ROM 2007
I am reporting from the ROM 2007 Leadership Development & Peace Gathering in Fuzine, Croatia. The most significant thing that I heard said today came from Todd Becker, Ambassador of OSCE to Croatia. Actually it was first said by one of our mutual friends from Sudan, during a conversation with Todd at the Institute for Sustainable Peace’s Leadership Development Workshop in Colorado. Todd asked her for an African perspective on Radical Forgiveness as a means of ending cycles of violence and intractable conflict. Our friend from Sudan said that radical forgiveness is a vital step toward “making whole that which has been rendered asunder.” What caught my attention was the premise inherent in her statement.
That premise makes vivid a fundamental difference between our western materialistic point of view and the worldview of Africans (at least as reported by our friend). The premise inherent in her statement is that all human beings are interconnected. In her view of the world, we form a whole that destructive conflict has torn asunder. Do you see the fundamental difference?
In our western materialism we start from the premise that we are all separate individuals for whom there is no “whole” to be restored post-conflict. This is huge! Somewhere along the way we have lost all conception of our interconnectedness. What are some of the consequences?
Two consequences immediately come to mind. One result of our inability to sense our connectedness is that we see destructive conflict as inevitable and even desirable. If one cannot see his connectedness to another person, whether that person is across the street, on the other side of the city or the other side of the world, it is all to easy to see that person as alien and therefore a threat. We are primed for manipulation by “the powers that be” who often have much to gain from our seeing that person as a less than human enemy to be dominated, vanquished, and even annihilated. As we succumb to that manipulation, we are interlocked with our enemies in a perverse communion of mutual distrust, hate, oppression, victimization and counter-victimization. Our connectedness cannot be broken; it can only be distorted, corrupted, and perverted. Yet there is a remedy. Jesus said that we should love our enemies and seek to do good to them.
Another result of our inability to see our connectedness is that we just do not get that the systems of which we so often complain are not “out there” existing apart from us and impacting our lives from the outside. My African friend’s worldview enables her to understand more easily than I that we are the system and that if the system is to be changed it must begin within me. As Gandhi once said, we must be the change we seek. Or as Jesus once said, we must first get the plank out of our own eye before attempting to pick out the speck in the eye of another. If I want to change the system, I must start inside myself.
Here at ROM 2007 we are working to correct our misapprehensions about our connection to one another. We are affirming our connectedness and working to build sustainable peace by first working to change our own outdated “maps” for navigating relationships. We are creating a safe space where deep transformation can occur, both individually and collectively. We are co-sensing and co-creating a future of sustainable peace.
That premise makes vivid a fundamental difference between our western materialistic point of view and the worldview of Africans (at least as reported by our friend). The premise inherent in her statement is that all human beings are interconnected. In her view of the world, we form a whole that destructive conflict has torn asunder. Do you see the fundamental difference?
In our western materialism we start from the premise that we are all separate individuals for whom there is no “whole” to be restored post-conflict. This is huge! Somewhere along the way we have lost all conception of our interconnectedness. What are some of the consequences?
Two consequences immediately come to mind. One result of our inability to sense our connectedness is that we see destructive conflict as inevitable and even desirable. If one cannot see his connectedness to another person, whether that person is across the street, on the other side of the city or the other side of the world, it is all to easy to see that person as alien and therefore a threat. We are primed for manipulation by “the powers that be” who often have much to gain from our seeing that person as a less than human enemy to be dominated, vanquished, and even annihilated. As we succumb to that manipulation, we are interlocked with our enemies in a perverse communion of mutual distrust, hate, oppression, victimization and counter-victimization. Our connectedness cannot be broken; it can only be distorted, corrupted, and perverted. Yet there is a remedy. Jesus said that we should love our enemies and seek to do good to them.
Another result of our inability to see our connectedness is that we just do not get that the systems of which we so often complain are not “out there” existing apart from us and impacting our lives from the outside. My African friend’s worldview enables her to understand more easily than I that we are the system and that if the system is to be changed it must begin within me. As Gandhi once said, we must be the change we seek. Or as Jesus once said, we must first get the plank out of our own eye before attempting to pick out the speck in the eye of another. If I want to change the system, I must start inside myself.
Here at ROM 2007 we are working to correct our misapprehensions about our connection to one another. We are affirming our connectedness and working to build sustainable peace by first working to change our own outdated “maps” for navigating relationships. We are creating a safe space where deep transformation can occur, both individually and collectively. We are co-sensing and co-creating a future of sustainable peace.
posted by Randall E. Butler at 11:27 AM
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