I am still in the mountains, getting ready to head back to Wine Country (where I currently live) and I'm wondering yet more about differences of how people see the world, and how much conflict those differences actually causes (I'm leaning towards "all of it").
I heard a story about John Dillinger (the famous criminal from the 1930's) who was making out with his girlfriend when a cop came up and interrupted them (not sure why, I think they were somewhere that this activity seemed inappropriate to the cop), and Dillinger shot the cop and went back to making out with his girlfriend. Dillinger's attitude and behavior was based on his (admittedly) skewed world view that he was doing something important, and this guy was inappropriately interrupting him and needed to be stopped permanently and quickly. The cop's view (while he was still alive) was that his job was to make sure the populace behaved within the confines of the law (and possibly moral decadency), and he rightly should stop the couple slogging away on the park bench (or wherever they were). Also, the cop figured that two people making out probably was not a danger to him; bad call in this case.
But all conflict seems to arise from people taking different views, and then almost deliberately not taking their "opponent's" point of view into consideration. Now, you might say, what about Hitler invading Poland? Would it not have been better to step in and prevent Hitler from annexing lands near Germany, willy nilly, until World War II broiled into full fury? Sure, and yet Hitler (and apparently a good segment of the German population) felt that invading Poland was the right thing to do. And Poland's government and populace was opposed to invasion (as far as I know). Neither wanted to take the others view, both had to fight in order to protect their own view - this just seems messy and very possibly unnecessary. I'm not a historian, but I do see that, at least in most ways, this fits my original postulate above.
Perhaps the problem with this explanation of conflict has more to do with the fact that some views are more widely held than others. I'm sure that most rapists and murderers feel that their heinous act, as they commit it, is necessary, if not appropriate, yet pretty much EVERYBODY ELSE (including, of course, their victim) is quite sure that it is neither necessary nor appropriate. I'm honestly not sure where I'm going with this, but I feel like it's important. Perhaps not a solution to conflict, but at least some insight into how it operates. Or maybe this is just common knowledge and I'm wasting your time, gentle reader (if you even exist). I 'll sit here and think for a bit, and if I come up with additional insight, I will let you know (right now I feel that there is a crumb of explanation that I am omitting, and in omitting it I am confusing the issue rather than splaying it open for all to understand...)