Peace, Conflict, Mother & Sister

My sister has some good skills! She was explaining to me today her resolution to my mother and its brilliant. She applied her studies in peace and conflict to the situation and here I re-generalise with wording of this blog.

Conflict arises when we find ourselves being put in a box. Our normal response is to try and escape the box and there is a conflict.

What is really happening is that we are being put in the box that our opponent already lives in. Instead of escaping ourselves we need to understand that actually we are outside the box and help them outside by giving them what they need.

The solution to conflict is not just patience and sacrifice, but most importantly generosity. Unresolvable conflicts then occur when two people are in the same box so that no-one is outside. They then can't bring themselves to give what the other person wants because it is exactly what they are demanding of the other person. They need an external mediator to help them out of their boxes. Or they can listen to all the religious teachings and be generous which ever works for them.

Specifically my mother: the box that she lives in according to my sister is that she thinks she is a bad person. This has been reinforced by my grand parents and my father. But he also thought the same thing of himself so they were never able to help each other.

As a result of this world construction she is always trying to confirm her goodness. Part of this is trying too hard to be a good mother. Thus she tries to get too involved in my sister's and my life to ensure that it all goes well. Instinctively her fear of being a bad person becomes her fear for us, so she tries to worry us with pictures of our failure and badness if we don't do what she says.

Naturally all this control and forcing us into a box leads to a conflict where in variably everyone says that everyone is shit and it reinforces her belief that she is a bad person.

The correct response then is not to justify ourselves, fight for control ourselves, or criticise her for always interfering and being negative (as we do) but instead to be generous and give her the positive affirmation she is really looking for.

My sister has tried this and says that it brings at least 24hours of peace each time it is used! And it also gives my mother a picture of life outside the box where she is constructed as a bad person.

Of course writing this I realise that the real box is the dialectic between being good/bad and craving positive affirmation is just a response to fearing negative dissention. However it is a step in the right direction and expecting anyone to transcend the framework of a whole dialectic in one lifetime is virtually impossible.

Good work sis. Am heading home tomorrow to see if this works. Maybe I can use it with capitalists, fascists and bosses also ;-)

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Apply that to the Israeli/Palestine conflict. The Israeli box is fear that they will experience another holocaust. As a result they seek to escape this box by reducing all possible sources of fear into a greater sense of fear. The Palestinians finding themselves in the box of fear obviously try to escape the box by in turn trying to reduce the Israelis into a state of fear... which only escalates the problem. I began the cycle with the Israelis because as far as I know before the creation of Israel and the preceding empire there was not internal struggle in the region (but I am probably wrong - but it doesn't matter where one starts the cycle, point is it starts). So the way out is sacrifice and unilateral generosity of one side to shoulder the fear and help the other side out of fear. Maybe it is the job of the Arabs in general to assure the Israelis that there will not be another holocaust - that would defuse tensions entirely. It is understandably why the Arabs are fearful however faced with such an incredibly powerful and hostile neighbour, allied with hostile and invasive foreign powers all packing the nuclear bomb. Hardly the sort of neighbour who will make you feel safe. Given this maybe it is the job of the Israelis to initiate the sacrifice and show the Arabs that they mean no harm. But in parallel the Israelis only have this immense power because they have a U.S. sized inferiority complex in the region and feel they have to display super-size muscle to reach parity. Neither group either follows a leader who teaches Peace or Wisdom so the chances they will find the secret map to peace is extremely slim. Main point is that without finding that secret map and initiating the unilateral actions it illustrates they have only themselves to blame for their own sufferings. The worst and most tragic thing about conflict is that we always blame the other person for starting the war and never ourselves for not taking the path to peace.