In one occasion a friend of mine asked the provocative question “ if you are belong to one community where violence / war is taking place, and all your family are killed, leaving no one, what would you do in this situation?” Would you be willing to forgive or to be reconciled with them? My spontaneous reaction was so offensive: I would have to kill them; not allow them to exist in this world. And absolutely I could not forgive and be reconciled with them. Then my friend responded “ Oh…. God how horrible life can be… I cannot imagine what would be happen to our world if we always put into practice the most popular philosophy of uncivilized people “an eye for an eye”. The world might be filled with fresh blood”. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind and brings humanity to the brink of self-destruction. A moment later I came to realize that violence always absurd, we have to go against violence with nonviolence: nonviolence maintains that violence only leads to further violence, that violence never ever solves anything.
However thinking about that question moved me deeply to reflect more and more about the fate and life of those who have to come face to face with real conflict, and above all to re-think or redefine the process of reconciliation. Does reconciliation have meaning at all to our social conflicts? Or is it important to have a reconciliation in the midst of conflict, if than What kind of reconciliation do we practice?
In fact the recent situation shows us that the feeling of insecurity, indignation, and deep revenge still remain in the mind and the heart of the victims or even the wrongdoers. Despite that they have been reconciled to each other and they seem to live a normal life, we cannot deny that the tragedy and irony of so many conflicts, whether formerly in Ambon, in East Timor, in Afghanistan or now in Iraq, Israel and Palestine, cause reasonable and peace loving people to flee their homes and become refugees, often abandoning their possessions to the looters and the scavengers. In such conflicts, it is not the meek who inherit the land, but the violent. Therefore it is not surprising that in every society, there are some courageous individuals who refuse, even in times of crisis and conflict, to abandon the path of reconciliation through dialogue. The reasons for their rejection of reconciliation in one way could be a result of their experience of dialogue for reconciliation as an inter-religious tea–party where everyone says nice things but avoids difficult issues. But, for other reasons, people refuse to have dialogue because they experience deep pain which eventually draws life itself into a paralyzed world.
Nevertheless reconciliation may not always be possible. As long as the oppressor / the wrongdoer has power over the victims, it may be necessary simply to establish whatever distance is possible in order to prevent further pain. But removal may be only a temporary expedient with an eye to eventual reconciliation, if such be possible.
Thus we have many ways of bringing reconciliation to the conflict situation. If our recent reconciliation practice is not working well, it means that we need to find other ways of dealing with reconciliation. Therefore, through this paper I propose a different approach in dealing with reconciliaiton. This approach might seem very ordinary but it lies more in philosophical thought than in a practical approach. The reason is that sometimes we neglect this approach in dealing with reconciliation, and we tend to emphasize the practical dimensions of reconciliation. And what are those approach to bring up here?
Genuine Dialogue Is A Way Of Reconciliation
People ask today, “How is dialogue possible in today’s social climate? And how can you engage in dialogue with people who are burning your churches, raping your sisters, massacring your villagers and killing your clergy? These questions are actually common, especially for those of us who really are engaged in conflict. It is basically our human spontaneous reaction to conflict. But what are the answers to this question. We presume the simplest answer would be to say, “You don’t”. Just as Paul did not dialogue with the fanatics and the murderers of Ephesus, you don’t dialogue with violent criminals, with people who have given themselves over to hatred,. Dialogue presumes good will and a certain level of openness to others. You don’t dialogue with an angry mob that often has forgotten the cause of its grievance. You try to avoid them as Paul avoided the mob by staying out of the city center in Ephesus.
However in order not to obstruct the dialogue process in times of crisis or conflict, there must be some effort made towards a genuine dialogue. Genuine dialogue here does not just mean conversation between two or more persons with differing views, but rather has as its primary purpose that each participant learn from the other so that he or she can change and grow. Genuine dialogue takes place through encounter and common action among the wrongdoers, the victims, and those of different persuasions leading them to build an enriching relationship. In their interaction they learn not only to understand the other but also to respect and appreciate the “otherness” of the other. This is grounded in two basic facts: firstly, the realization of our existence as a “Homo Socius” who constantly related with other human beings, with all creation and with the creator (God) itself. In this sense, the human being lives always in the context of a self-network: creating mutual relations with others. And secondly, the implication of being human – acceptance of being interconnected. In this case it highlights several dimensions of being interconnected such as trust, mutual acceptance, respect for the convictions and integrity of the other which lead us to safeguard the right of individual to follow the way of life of one’s choice. Thus dialogue calls for great tolerance in promoting friendliness in building bridges of reconciliation. We need to be open and accessible, willing to be challenged and ready for creative transformation in our common human search for fulfillment. As Martin Buber said in his writing about dialogue - genuine dialogue is at once a confirmation of otherness and togetherness. The key to Martin Buber as peacemaker is found in his own conception about dialogue – the meeting with the other person, the other group, the other people which confirms it in its otherness yet does not deny oneself and the ground on which one stands. In other words Martin Buber understood the genuine dialogue embodied in the relational aspect of “person”: person is relation. Furthermore one of the basic elements of Buberian dialogue is that in such an encounter we do not try to manipulate each other or the conversation. Rather there is an openness, a willingness to listen, to learn, to confront the other and to confront issues, and most importantly, to give oneself wholly to the other. In genuine dialogue one is not striving to make an impression, but rather one is always attempting to speak straightforwardly, to share one’s entire being. Empathy, Buber stressed, is not dialogue, for empathy is not confronting the other, it is not a giving of oneself wholly to the other. In dialogue one does not identify with the other, one relates fully to the other.
But in contrast modern man has lost his trust in his existence, writes Buber, and the most acute symptom of it is that a genuine word cannot arise between conflicting camps in the so called Cold War. The reason is that in our time the ancient mistrust between man has become existential. “The human world”, wrote Buber in 1952, “is today, as never before, split into two camps, each of which understands the other as the embodiment of falsehood and itself as the embodiment of the truth”.
This is not to say that modern man who has lost his trust in existence will block the way to build a genuine relationship in dialogue with others especially with those who are in conflict. We can overcome this existential mistrust by the good will of those who come together out of the camps and talk with one another, despite their criticism of the opposing system and their loyalty to their own. In this sense people realize that we human beings can be fully human when we acknowledge and have a sense of openness to the presence of other fellow human beings in our concrete life.
Moreover genuine dialogue can take place in what Naim Stefan Ateek called four basic ingredients or principles for any dialogue such as: (a). Respect, (b). Fairness, Honesty, and fidelity to truth, (c). Sincerity, and (d). Humility. These four principles are important as follows: The First ingredient is Respect, which consists of two dimensions. The first dimension is that the participants must be mature, knowledgeable, have self-respect and integrity. The second dimension is that the participants must also respect the integrity of the other party. This implies obedience to the Golden rule, “In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you” (Mat 7:12). Respect keeps the other party’s interest in mind. It should lead to mutual respect and mutual respect should lead to mutual acceptance of the personhood of the other. Thus respect and acceptance do not rule out one party’s challenging the other, but respect should lead each party to changes its attitude toward the other.
The second ingredient is Fairness, Honesty, and Fidelity to Truth. In times of crisis and conflict, it is important to emphazise the needs for the vicitms and the wrongdoers to confront each other with truth. To tell the truth requires openness, and openness allows them to speak fraknly, yet sensitively. Fidelity to truth also involves addresing the core issues without wasting unnecessary time on the periphery, and with a minimum of wrangling on the questions of format, structure, and shape. Fairness implies a commitment to the demands of security and justice for both people. Meanwhile honesty is a correct assessment of the past. Honesty neither shrinks from, nor becomes obsessed with, the past. It assesses and evaluates, learns and moves ahead. Honesty does not use past injustice to shackle the interlocutor nor does it exploit the past in order to impose unnecessary demands on the other.
The third ingredient is sincerity. Sincerity in dialogue means that the interlocutors move as quickly as possible because they realize that the level of suffering among the common folk, who usually bear the brunt of a conflict, is reduced when a conflict is quickly resolved. At the same time, sincerity means a commitment to details so that no aspects of injustice are left out and no issues relating to the conflict are left unclarified. Everything is done in order to prevent the germination of any new seeds of enmity between the parties.
And finally Humility is one of the most essential ingredients in dialogue and negotiation, and genuine dialogue cannot exist without humility. It ensures that the interlocutors approach each other with openness to the different possibilities that will present themselves along the way. In fact one cannot approach dialogue with the feeling of arrogance or superiority over the other, a sense of a higher morality or even a feeling of self-sufficiency. That kind of arrogance or superiority has no place where genuine dialogue is pursued and where people are working toward reaching a peaceful settlement between enemies.
What I have mentioned above are essential if genuine dialogue is to succeed. By realizing these aspects, we create a new space and good atmospher for genuine dialogue - inherently a genuine dialogue itself can produce a true reconciliation. Hence genuine dialogue is a bridge to true reconciliation. It is a bridge to fulfill the needs of the victims and the wrongdoers and at the same time to be open to new input from the diversity of otherness.
Promote the Culture of Peace
When we encounter conflicts in our lives we spontaniously recite this prayer “ Dona Nobis Pacem”:Give Us Peace. Certainly this prayer has great influence for us who live in an age of compounded crises, an age of fear and terrorist attack and the constant threat of total annihilation by the weapons that we ourselves have perfected. It is an age more and more bereft of authentic human existence, and even the image of such existence increasingly deserts us.
In the midst of these kinds of situations, peace has become a powerful symbol for our times and it is obvious that peace is naturally a human desire: we need to live life in an harmonious and peacfull way. But we know well that there can be no peace or peace cannot be restored in a world ravaged by violence without involvement from all the significant sectors of society both civil and government. In short, all clans must be involved in bringing about the culture of peace.
However when we are thinking in terms of a peace culture, many other elements come into play as well. It helps to think of the peace culture as a mosaic, made up of varied ingredients: historical memories of peacefulness, compassion, forgiveness, and the inward disciplines of reflection and prayer; the way families care for one another and nurture the next generation; economic behaviour that deals carefully with the earth’s resources and is oriented towards human need and human sharing; forms of governance that ensure justice for all; and means of dealing with conflicts, differences, strangers – with those who are “other” – in a problem-solving, reconciling manner.
This peace culture as a mosaic occurs at various levels of our lives and it is rooted in every human action. However religion or other social forces play a crucial role in building the culture of peace. This role always begins locally in the setting in which members of faith or of society find themselves. The presence of the church, temple, mosque, synagogue or other places of worship is in a profound sense a zone of peace, a special type of space dedicated to the embodiment of a culture of peace in human togetherness. Developing deeper awareness of this aspect of peace building is important for every local place of worship. We can see this from the witnesses of the life of Jesus who taught his followers that “ an eye for an eye” only makes the whole world blind and brings humanity to the brink of self-destruction. We have to against violence with nonviolence: nonviolence maintains that violence only leads to further violence, that violence never ever solves anything. In fact this greatly inspired Mahatma Gandhi to actualize the word of Jesus in the Indian context. He popularized the term nonviolence, taking it from the Sanskrit word ahimsa (non-harm) to express the peaceful, loving means of proclaiming the truth. Likewise Martin Luther King, Jr., declared the night before he was assassinated. “It is nonviolence or nonexistence”. Gospel nonviolence offers us the only way out of the global catastrophe of violence. These three greatest figures of all time understood nonviolence as way of active peacemaking that both resists evil without doing evil and insists on truth and justice through love. From Jesus – Gandhi to King and the movement of peaceful transformation around the world, nonviolence refers to active peacemaking and persistent reconciliation.
Beside the influence of the power of religion in building a peace culture, the individual initiative is profoundly important. It can start from our daily attitude or our way of thinking about the other person. Having positive thoughts in the mind and in the heart about the other person and putting aside all the prejudices is one dimension in creating and maintaining the peace culture in our society. After thinking positively of others, people are able to go to the further dimension of forgiveness. But forgiveness will not occur if each one has no concern for the life of other people. Nourishing selfishness, or the inner ego, or putting self-interest before the relationship to other people, endangers the support of a culture of peace. Forgiveness can take place if we put aside these motivations above, because forgiveness means going beyond our ego. It is therefore linked to what I have already mentioned in regard to genuine dialogue which is the “self-realization” of our existence as Homo socius who is always in relationship. In other words, this stage in the art of forgiveness by internalizing the values of being human we enhance the culture of peace.
Animate the Network of Initiative
Globalization, as we know, is a recent phenomenon in the economic history of humanity, even though its roots are to be found in the distant past when trade and commerce moved out of one territory to another, transcending the natural barriers of sea and mountains. But globalization is not merely an economical phenomenon, it is widely spread in various level of our lives. Globalization extends the effect of modernity throughout the entire world via the communication technologies that create the information network. This communication revolution of the second half of the twentieth century has reshaped how we perceive time and space. The communication technologies make possible a networking that increasingly eludes hierarchical control: network has replaced hierarchy as a social model for communication. Travel possibilities allow for the movement of peoples in such a way as to reconfigure societies, allowing for migrations on a massive scale. These are creating societies where cultures come into contact with each other and result both in conflict and in new possibilities.
Mirroring this reality, we may say that new high-technology communications in this - 21 century offer us much opportunity to be creative in building a culture of peace in society. We use them as tools to maintain the peace process. Hence in high-tech communication the term “web” is always a starting point in understanding the world. However in the light of high-tech communication, there are some possibilities which can sustain the peace through creating a network and cooperating with other groups in society. We expand our network by sharing the news, visions, or other things that support the process of reconciliation. A number of groups in society such as church can join hands with other christian communities or other religions within a country as well as in other parts of the world for the sake of peace. The various initiatives in the recent past, for instance the peace efforts of Muslim and Christian in Ambon, providing a peace road map for Israel-Palestine in Middle East, etc- these are a few examples which show how a local and international community can tap the support of others to tackle the problem of violence.
Certainly only such a network of initiative at micro level could bring lasting peace for a country as well as for the global community. The remedy for the culture of death and cuthroat competition due to economic globalization lies in the globalization of humanitarian initiatives for peace, cultivating a “civilization of love”. And Pope John Paul II is greatly concerned about this. He pointed out that the “Remedy for the escalation of violence due to economic globalization is the “globalization of solidarity”. It is time for people now to join hands tightly to eliminate dehumanizing actions that are rampant in our lives. And yet reflected in humanitarian works there is a glimmer of hope from the peacemaker or the number of groups in society who are already in a civilization of love. They give new possibilities to the world, so that there is always a way to find peace. The important thing here is the initiative of many individuals, who dare to stand apart and explore new ways for peace. We would initiate a lasting transformation at local as well as at global level.
In sum, our efforts to revitalize reconciliation in horizontal conflict which is supported by genuine dialogue, a culture of peace, and the animation of the network initiative, can enhance the value of life. It is an endless effort of going deep down to the real reconciliation that enables us to boldly assert that true reconciliation appears to us only when we dare to separate the self from the mask: the mask of hatred, the mask of arrogance, the mask of hyprocracy etc., leading towards the real self – the real identity of me, of you, and of all us in this globe. Indeed this real self ensures that we are connected with the otherness of the other. As Martin Buber, has pointed out again and again, genuine reconciliation which begins with a fully realistic recognition of real differences and points of conflict, and then moves to the task of discovering the viewpoint from which some real meeting may take place which includes both perspectives.
Moreover this world of ours calls for coordinated action based on commonly recognized values. Moral commitment has become simply unavoidable. It should not be only individual but also communal. There is a vast common ground on which we can make common reconciliation decisions. Reconciliation is not only matter of healing memories and receiving forgiveness, it is also about changing the structures in the society that provoked, promoted, and sustained violence. The situation of the world demands a common responsibility of all religious. Christianity or Islam for example with its “cosmological faith” has, as we shall see, some specific insights to offer in this respect.
An encouraging fact in our present situation is the growing awareness of many people that religious identity must be closely related to the common human experience of suffering. This applies also to the unbeliever. The great and noble aspiration of our time-whether we believe in God or not, whether are Christian, Buddhist, Hindu or Muslim – is to build a more human world for all its inhabitants. Because conflict exists without compromising the human situation. It is unavoidable and sometimes surprising or shocking for us to the other side of our lives. (Sebastian)
Reference:
Dialogue: Resource Manual For Chatolics In Asia (FABC), Bangkok, FABC-OEIA, 2001.
Walter Wink (Editor), Peace Is The Way: Writing On Nonviolence From The fellowship Of Reconciliation, New York, Orbis Books.
Hain Gordon & Rivca Gordon (Edit), Israel/Palestine: The Quest For Dialogue, Maryknol, New York, Orbis Books.
Robert Herr & Judy Zimmerman Herr (Edit), Transforming Violence: Linking Local & Global Peacemaking, U.S., A Pandora Press U. S. Book & Herald Press, 1998.
Robert J. Schreiter, The New Catholicity; Theology between the Global and the Local, Maryknoll-New York, Orbis Books, 1997.
Felix Wilfred (Edit), Minority Rights In The Age of Globalization, Jeevadhara (A Journal of Socio-Religious Research), Vol. XXXIV NO. 199, Kerla, India, 2004.
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