I awoke at 3:30am the other day - one of those sudden awakening when you can’t go back to sleep so I decided to go online. Checking the headlines, I saw that the Israeli's were continuing to destroy the entire country of Lebanon, continuing the distraction from the burgeoning civil war in Iraq. The North and South Koreans were shooting at each other. The Iranians were refusing to comply with UN regulations. Mexico City was engulfed in riots and the Ukrainians were considering dissolving their parliament.
This old Kingston Trio tune kept running through my brain.
The Merry Minuet by The Kingston Trio
They're rioting in Africa,
They're starving in Spain.
There's hurricanes in Florida,
And Texas needs rain.
The whole world is festering
With unhappy souls.
The French hate the Germans,
The Germans hate the Poles,
Italians hate Yugoslavs,
South Africans hate the Dutch,
And I don't like anybody very much!
But we can be tranquil
And "thankfill" and proud,
For man's been endowed
With a mushroom-shaped cloud.
And we know for certain
That some lovely day
Someone will set the spark off,
And we will all be blown away!
They're rioting in Africa,
There's strife in Iran.
What nature doesn't do to us
Will be done by our fellow man.
A few days later I came across an article published in the NY Times by Dr. Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard University professor of psychology. The article, called He Who Cast the First Stone, Probably Didn’t, describes research conducted on “tit for tat” acts of retaliation and vengeance, and concludes that regardless of the truth, we humans seem to see their own attacks on others as just, while consistently holding others to account for harming us.
“Research teaches us that our reasons and our pains are more palpable, more obvious and real, than are the reasons and pains of others. This leads to the escalation of mutual harm, to the illusion that others are solely responsible for it and to the belief that our actions are justifiable responses to theirs.“
Coincidentally I recently finished reading Dialogue by David Bohm. Bohm was a physicist and protégé in physics to Albert Einstein. Bohm’s idea of dialogue was quite specific. In Bohm’s world dialogue circles consisted of 20-40 people sitting together for the sole purpose of talking. The only purpose of a dialogue was to:
- Listen
- Suspend judgment
- Control your own impulses
To do this successfully, one must practice:
- Deep listening and acceptance
- Noticing when you are triggered (positive or negatively) by a comment
- Reflecting and checking the assumptions you make of the internal meaning of what you hear
In other words, to learn what others feel and think and to learn about our own internal emotional guidance systems and the power they have to compel us to think and act in a particular way. Dialogue circles are not convened for the purpose of drawing conclusions or creating plans. There sole purpose is learning.
I’ve participated in dialog circles and at first most people find them frustrating and there is fair amount of chaos and discomfort as we find our place in a conversation that is simply about learning. But if you stick with it, the result is surprisingly, trust and compassion. Rather than advocating for a point of view, participants naturally begin to learn from each other, discover their common ground and engage in creative new ways of thinking and being together.
It made we wonder… what would happen if we put the powers that decide to send our children into harms way for the sake of vengeance or national security into a room together and kept them there until they figured out how to be in a dialogue circle.
Is it possible that eventually, they could actually talk themselves into peace?
For the full text of Gilbert’s article, see: http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~dtg/gilbert.htm
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