Conflict notes for Friday’s talk
May 25, 2008 by jeffrkeithEncountering Conflict
1. Conflict tests us in some way, by which I mean that it demands something of us. There are some revelations about who we are, and also about what life can be. That can shake you – it is perhaps synonymous with emerging from innocence.
What is the nature of conflict? When we look at conflicts such as wars, whether they are international or civil, full-scale long-term simmering struggles such as those between Palestine and Israel or the unrest in Fiji or Irian Jaya, it is hard to categorise them efficiently. One way might be to draw a distinction between those struggles that erupt between groups, those between individuals, and those within individuals.
Between ideologies, between countries – such clashes still involve people, and the people must have some reason for being involved; perhaps, for example, it is simply because they identify with a group, or because some ideal matters to them, or they feel their personal morality is involved, or they feel they (or those they care about) are threatened, or they have something to gain. There is, therefore, a degree to which all these conflicts come back to the individual.
There might be some interesting elements in this if we take the war dealt with in The Line. If we found it hard to discover or say much about the war, that’s hardly surprising. It’s not a war book in the way that All Quiet at the Western Front and Generals Die in Bed are. Either of those would make an interesting contrast if you’re looking for a leisure read. The Line deals more with the impact on prisoners. There is surprisingly little detail or graphic description of the ‘bashing’, nor the paucity of food. Disease and physical deprivation emerge as big issues. Clearly there is a disregard for the prisoners by most Japanese guards, but the great struggles seem to be internal. It is about how they cope, how they endure. Something to hope for seems important – and so leaders emerge as significant. Personal qualities emerge as important – leaders, those who will sacrifice for others, and who are humble (such as Ray Parkin who thought he was the barnacle on the bottom of the battleship, while others thought he was the battleship) are admired. But they are not unscarred.
The scarring may be something you learn about yourself and have to live with, it may be a compromise of your morality that makes it hard to live with yourself, or it may just be an awareness of the darkness life can offer up – imagine being through the Port Arthur shootings, or the Columbine shootings. How could you be the same, ever? How could you shake the kind of fear that Martin saw in Arch’s eyes when he took him by surprise in the yard? Look Both Ways enters the same territory. Draw on that for ideas if you wish – the world is full of them. Anything that gives you a manageable frame of reference is good.
In passing, the opposite is harmony, which requires everyone to be able to get along. Surely, as an eternal condition this is hard to imagine. Surely, there will be some occasions when we are irritated, jealous, or hurt by someone else’s insensitivity or ignorance or simple unawareness of how we are feeling. There must be times that if we get what we want (or even need) the desires and comforts of others will be compromised. John Donne famously wrote “ no man is an island”, and in the sense he meant, that we are all touched by the fate of others, this is supportable – but in another way we are all foreign countries to each other. Martin Flanagan writes that it is impossible to understand what the prisoners on the line went through if you weren’t there. To a significant extent, we can none of us really get into another’s skin and really know what it is like to be them – and so, if we mix with others for log enough, we will clash. And if we don’t, we’ll probably worry about being loners, even “loner[s] who [like] people”.
How you deal with conflict, then, becomes the big issue, and this can be linked to personal qualities, to past experiences and learned responses.
It is different if you have the power or not. If you are a victim, oppressed, then all you can do is work within yourself – to refuse to be false to yourself. That then is the victory. Does there need to be victories? Can there be draws? If you have the power, the challenge can be even greater, if you are evolved morally. The more morally sophisticated you are, the more complicated things can be. In essence, one way of looking could be to say there is a difference between those conflicts which make you aware of an ugly side of life, that destroy your innocence. The challenge can then be to go on, to find a positive direction to head in – perhaps like a family to protect from what you have seen or been through, or a cause to ensure fewer people suffer as you do – consider Walter Micak, originator of the Lana and Madeline Foundation. There are others that leave you physically or financially or otherwise reduced. Then, the challenge is still to continue – to persist in the face of adversity. There are those that see you contravene your values, that change your sense of self, or your ability to rest comfortably with yourself. There might be the challenge of decency in triumph. There might be the triumph of finding more in yourself than you thought existed. All of these are internal in some way. In the end, the consequences of conflict for individuals contain some element of the personal and must be dealt with on personal levels.
Mugabe v Gandhi
jeffrkeith