Friday, July 6, 2012

13. Conflicts and Interests: A Conflict Case4


              Here is a story between a person who work as a chief of the human resource department, and a person who work as a head of a section of the same department. Name James for the former and Alex for the latter. In the human resource department, the reformation of the evaluation for people was discussed in order to adapt the current economic environment. James and Alex were agreed with the basic concepts of the reformation plan. This section is special because a lot of people are working only for this section and as a result, the solidarity between people is strong.
              James changed his attitude toward the reformation plan when they provide the document with the member of the meeting to discuss this reformation plan. He said that the reformation plan will not be accepted by the workers above 40 years old, and he told Alex that this plan should be completely revised. Not only was Alex perplexed, but also other colleagues of him were so. Alex was perplexed because the meeting will be held in a month. It seemed too impossible for him to revise and write a new document for the meeting. Moreover, Alex was not sure what kind of reformation plan can be acceptable because James did not point out specific points. Furthermore, Alex was responsible for making this reformation plan. He was afraid of being penalized if he cannot make a new reformation plan only a month. Thus, Alex became nervous with James.
              James rejected the reformation plan because he thought his interests. He calculated the effect of the new plan. As a result, he notices that he could lose 20,000,000 yen for life-earnings if this plan was passed. James knew that this plan was profitable for the company, although he did not want to accept this plan because of his interests. He also thought that Alex was responsible for this plan. He knew that he would not receive any damage if this plan was not accepted.
              In this case, they share the same goal, values and means. In addition, their personal relationship was not distracted. It is; however, it must be recalled the fact that the differences in the standpoints can cause different interests. There are few people who can free from their own standpoint. Moreover, it may harm others.
              It is really difficult to give up the status quo for people even though they believe that the society should be more equal. It is extremely difficult to free from own standpoints. It is easy to criticize that behavior as egoism, although it is also easy to advocate egoism. Thus, the problem is the limitation of the egoism. The egoists want to be recognized their maximum autonomy regulated by the law and culture. They try to argue that minimum regulation of autonomy whereas anti-egoists argue to maximize the minimum regulation. This debate is in vain because most of the problems are end of the spectrum.
              The strength of the standpoint is different. In this case, James is in a stronger standpoint than Alex. James utilized his position to reject the reformation plan. I do not want to argue that the problem is strength and weakness of each standpoint. It is inevitable that there are strong and weak standpoints in the world. In some cases, these differences are large and fixed, but in the other case, are not.
              In this case, I am not sure that Alex who seemed to be a weaker standpoint did counterattack or he might be succeeded as a result of the attack. Differences in standpoints are different from the relationship between dominance and obedience. Foucault pointed out the fact that there is some sort of freedom, and this freedom produces the power and it was represented as different standpoints. If there is no freedom between dominance and obedience, then it can eliminate standpoints and it can be the condition that the complete domination eliminates the notion of the domination. It eventually eliminates the notion of the standpoints.
              People are affiliated with the multiple societies and multiple standpoints. Some might devote his life to utter their idealism whereas the others might devote their life to criticize egoism. I am thinking of both and consider to how to balance these different notions. I am not sure that I can have another option.
              I am not able to sympathize with the optimists who ignored the real world or egoists who cannot understand others. As Shakespeare says, “All the world stage, every men and women were merely players.”  It is not the problem of judgment whether it is good or evil but it is reality in the worlds. Standpoints or interests are naturally produced. It is not reasonable to reject and disprove that fact. Rather, people should recognize themselves as players in the world.

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