Why?

Here’s a strange question: Why?
It’s considered socially responsible and well-adjusted of us to desire order and peace. But, why? There isn’t a thing that man has done that isn’t the result of conflict. We outright declare that much of our progress is made through an arms race. We are taught that a story cannot exist without conflict. Conflict defines us whether we agree with this concept or not. “The Greatest Generation” is so called due to their triumph over not only the great depression, but the great war(s most specifically the second). So why? Why then are we so opposed to that which molds us, advances us and defines us?
Have we stopped to consider a world absolutely free of conflict? This is no utopia that you propose. This is the societal equivalent of a lifelong waiting room. More and more people, making more and more art, needing more and more food, taking more and more land. Until the art is bland and pointless and evokes no response. Images scraped over by dry blank eyes. Ears incapable of telling the difference from one song to the next. Until the land is too full of people to grow crops or livestock. Yet, we will be ingenuous and usurp all of this. We will find a way to grow food hydroponically, indoors. In labs. We are mostly already here. We will eventually develop a soma that will allow us to cope. Big pharma is halfway there. We will write stories. Imaginative tales of conflict that will frighten us back into shape. None of us ever having to struggle our entire lives, grateful that will will never have to.

We will know no satisfaction in a conflict-free world.  There will be no triumph, no sense of accomplishment.  We will be spoonfed meager goals which we will efficiently and effortlessly complete so that we may report for another.  Never once will we take away any glory from this.  To throw our efforts into a giant mill and watch it ground together with the labours of an infinitesimal number of others.  Indistinguishable.  Insignificant.  Undefined.  When we die there will nary be a comment about our exemplary performance.  The fine example we had set for all others to aspire to.  We will truly all be even.  Equally disregarded as merely another life in a sea of mediocrity.

Not only should we not fear nor shy away from conflict, we should embrace it.  For above all other things it is this which raises us above our peers.  Makes evident our outstanding nature and challenges others to surpass it.  The meals that we earn taste all the more sweet because we know that we are solely responsible for having them to enjoy.  So too is the victory earned through conflict.  We cannot sit idly by resting in the sheltered glory provided us by our forefathers.  We must go and take our own.  Carve our own path.

Be diplomatic.  Why?  There is no need for diplomacy if there is nobody left to argue with.  They say: violence doesn’t determine who is right, only who is left.  Why?  Is this intended to dissuade me?  The result is the same; minus one challenger, plus one delicious victory.  Yet, it doesn’t end here because a victory for you is tenfold in the eyes of potential challengers.  One conflict quells a potential dozen.

So, here is a strange question: why?  Why would you crave an empty world lacking in ways to challenge and define yourself?