Foundations 8 Learning Together in Our Differences

Learning Together in Our Differences

Reconstructive Education: Building Shared Learning Communities

Reconciliation is a peacebuilding practice rooted in learning and working together. We build a wider shared learning community where we can be open and to which all can contribute. In a learning community we can distil and sharpen often hard won insights about how to bring peace back into our own lives, our relationships, and the institutions and organisations in which we engage. Let us look at how peace can be built by and through shared learning communitiesxxiv. Peacebuilding is a practical human activity for each of us. Peacebuildingxxiv is an activity in relationship building that focusses on finding and living in ‘right and respectful relationships’ with both those we know personally and those from whom we are at a distance. We build peace when we experience and sustain diverse trusting relationship cultures in our families, schools, colleges, work groups, friendship groups and in our civil society engagements. Structures support peace when group members reach agreement to share and live out some explicit values or agreed guidelines and rules for fair treatment. We can all return to these when our relationships become confused, restoring the peace between us as fellow citizens. We build peace restoratively when we bring new energy and vision to established but tired ways of being together. We do this when we also establish new relationships and structures that have a future orientation and are more inclusive than what has been beforexxv. There would be less need for peacebuilding after conflicts, if there were more upstream peacebuilding practices informing our daily life together, the relationships between different groups in our societies, and the state of relationships between different countries. Peacebuilding requires honesty as to whether and how we give each other a place in the groups and organisations to which we belong. Our task is to ensure that relationships and structures include all of us and honour each of us as we nurture our mutual interdependence. Reconciliation requires us to take risks in good faith, often not knowing that what we are doing will work. Reconciliation is a learning discipline, not a problem solving discipline! Reconciliation is a risky business. It asks us to relationally and structurally move beyond our experiences of deep mistrust, fear, misunderstandings, massive invasions of our individual rights, and even the strongest enmity and most violent pain. Reconciliation is the acknowledgement of these experiences, and the choice to move on from them, even if they sometimes cannot be fully put right at that moment. As demonstrated on the world stage by people like Nelson Mandelaxxx, Martin Luther King Jr, Vaclav Havel, Bell Hooks, Malala Yousafzai, Toni Morrison and many others, reconciliation is surprising, unexpected, and is sometimes expressed in unexpected actions and words. At the individual level, it is no less surprising and unexpected. Breaking the force of sectarian choices could rarely be done on a grand scale…it was more often a question of finding an opportunity to reinsert sanity into the midst of chaos..George Mc Mullan of Railway Street, Sandy Row, Belfast… had no resource to turn the tide except his own conviction as he stood in his doorway facing a mob of his own people and protecting his Catholic neighbours. There were probably many like him who were never remembered. ”xxxi Many unsung heroes in every society, such as victims of violence, have sought to restore relationships with those oppressing them. They have chosen to forego revenge and retaliation for a possible future together. Reconciliation is also experienced when former violent actors genuinely commit to healing and finding non-violent ways forward together. Reconciliation is about acknowledging that no matter what our experience is, our hope is in re-establishing relationships with one another. It expresses our hope in finding ways forward together. Actions of reconciliation are needed especially in a world of growing interdependence and diversity. Peacebuilding and reconciliation are tasks for all: citizens and politicians, as well as public and civic organisations. In the wake of two world wars, the world was increasingly framed by international treaties, rules, and agreements. International and multi- national agencies rapidly followed, the first of which was the United Nations in 1945, as post-war nations strove for institutional peacebuilding. Our world of today is a world in motion. We have an extensive history of further wars, ethnic cleansing, racial inequity, displaced people and refugee movements, and many poor societies being asked to look after the bulk of refugees on their borders. We also have the new challenges to order in Eastern Europe. Once again, peacebuilding and reconciliation are required to be in the essence of our daily life together. Nurturing hope is now understood to be a central task for each one of us and the relationships and organisations to which we belong, as well as for politicians, diplomats and international mediators. If creating inclusive community is accepted as a central task for public and civic institutions, then their cultures would be characterised by openness, trust, and sensitivity. Such institutions would face into escalating tensions early, affirming our ability to resolve conflict in humane ways. Peacebuilding and reconciliation are relational, structural and restorative tasks.

When citizens, families, civic, sporting, cultural, faith, and artistic organisations prioritise the modelling of more open and trusting relationships, peacebuilding and reconciliation are de-mystified. Each one of us can contribute to securing a wider peaceful reconciling culture, wherever we live and work. What peaceful actions we do together today are made possible by past relationships in which we have experienced freedom and hope. In such ways we contribute to promoting future trust between different people. Peace is a break in the escalating rivalry between us. It is the experience of deep reconciliation that comes when we stop rivalling and fighting or because it has been stopped by somebody else in our midst. When we take responsibility for doing wrong or harming an other, we practice reconciliation. “Nurturing Hope” is about reconnecting ourselves with experiences of freedom in our lives. When we choose to end rivalry, we experience and nurture hope. The materials encourage each one of us to constructively build relationships and structures through which we, and those we are with, live hope-filled lives. They are intended to support us as we:

• explore our own story.

• value ourselves and others in positive relationships, devoid of rivalry.

• better understand the dynamics around conflict which have the power to destroy lives.

• better understand how such conflictual dynamics enable us to hide or deny the violence accompanying such actions. The “Nurturing Hope” resources support us exercising our freedom to choose to live in ways that do not involve scapegoating others.

Unmasking Scapegoating and the Generation of Sacred Values and Beliefs

We scapegoat others because we are unable to acknowledge and carry our own responsibilities. In the evolving chaos of our lives, we sometimes are driven to identify those weaker than us, or those different to us. We seek to make them the cause of all that is wrong with us. This scapegoat mechanism lies deep within us; often we are not even aware of what we are doing. Without thinking, we simply act in this way. However, as human beings, we have agency. We can choose who our models for living in freedom are.

It is not inevitable that we scapegoat others.

• We nurture peace when we stand with the scapegoat and name the process of scapegoating for what it is, a process with no good reason.

• We nurture peace when we acknowledge how we have experienced both being scapegoated and being the scapegoater. We bear witness that such ways do not lead to a just peace between us all. If unrecognized and unacknowledged, scapegoating dynamics (discussed more fully in the Understanding Relationships Section) will continually destroy our possibilities for living well together in freedom and trust. Therefore, it is crucial that people begin to address often unacknowledged or unspoken secrets around the distress and mistreatment of some people who have been silenced, scapegoated or driven out. It is important for us to recognise that scapegoats are no more responsible than anyone else. They are arbitrarily picked on and isolated. Their only ‘fault’ is that of being different or weaker. When we, and the societies we live in, are under great stress or in conflict, there is a danger of generating fixed positions and beliefs that dominate our world views. These perspectives are seen as sacred; we are ready to fight and perhaps even die for them. In the absence of any warm and open relationships with our ‘different other’, they give us ‘good cause’ to commit violence and claim impunity. If reconciliation and restoration are to be possible, it is important that we acknowledge and examine these beliefs and embrace the importance of day-to-day relationships in which we experience freedom and trust. Some commentators argue that in modern society there is an absence of shared, lived experiences of how we, in all our differences, can live together. More and more we are apart from and against each other, in “communities of entanglement” rather than associationxxvii. When the “familiar turns strange” tensions emerge; scapegoating the other often occurs. The path forward, for ourselves and our societies, is to meet with, know, trust and respect those who differ from us culturally and by belief. By coming into relationship with those who are so often our scapegoats we can mutually engage in a more open and challenging conversation as to how our common good might eventually develop. Our hope is to find ways to live in relationships that transcend what our sacred beliefs, get out of rivalry, and seek to build a supportive culture together. It is time to take risks, to embody the absurd, and establish previously ‘unthinkable’ relationships!

“political change cannot be brought about by politics alone. It needs human transformation, brought about by rituals, habits of the heart, and a strenuous process of education. It comes along with knowledge borne out of painful experience, preserved for future generations by acts of remembering. It calls not only for high ideals but also a way of life that translates ideals into social interactionxxxviii.”

Learning Together-An Experience in Reconstructive Education

When we have positive experiences of learning together, in all our differences, confidence and ease between us grows. When, together, we learn how to critically reflect on life, everything else starts to change as well. Nurturing Hope’ takes a reflective learning approach, so that we can:

• Learn about our identity and that of others in all the relationships of which we are part.

• Resist the call to use those polarising divisions that diminish our neighbours and, ultimately, destroy us as well.

• Embrace possibilities for growth in the new opportunities others bring us, rather than retreat in fear.

• Contribute our own unique part to make life possible and enable others to do the same.

• Take responsibility for our choices.

The Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, Jonathan Sacks, said this about the relationship between political change and reflective learning.

A. Building walls offers no solution.

The more we fear we are under attack, the more we respond with fear to that possibility. Sometimes retaliation takes the form of aggression, and sometimes of flight. At other times we retreat behind the walls of what we already know, fearing something is about to be taken away from us.

One of the reactions to living in any society dissolving into rivalry, is that we wish to know and define who belongs and who is an outsider. We want to ‘build that wall’xxxix.

Instead of being open to the other, we are wary, on our guard. Our relationships are characterised by separation, avoidance, and festering silence. We hunker down rather than venture out. (See Model 4 in The Dynamics to Dissolve Section.)

When we seek defense from our divisions through separation, our normal becomes avoidance. We don’t meet with each other and address the sensitive issues reflected in our anxious public and civic cultures. We choose silence in order to avoid provoking conflicts and the unexpected. We stop meeting the other in anything other than the most minimal sense of the word.

In conflicted societies uncertainty lies close to the surface. We stick to the places where we feel safe and where insecurity may be kept at bay.

And yet, living so close to our rivals, it becomes clear that being apart does not prevent fear. Rather, it nurtures it. We become suspicious of anyone who is not like us. Outsiders, even those recently arrived to our society, are a risk and we blame them for our troubles.

Building a wall offers no solutions. Fear does not respect bricks and mortar. Our only way out is to find new ways of living together with each other where the value of the other is not in question, the difference they bring into the world is valued, and we are able to trust each other and do things together.

The bricks of the walls that we build to protect ourselves-separation, avoidance, and politeness-also close down the possibilities we have of facing and addressing old historical mistreatments and injuries.

This process of insecurity and rivalry is not confined to historic ethnic and social hotspots. It is visible everywhere and increasingly in so-called secure societies where identity is the new engine of politics. When beliefs are put before relationships and determine whether people with differing beliefs meet and speak together in a trusting, human way, do we rival or do we collaborate?

Learning deeply about these dynamics, and how they affect who we are and where we might go together, has become a vital task.

B. Openness to the other

There is no way back to the old world of comfort where everything appears known. Now we are moving together into an unknown future.

Whilst it is important and reassuring to find comfort in returning to our rituals and memories, they no longer bring us peace. The way forward does not lie in the certainties of our past. We make progress by trusting those with whom we are most uncertain. In these relationships we notice what becomes possible when we meet free of suspicion. Meeting others in new ways changes our relationships with them as well as with ourselves.

Taking steps together in this direction is the only route for those who have lived apart or have recently come to share a new and different society.

Really trusting ‘the other’ means acknowledging the fear and distrust that often continues to threaten movements forward together.

The vision behind these materials is that the reconciling steps people take in meeting, learning, and working together on the issues about which we have so often been silent, are all part of new understandings about meeting, relationships, and social practices in our different societies.

As noted earlier in Section 5.3, reconciliation is about the whole of life. Change in just one small part can change the whole. When the workplaces, organisations, and institutions to which we belong are made safe for meeting and sharing with each other, the small steps that individual citizens take can have an impact on the culture of the whole group.

C. Learning to meet outside rivalry

Not one of us is the same: we are each different. Our difference is our strength and, if we are open, the gift we can offer to one another. Our identity is a rich mix, composed of our relationships, social affiliations, interests, values and beliefs, work experience, and creative and athletic passions, to name a few.

However, when we become rivals, these differences are no longer a gift, but a threat. The more we rival over differences the more we become similar! Our rivalry makes us the same. Paradoxically, the more we are the same, the more we rival.

As we rival, fear shapes the way in which everything happens:

• The ways we structure our relationships.

• How business has been done, and is done, between different people.

• The choices about the places people from diverse backgrounds seek to live.

• The histories and anxieties we carry with us into other places and cultures.

As our conflicts rise, we cling more and more to our rivalry. We can recognise this because we become increasingly frantic, obsessive and even violent as it escalates. We are willing to sacrifice ourselves as we become increasingly focused on our rival. We reduce, or allow ourselves to be reduced, to one identity, one relationship of rivalry which matters above everything else.

D. Living well together

As is evident, staying out of this magnetic fascination with our rivals is crucial. One way to do this is to know that we belong to other people through a shared idea like citizenship. Another is to ensure that we find and stay close to other people who can bring us into another reality which enables us to resist the supremacy of single and opposed communal identities.

Social stability is furthered when we do not rival with those different to us. In such relationships we do not fear them nor let them trouble us.

Strong democracies are societies where each one of us is sure of our value, has a clear personal identity and recognises the other. When they work well, democracies create a framework within which we can see one another as different and unique and of equal political value.

In the absence of fear, people can resist being drawn into structures and policies that view people through the lens of a group identity or a society of group identities.

The dominance of rivalling group identities reinforce sectarian, monocultural, and/or exclusive religious and political divisions. These group identities work against any possibility of promoting a base of equal and diverse citizens, undergirded by basic and shared rights.

The ‘Nurturing Hope’ materials and processes are an invitation to engage with one another, to consider how our actions, our traditions, and our communities promote inclusion rather than relying on the rejection or expulsion of others.

When, mimetically, we experience freedom together and step back from rivalry, it is possible for a reasoned public voice to emerge. Such a voice is essential to the development and maintenance of strong democracies. The habits developed from being members of groups composed of people from very different backgrounds, traditions, and cultures assert the importance of relationships between us all. In such experiences we lay the groundwork from which we can listen deeply to diverse views and consider and reflect on the sensitive issues of our time. The growth of these habits:

• strengthen democracy.

• assert the primacy of citizenship.

• increase the recognition that identity based political climates tend to foster excluding or judgmental practices likely to foster violence.