"Contending with Endless International Conflict" (#345, Topic F)

Our retirement community has a Lifelong Learning Center, offering courses and lectures from time to time. The topic for today's hour-long lecture is captioned above. It was a follow-up lecture on "The Clash of Civilizations," which was given a couple of weeks ago, which I missed. Despite snow on the ground, about 50 fellow residents were in attendance today. (The flyer announcing the talk said that the earlier lecture attracted 85.) Our lecturer opened the lecture by asking attendees to provide a single word that best captured the reason for conflict. "People," one ventured; no. "Religion;" no. "Envy;" no. "Freedom;" no. "Survival;" no. "Greed;" no. It turned out that the word our lecturer had in mind is Difference. Difference? After some discussion, I ventured that since difference in physical features can never be erased, thus, conflict, were difference used as the criterion, can never be resolved. I mentioned that, in China, the approach is "Live and let live." Before I could say another word, I was asked to stop -- "I just want a short comment or question. You should give an hour-long talk yourself." So I shut up. To a large extent, the lecture was off-topic. After an hour, as the talk was at the tail-end of a Q&A period, I left and returned home for lunch, as I promised my wife before going to the lecture.