Like other forms of life on this planet, human beings face a basic task: to deal satisfactorily with their conflicts and thereby secure the advantages of community and cooperation. Unlike other forms of life, human beings are born with a capacity to reflect on this task and to search for better solutions by conscious thought and careful choices. The task of overcoming conflicts and achieving community life and cooperation arises because human beings are unable and unwilling to live in complete isolation. The advantages of cooperation and community life are so numerous and so obvious that they must have been evident to man from earliest times. By now, our ancestors have closed off the choice for most of us the choice of total isolation from a community is, realistically speaking, no longer open. Nevertheless, however strongly human beings are driven to seek the company of one another, and despite thousands of years' practice, they have never discovered a way in which they can live together without conflict. Conflict exists when one individual wishes to follow a line of action that would make it difficult or impossible for someone else to pursue his own desire. Conflict seems to be an incapable aspect of the community and consequently of human beings. Why conflict seems inescapable is a question that has troubled many people: philosophers, historians, social scientists, doubtless a great many ordinary people.' Conflict is built into the very nature of men and women,' said James Madison, 'Human beings have diverse abilities, and these in turn produce diverse interests.' The main point of this passage is that ______.