peace - more disturbing reflections

Disturbing possibilities from Terrance and Werner Erhard.

These two quotes are the most discomforting and generative that I have come across.

Terrance: “Because I am human, there is nothing that any human being can do that is totally foreign to me.”

Werner Erhard’s Definition of responsibility:

Responsibility starts with the willingness to experience yourSelf as cause.

It starts with the willingness to have the experience of yourSelf as cause in the matter.

Responsibility is not burden, fault, praise, blame, credit, shame, or guilt. All these include judgements and evaluations of good and bad, right and wrong, or better and worse. They are not responsibility. They are derived from a ground of being in which Self is considered to be a thing or an object rather than context.

Responsibility starts with the willingness to deal with a situation from and with the point of view, whether at the moment realised or not, that you are the source of what you are, what you do, and what you have. This point of view extends to include even what is done to you and ultimately what another does to another.

Ultimately, responsibility is a context - a context of Self as source - for the content, i.e., for what is.

How does this relate to peace?

If the US blames terrorist extremists for the New York disaster, or if the terrorists blame the US, and each ignores its own part in generating the situation, there is a risk of mutual retaliation and further escalation of the groundswell of resentment which preceded the tragedy.

If the US or the terrorists were to blame themselves, it will generate self criticism and guilt which will hardly help the healing either.

If the US and / or the terrorists were to begin with the acceptance that what happened happened, and that the horrendous nature of what happened does not take from the fact that it happened, then the possibility of asking about what might be useful, helpful, relevant to healing appears for the first time. If the past could be acknowledged adequately, the future may have an opportunity to appear as more than a variation on the theme of the unacceptable past.

We can, any of us, at any moment in time, ask ourselves what we are doing or not doing that might influence directly or indirectly the movement in our personal experience, our personal relationships, our community, our country, the world away from or towards peace, we can begin to see what we might be able to contribute. Maturana says that we cannot be held responsible for where we are, but on recognising that we are where we are, we are totally responsible for where we go from this point. I am discomforted by this perspective but I like it. I had and have a similar response to Terrence’s comment and Erhard’s.

Shifting from fixing what’s wrong to exploring what’s missing.

War is generated in a mood of hate, or mutual negation. When we hate another, we negate their legitimacy, and so, killing them becomes possible, or even a duty. They are wrong, and need to be fixed or corrected, or if necessary exterminated. The problem escalates when each side of the conflict knows that they are right, that the other side is defective, and so needing to be fixed. The hate is mutual. The negation is mutual. The lack of legitimacy is mutual.

Whether either or both are right or not, whether god is on one or the other or both sides, this won’t lead to peace. The right / wrong conversation will never lead to peace. I am reminded of a conflictual couple being told by Erickson that each was 80% right and 20% wrong, and that each should explain to the other the 20% that they were wrong. I am not sure who an Erickson might be in a waring situation but Stoltenberg may have come close several years ago at the beginning of what promised to be a useful beginning of a peace process in the Middle East, and although it didn’t persist, the process points to something. As a Scandinavian diplomat, Stoltenberg arranged a secret meeting between the two mutually negating negotiators in an isolated villa in the mountains of Scandinavia. He filled them full of gluvine, sat them in front of a fire, and they each discovered their mutual hate, and their shared love of their own country and people, and fell into each others’ arms weeping at their shared human experience. The peace process had begun.

Exercise: with your situation, what’s missing such that peace could happen?

War and peace – complainants and customers.

We can look at the terrorists and the US as complainants. The terrorists have a problem – the US. The US has a problem – the terrorists. Anyone whose clinical practice include couples will have felt the frustration of being in the presence of two complainants, and the inevitable escalation which follows unless we intervene to change the mood and direction of the conversation.

In my first marriage, I had a major problem – my first wife, and she had a matching major problem – me. Each knew with a certainty which was beyond question that the individual position was rock solid and right. When we had to attend counselling before the divorce, the unfortunate counsellor found herself in a war zone. I am ashamed, looking back, at my arrogant blindness, and although I have no regrets about the outcome, I can’t help wishing that this might have been achieve with more dignity and less verbal violence.

In working with couples who argue, I have observed, at least often enough, that each individual knows they are right, the other is wrong, and that for the problem to be resolved, the other needs to change, and the self has no contribution to make, and even if it has, why should it, since it should be the other. A colleague said years ago that in her personal experience, she’d notices that she could be right or in relationship, but not both.

I have also recurrently and predictably experienced the relief which follows acknowledging the legitimacy of each complainant’s perspective. This can easily be created by “standing in their shoes” and just as easily each can be complimented genuinely for doing as well as they have, given their experience. It is such a joy, relief, and benefit to then ask this genuinely suffering, legitimate individual about what they already have done, or might be willing to do themselves to lessen their own suffering, and bring some tiny movements towards peace from their position.

Exercise: immagine that the other in your conflict is acknowledging the legitimacy of your experience, giving you a compliment, and then ask yourself what is the smallest and easiest action you have already begun to do or that you might be willing to do in the future?