…8/15/06 update on the ROM Peace Project.
...through a glass, darkly...
Since my last blog I have been considering what happened on Wednesday night of the second week and trying to understand it in the context of community building. The late Scott Peck, in his highly instructive book on community building titled The Different Drum, describes a pathway to community that all groups must travel. Peck believed that all groups start out in Pseudo-community. This is where everyone tries to abide by the rules of the group and act “nicey-nicey.”
Think of going to church on Sunday morning and being greeted with “Hi! So good to see you. How are you?” Knowing that the interrogator is not looking for an authentic description of the precarious state of your finances, your anguish over your teenager’s latest walk on the wild side, or the fight you just had with your wife on the way into the church parking lot, you quickly respond, “We’re just fine. So good to see you too. How are you?” And of course we know we will get the obligatory “Oh everything is good.” That is unless we are drawn an encounter with that rare person for whom everything really is great and we then get to hear about how Suzie just got into Harvard, son John just returned from serving the poor in the jungles of Africa and has been nominated for the Nobel Prize, and my husband just got a big promotion. Following which one walks away with a big smile on one’s face while secretly seething over the daily injustice of life. But I digress. I was discussing Peck’s concept of pseudo-community where most groups remain as long as possible for fear of real engagement and the inevitable conflict that follows. I believe that Peck understood us all too well.
And ROM is no exception. For the first few days everyone is extremely polite. We are all trying our best to be culturally sensitive. After all, this is a peace project! We each want to demonstrate our respect for diversity and our tolerance of individual differences however secretly irritating. Some, of course, choose the safest approach and are very quiet for the first day.
This rule following and politeness begins to erode on day 2 when we join with the other members of our newly assigned groups in trying to solve the puzzles and problems at the Adventure Academy. There is nothing like a little physical hardship and the necessity of pulling together to overcome an obstacle to bring the best and the worst out in people. But the worst that usually happens is the unmasking of the extroverts, the know-it-alls, and the self-perceived leaders. Even then the rest of the group is tolerant. Others may be eager to voice their own input, sometimes talking at the same time. But everyone is still very polite.
Peck described the next phase of community formation as Chaos. William Isaacs, in his book Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together, calls this phase Breakdown. This is the phase where we begin to more fully recognize that despite our common commitment to finding peace, we are NOT THE SAME. We really do have differences – of opinion, of perspective, of culture, of ideas – you name it. In all groups this creates tension and anxiety. In the Balkans such differences have in the past been deadly.
Yet Peck and Isaacs and others who have researched these processes all agree that for real community to be built, we must go through Chaos. The risk of course is that it will be too much for us. Tempers may flair. Angry words may be spoken. And some may not be able to handle the inevitable tension. Some leave the group, if not physically then emotionally. Some groups retreat back into pseudo-community, scared to death of the conflict and the accompanying pain. But some groups, particularly those that have learned conflict resolution skills and principles and practices of generative dialogue, are able to push through the chaos to a space of reflective inquiry and real community.
One of the reasons I both fear and eagerly anticipate the second week of ROM is that I know at some point the group will move into Chaos. During this crucial second week we speak the truth about what really happened in the Balkans. We openly confront and wrestle with the suffering of the innocent, and the atrocities committed by those who have the power to act out their basest instincts. We learn that no ethnic or national group has clean hands; all committed war crimes.
I fear that week because there is always the possibility that the members of the group will either begin fighting and turn their backs on the peacemaking process or that they will just give up on the hard work of community building and retreat into pseudo-community. At the same time, I am eager for the week because I know from prior years that if we work through the chaos, we will emerge, on the other side of the pain, into real caring and authentic community.
Each year, during the second week, it is the role reversal exercise that brings us to a necessary crisis of emptiness that is the gateway to real community. There is something about putting yourself in the place of a victim from the opposing group that strips away all of the stereotypes and mental models or images that feed the deep seated fears that impel us to strike out at those that we see as different and foreign to our definition of human. We are able to see the sufferers not as enemies but as fellow human beings whose pain we cannot help but feel. In that moment, we begin to empty ourselves of our preconceived notions, of our certainty that we already know all we need, of our need to dictate, dominate and control.
Last Wednesday night in that crisis of emptiness we found the pathway to real community. We came face to face with the evil and bent to destruction that lurks in the darkest recesses of every human heart. We wrestled with our differences and yet we emerged with our newly formed friendships not only intact but also strengthened by the experience. And once again we proved Scott Peck right. The pathway to real community runs through chaos.
Thanks for staying with me through these ruminations about seeing the world through the eyes of the other. Next time I will tell you about an utterly remarkable two hours with three genuine heroes who played key roles in preventing ethnic violence in their region at the same time that hell literally broke loose in the rest of the Balkans.
Since my last blog I have been considering what happened on Wednesday night of the second week and trying to understand it in the context of community building. The late Scott Peck, in his highly instructive book on community building titled The Different Drum, describes a pathway to community that all groups must travel. Peck believed that all groups start out in Pseudo-community. This is where everyone tries to abide by the rules of the group and act “nicey-nicey.”
Think of going to church on Sunday morning and being greeted with “Hi! So good to see you. How are you?” Knowing that the interrogator is not looking for an authentic description of the precarious state of your finances, your anguish over your teenager’s latest walk on the wild side, or the fight you just had with your wife on the way into the church parking lot, you quickly respond, “We’re just fine. So good to see you too. How are you?” And of course we know we will get the obligatory “Oh everything is good.” That is unless we are drawn an encounter with that rare person for whom everything really is great and we then get to hear about how Suzie just got into Harvard, son John just returned from serving the poor in the jungles of Africa and has been nominated for the Nobel Prize, and my husband just got a big promotion. Following which one walks away with a big smile on one’s face while secretly seething over the daily injustice of life. But I digress. I was discussing Peck’s concept of pseudo-community where most groups remain as long as possible for fear of real engagement and the inevitable conflict that follows. I believe that Peck understood us all too well.
And ROM is no exception. For the first few days everyone is extremely polite. We are all trying our best to be culturally sensitive. After all, this is a peace project! We each want to demonstrate our respect for diversity and our tolerance of individual differences however secretly irritating. Some, of course, choose the safest approach and are very quiet for the first day.
This rule following and politeness begins to erode on day 2 when we join with the other members of our newly assigned groups in trying to solve the puzzles and problems at the Adventure Academy. There is nothing like a little physical hardship and the necessity of pulling together to overcome an obstacle to bring the best and the worst out in people. But the worst that usually happens is the unmasking of the extroverts, the know-it-alls, and the self-perceived leaders. Even then the rest of the group is tolerant. Others may be eager to voice their own input, sometimes talking at the same time. But everyone is still very polite.
Peck described the next phase of community formation as Chaos. William Isaacs, in his book Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together, calls this phase Breakdown. This is the phase where we begin to more fully recognize that despite our common commitment to finding peace, we are NOT THE SAME. We really do have differences – of opinion, of perspective, of culture, of ideas – you name it. In all groups this creates tension and anxiety. In the Balkans such differences have in the past been deadly.
Yet Peck and Isaacs and others who have researched these processes all agree that for real community to be built, we must go through Chaos. The risk of course is that it will be too much for us. Tempers may flair. Angry words may be spoken. And some may not be able to handle the inevitable tension. Some leave the group, if not physically then emotionally. Some groups retreat back into pseudo-community, scared to death of the conflict and the accompanying pain. But some groups, particularly those that have learned conflict resolution skills and principles and practices of generative dialogue, are able to push through the chaos to a space of reflective inquiry and real community.
One of the reasons I both fear and eagerly anticipate the second week of ROM is that I know at some point the group will move into Chaos. During this crucial second week we speak the truth about what really happened in the Balkans. We openly confront and wrestle with the suffering of the innocent, and the atrocities committed by those who have the power to act out their basest instincts. We learn that no ethnic or national group has clean hands; all committed war crimes.
I fear that week because there is always the possibility that the members of the group will either begin fighting and turn their backs on the peacemaking process or that they will just give up on the hard work of community building and retreat into pseudo-community. At the same time, I am eager for the week because I know from prior years that if we work through the chaos, we will emerge, on the other side of the pain, into real caring and authentic community.
Each year, during the second week, it is the role reversal exercise that brings us to a necessary crisis of emptiness that is the gateway to real community. There is something about putting yourself in the place of a victim from the opposing group that strips away all of the stereotypes and mental models or images that feed the deep seated fears that impel us to strike out at those that we see as different and foreign to our definition of human. We are able to see the sufferers not as enemies but as fellow human beings whose pain we cannot help but feel. In that moment, we begin to empty ourselves of our preconceived notions, of our certainty that we already know all we need, of our need to dictate, dominate and control.
Last Wednesday night in that crisis of emptiness we found the pathway to real community. We came face to face with the evil and bent to destruction that lurks in the darkest recesses of every human heart. We wrestled with our differences and yet we emerged with our newly formed friendships not only intact but also strengthened by the experience. And once again we proved Scott Peck right. The pathway to real community runs through chaos.
Thanks for staying with me through these ruminations about seeing the world through the eyes of the other. Next time I will tell you about an utterly remarkable two hours with three genuine heroes who played key roles in preventing ethnic violence in their region at the same time that hell literally broke loose in the rest of the Balkans.
posted by Randall E. Butler at 7:14 PM
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