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I find myself sitting here reading the articles of the day and I can't help but think about one of the DAL writing contests topics in the first round. "A time of peace, a time of inner-conflict". This of course can be approached from many levels. I could take an existential path and make references to the Matrix when Agent Smith tells Morpheus that the first Matrix was perfect, but humans could instinctualy tell something was wrong and rebelled against it.

I could also go the path of inner turmoil. When your life is hectic, and you're struggling to just stay afloat you don't have the time or resources to deal with personal issues. But when the outside world around you is calm and controlled you suddenly find yourself facing inner demons you may or may not have known were dwelling inside yourself.

But alas that topic would be much too philosophy based to be interesting to the few readers that will take the time to read this.

So I have decided to tackle this topic in the most direct way possible. I will use the example we are surrounded by to discuss the topic at hand.

When there is no one to fight, eCanada has a terrible history of fighting ourselves.

Our past in eCanada is well recorded and well remembered to many of us. 18 months ago we were fighting to put ourselves back on the map. This of course is the prime example of us fighting an external force while ignoring internal problems to reach a common goal. It exemplified what it meant to be eCanadian, and brought the best out of all of us. When you have a clear goal, and face extreme odds you are forced to put differences aside and show the enemy that when times are dire we are much more than the sum of our parts.

The flipside of this is evident now. All I see when I log into eRepublik is attack shouts, or articles from one group berating another. With no external threat or goal we are quickly reduced to a group of children who are more concerned with bickering and infighting than with continuing to work together to improve our station.

I find the easiest way to describe this is to reference one of my favourite shows of all time. Married with Children.

Now before you guffaw, or stop reading let me explain.

Anyone that has seen the show probably knows what I'm talking about already. The Bundy's exemplify dysfunctional. That sound familiar to anyone? They are constantly attacking, putting down, undermining, and sabotaging each other. They derive no greater pleasure in the world than when they are able to get a leg up on one of the other members of the family. In fact the show itself is based around that very fact. The parallels to eCanada should be clear to anyone that has spent more than a week reading articles and looking at shouts.

There is of course an exception to this. When someone else attacks one of them. You'd think with the amount of attacks within the family that if one of them were attacked by someone that isn't in the family the others would standby and let it happen, or take pleasure in their own being brought down. But that certainly is not the case.

When a Bundy is attacked by an external force the family instantly comes together and joins forces to help the besieged member. This is also a prime example of eCanada. It's fine for us to pick on each other, but God forbid someone else steps over the line. That aggressor, or in the world of eRepublik invader will quickly find themselves as the target of everyone, and the support they may have expected or hoped for watching from the outside before they attacked will quickly be turned against them with even more passion and rage than was previously displayed.

This brings us back to the topic at hand. When there's peace without are we doomed to conflict within? Sadly, I think it's inevitable. Whether it's a person in their daily life, or a corporation, once some semblance of external equilibrium is reached the attention is focused inward and they begin questioning themselves. With that in mind it's best to realize that eCanada is nothing more than a dysfunctional family. If there is nothing outside of us to focus our attention, than that attention is turned inward, and as everyone knows from fights with family members, those fights are some of the fiercest of all.

We attack, we offend, we fight dirty, we hit below the belt, we do everything in our power to get a leg up on the other people in our "family" but as soon as a threat is perceived outside of our group we turn in unison to face it.

"A time of peace, a time of inner-conflict"? Definitely. But so long as we're able to externalize our focus when that peace ends than that inner-conflict does nothing but strengthen our bonds and hopefully leaves us better for the experience. Whether you're an individual, a family, or a corporation, if you are able to conquer the problems within you emerge from that period of inner turmoil much stronger than you were when you entered it.