Morsel Conflict

A morsel conflict activates endodermal tissues governed by the brainstem. These tissues respond with cell proliferation during the conflict-active phase of the special biological program (SBS), increasing the individual's capacity to "take in," "digest," or "get rid of" a morsel.

At the most fundamental level, a living being lives or dies by its ability to take in what it needs and expel what it doesn't. The brainstem – the most ancient part of the brain – evolved to manage exactly this, and the endodermal tissues it relays (digestive tract, liver, pancreas, lungs, inner ear, irises of the eye, thyroid, and other tissues developed from the ancestral "gullet" and "gills" structures) are the biological instruments of morsel management.

This is the keystone of the whole framework: digestion was never only about food. The literal morsel is the substrate; the experience of the morsel is the meaning — and meaning is the province of the special biological program. Handling an actual, physical morsel (really eating, breathing, hearing) is an ordinary biological program. A morsel conflict arises when the individual unconsciously makes the meaning that a vital morsel (including a metaphorical morsel, or, more correctly, the experience of it) is unavailable or unattainable, or that a morsel already taken in is "stuck," "too much," "indigestible," "unwanted," and so on. This is why two people in the same circumstance can form completely different morsel conflicts, or none.

The meaning may form around a literal morsel – "I cannot get enough food," "I cannot breathe" (I can't get the air morsel), "I cannot pass this" – or, more commonly in modern life, a metaphorical one:

• an individual loses their "daily bread" – their job – suffers a starvation conflict and produces a tumour in their liver
• a child misses the ice cream truck, because he didn't hear the sound because he was distracted playing a video game. To better "insalivate the sound morsel," he develops a tiny tumour in the inner ear which is broken down as an ear infection once he attains the "sound morsel" he wanted
• an individual is overloaded with work and just has to "power through" – an indigestible anger conflict which affects the large intestine and produces constipation during the active conflict and diarrhea during the healing phase
• a retired widow doesn't get her house for sale on the market quickly enough before the real estate market crashes. She creates a thyroid program because she was not fast enough to get rid of the "house morsel."

The response to a morsel conflict is cell proliferation in the affected endodermal organ – an evolutionary adaptation to increase motor, secretory, or resorptive capacity. The type and location of growth is specific to the kind of morsel, direction of the conflict (can't get the morsel in vs. can't get it out), and whether the individual is trying to break the morsel down (cauliflower type tumour) or trying to absorb the morsel (flat-growing type tumour)

The deepest morsel conflict – and the one present, to some degree, in every other biological conflict – is the existence conflict: the isolation, abandonment, refugee, or existential conflict, which runs in the specialized digestive tissue of the kidney collecting tubules. During the conflict-active phase these tubules undergo cell proliferation, producing water retention, conservation of proteins, increased thirst, and low urine output.

At conflictolysis, the cell proliferation of any morsel conflict instantly stops. The extra tissue built during the conflict-active phase is then broken down during the healing phase by fungi or mycobacteria – provided the appropriate microbes were available at the time of the Dirk Hamer Syndrome (DHS).