Conflict may be defined as an incompatibility between aims or desires held by at least two parties within a social system. A party may be a person, a family, or a whole community; or it may be a class of ideas, an organization, an ethnic group, or a religion. Some of the causes of conflict are to be found in the aggressive behaviour that is almost universal among vertebrates.
Conflict also has a positive function in helping to focus on what is really required in contrast to what is not really needed. Conflict can bring people closer together as they work to resolve their differences in a spirit of cooperation and positive intent.
The function of much conflict appears to be the control of food and reproduction through the control of territory. Conflict can be considered as one of the most motivating forces in our existence and as a necessary element to social life. The absence of conflict is contrary to basic human and social needs and is comparable to a state of death because there is no striving between need and need satisfaction, no oscillation between deprivation and gratification, no pendulum effect, no rhythm. It is an adynamic state, incompatible with life itself. This is why lack of conflict causes its own destruction, leading to conflict, just as conflict leads to actions aimed at attaining the state of conflictlessness.