franchise

Perhaps I (from the Asperger's socially-inept viewpoint) am learning to understand more about the "normal" (non-Asperger's) person's obsession about craving to observe conflict in action to the point of a winner and a loser.

It may have to do with the concept of a "franchise."

This means a title to exclusive business of a specific kind within a specific area. For example, a taxicab driver somehow obtains a franchise to pick up passengers within a specific area of town. No other taxicab is allowed to pick up passengers in that area. That way, the taxi cab driver is assured of a livelihood there, since no one else is allowed to operate in that territory.

So, maybe "conflict" is about acquiring and protecting franchise. It is fundamental to a person's ability to do business to make a living. "Business" here is meant more generally as a life sustaining activity.

Thus, the acquiring of a college degree can be seen as acquiring a franchise to do business in that field. The "degree" might be presumed to imply learned associated skill; but more clearly it is a right, a franchise, to do business or be hired to do that kind of job. This protects the degreed person from competing with people who have learned the field by some other way other than formal degree-acquiring schooling, such as self-education and experience.

Such "franchises" are protected by social ostracization mechanisms instead of formal law enforcement mechanisms, making it the concern of every person, to righteously enforce franchises, so as to be in turn supported by the social system if somebody gets out of place and butts into one's own field of livelihood. Thus "conflict" is the activity of violation of franchise, and the resulting strife determines who owns the franchise thereafter. Seeing that the "good guy" ends up with the franchise, is fundamental to one's own sense of security in one's own franchised area of livelihood, a personal survival issue, demanding attention.

Thus, its critical importance. That produces the focus on conflict as being essential to one's own survival and maintenance of level of lifestyle.

If this is an accurate assessment, then it explains why my proposals for a non-conventional kind of technological transportation system configuration to be able to utilize nearby space to the great benefit of civilization and Earth's ecosystem too, have been incessantly treated with hostility and refusal to discuss rationally with me. Their livelihood is based on rocketry's aspects, a franchise for access to space, like the taxicab driver's franchise to a specific part of town. They saw me as crossing into their franchised territory, and they were repelling an invader, to their mind. And not just business territory, but also esteem territory regarding formation of broadly sweeping concepts for space access and utilization: their credentials gave them franchise to that aspect too, which they saw me as trying to horn in, without having passed up through the normal corporate or academia channels.

Missing from the franchise system's capability, is the fulfillment of the broader needs of the customer, who is stuck with whatever is supplied by whoever has the franchise for that kind of thing in that part of town, that franchised territory.

Thus the needs of the customer, human civilization in this case, for fully adequate transportation means to nearby space so as to enable adequate worldwide clean space-sourced electrical power, means for solar powered totally reprocessing toxic materials that would otherwise accumulate fouling the planetary ecosystem, and need for room for population to continue to grow and thrive abundantly, and new off-planet sources for some kinds of raw materials, has no way to get fulfilled; but the people do not see that, seeing only the apparent need for protection of franchise as the provider for sustainability of their livelihoods. Conflict is called for, protect their franchises from the intruder, save their way of life.

This understanding helps me feel more at ease with my life experiences in this area. It also gives me more respect for all concerned.

But, pity might be the bottom line for all of us. Since we "can't get there from here."

Or, they may be counting on taking over abandoned territory. Right of salvage, and all that. Maybe that way the new technological configurations can by possession implication be ascribed to themselves, become their franchised territory, and they then make it available to civilization... for a price. A really big price.