Another file in this series discusses the sensitivities of members of a family towards each other and how these sensitivities can cause friction. We've seen that there are three issues at fault: the sensitivity of one party, the sensitivity of another party, and the combined sensitivity of these two parties that rub against each other.

Nothing changes when you continue this relationship or study of sensitivities on an international scale. The sensitivities continue and are maintained and may even cause wars, treaties, attacks, and the other things that history books are made of.

One might think that individual sensitivities can sometimes be childish and they can be dealt with in a reasonable manner by sitting down and talking and working out the sensitivities.

Of course this is not always the case, but this should be the goal and we would expect people in a family to be able to do so.

They don't.

Families maintain feuds for years, sometimes generations. Capulet and Montague (What about the McCoys and the Hatfields?) this is a feud probably because of sensitivities over the course of an extended period of time. Is this justified? Not necessarily, but that's the families sometimes are.

For some reason people expect entire countries or the world to be different from individuals squabbles. They expect countries to have leaders that sit down with each other and work out individual problems so that they can act in a more mature way.

Yes, it's always good to make such expectations. However, they are very often far from reality.

Politics very often reflects the most childish nature of mankind and the politicians can do very silly things. The world can be run in very silly ways.

When we try to raise our children to act in a more mature way on the one hand, but on the other hand we show them some of the very immature ways that governments relate to their sensitivities, it may be difficult for a child to understand why he should be better than a large nation which can seemingly get away with doing these things but on a grand scale. The child may feel that he should not be expected to greater maturity than the government.

And maybe he has a good point.