we say that Person/View A is more deep/shallow or less deep/shallow than Person/View B? Another reply, then : 'It is all relative. Whether something/someone is deep or shallow is relative.' Again, a good reminder that depth/shallowness cannot be weighed like a loaf of bread or a mass of butter on a scale. But once again, this reply raises some interesting questions. Firstly, depth/shallowness may be relative, but one would want to know in that case what they are relative to. One of the classic examples of 'bad science' is the invocation of Einstein's Special theory of Relativity in physics to buttress one's 'relativistic' arguments in cultural theory. The term 'Relativity' as used by Einstein is completely incommensurable with the term 'relativism' as it is understood by some cultural theorists who claim that people belonging to 'other' religious/socio-cultural traditions are trapped within their indigenous world-views. Is it true that a certain group of people, say the Azande tribe in Africa, is so distinct from us Europeans that we cannot understand anything of what their beliefs/practices are like? Suppose this is indeed true. It would mean that we Europeans accept the proposition X such that X : Europeans cannot understand anything about the Azande. What would that imply? It would imply that there is at least one thing, namely X, which we Europeans do know about the Azande!Therefore, to say that the beliefs/practices of the Azande are so opaque to us that we cannot make any statement whatsoever regarding the Azande is a self-contradictory claim. Now to argue in this manner does not necessarily mean that we have to accept the other end of the 'universal versus particular' spectrum, and say that there are timelessly valid universal criteria of 'rationality' that can be applied across the board. Whether or not such criteria exist that are broadly accepted by different socio-cultural traditions is a matter that I must leave to students of social anthropology.

Nevertheless, the basic point in this context is that perceptions of depth/shallowness take place relative to a certain background of beliefs/practices. As long as we share this background, we not only do make, but even should make, our perceptions of depth/shallowness. To many people brought up on a diet of post-modern jargon centred around the sensitive question of 'toleration', this would sound a highly 'totalitarian' (not to mention, 'masculine') statement. And yet, strangely enough, it is precisely such people who very often loudly proclaim the right of the individual to have an opinion, the freedom of anti/religious choice, the universal sanctity of human life, the right to (political) dissent, and so on. I am yet to hear a theorist of post-modernism say that the right to express one's opinion or to choose one's religion is an idiosyncratic right that is 'relative' only to West European society; it is usually assumed that all human beings, of both genders, all over the world, in all possible cultures and societies, should enjoy such rights. And what would such a 'universalist' claim be, if not a form of 'modernity' in disguise? If such 'human rights' are indeed relative to the socio-historical specificities of European civilisation, post-modernism would not be able to declare their universal validity. It would then imply that burning widows on a funeral pyre is 'right' in Hindu cultures but 'wrong' in non-Hindu cultures; beating wives is 'right' in patriarchal societies, and 'wrong' in non-patriarchal ones (that is, if any such society exists at all!); and that there is simply nothing anyone can do about it.

I do not know any post-modernist who is willing to accept such conclusions. Many people today seem to believe that they should not 'judge' things/people; that 'everything is relative' and that the matter should be left at that. And, in most cases, rightly so, for there are often so many hidden/submerged layers within a human person that in order to judge him/her one must first bring these layers to light, and this is a process that might sometimes take a life-time. Therefore, the statement 'do not judge people/things' should be taken as a salutary warning against jumping to conclusions about the perceived or alleged value/worth of people/things. When, however, it degenerates into an empty slogan it becomes potentially misleading for it then implies that every possible view in the conceptual universe/s that we dwell in is equally valuable. It is most clear that even 'post-modernist' people who swear by that slogan cannot hold this to be the final word on the matter. I take it that not many post-modernists would be ready to regard Colonialism and Patriarchy as two world-views that are acceptable to them. If not, it would imply that there are at least two world-views that even a post-modernist has to reject and, consequenty, hold as being shallow. That is, it is impossible even for a post-modernist to claim that s/he has transcended the depth/shallowness duality. To remain a post-modernist, s/he has to maintain that there is something 'shallow' about modernity and something 'deep' about his/her post-modernity. In short, then, post-modernism may turn out to be a bad tool to use if one wants to declare that 'everything is relative'. To repeat : everything may be relative, but everything is relative to what?