The Anatomy of PEACE. RESOLVING THE HEART OF CONFLICT. The Arbinger Institute

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Justified Against me
"As you'll recall," he began, "this is exactly what happened: I had a sense or desire to help Mordechai in this moment. It was my sense, my desire. I knew it was the right thing to do. But this then presented a choice: I could either honor my sense to help
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or I could betray it and choose not to help. Which is to say that we don't always do what we know is the right thing to do, do we?"
The group looked uncertain.
"For example," Yusuf continued, "We don't always apolo¬gize when we know we should, do we?"
Lou thought of the apology he still owed Kate.
"When a spouse or child or neighbor is struggling with something we could easily help with, we don't always offer that help. Don't we sometimes persist in sitting on the couch and watching television, for example, instead of getting up and help¬ing the person who is struggling to clean the kitchen?"
Lou wasn't much for television, but he knew he hadn't washed nearly as many dishes during his married life as Carol had. Had he felt he should? Had he made a choice not to? He wasn't sure.
"And don't we sometimes hold onto information we know we should share with others?" Yusuf continued. "At work, for example, when we know a piece of information would help a coworker, don't we sometimes hold it for ourselves?"
Most in the group nodded their heads contemplatively, in¬cluding Lou, who knew this scenario well.
"Sometimes we do what we know to be the right thing in the moment," Yusuf said, shrugging his shoulders, "and some¬times we don't. That's a statement of the obvious, of course, but it reveals the presence of a choice, doesn't it?"
Again, the heads around the room nodded in agreement.
"When I choose to act contrary to my own sense of what is appropriate," Yusuf continued, "I commit what we at Camp Moriah call an act of self-betrayal. It is a betrayal of my own sense of the right way to act in a given moment in time—not someone else's sense or standard, but what I myself feel is right in the moment.
CHOOSING WAR
• 91
"Acts of self-betrayal such as those I've mentioned are so common they are almost ho-hum. But when we dig a little deeper, we discover something fascinating about self-betrayal."
He looked around at the group. "A choice to betray myself," he said, "is a choice to go to war."
11 • A Need for War
"How is a choice to betray oneself a choice to go to war?" Lou asked, troubled by the claim.
"Because when I betray myself," Yusuf answered, "I create within myself a new need—a need that causes me to see others accusingly, a need that causes me to care about something other than truth and solutions, and a need that invites others to do the same in response."
"What need is that?" Pettis asked.
Yusuf turned back to the choice diagram. "At the beginning here, when I had the desire to help Mordechai, how would you say I was seeing him? Was he a person or an object to me?"
The group collectively murmured, "He was a person."
"How about down here at the end, when I was in this box. Was he still a person to me then?"
They looked at the diagram.
Pettis spoke up. "No, you'd dehumanized him. He's almost a caricature."
"So what was he to me at that point, a person or an object?"
"An object," Pettis answered.
"Which gives rise to what need?" Yusuf asked.
Pettis and the others puzzled over that. "I'm not sure what you mean," he said.
"At the end of this story, when I was seeing Mordechai as an object, I had a need for something—something I had no need for at the beginning of the story, when I was seeing him as a per¬son. What did I now need?"
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A NEED FOR WAR • 93
Still, the group sat in silence.
"Look at the diagram," Yusuf invited. "The answer is on the diagram."
After a moment, he said, "Perhaps an analogy would help. My father was a carpenter. When I was four or five, I remember going with him on a job where he was helping to rebuild a house. I remember in particular a wall in the kitchen area of the home. It turned out that the wall was crooked. I remember this because of something my father taught me about it. 'Here, Yusuf,' I remember him saying, although in Arabic, of course, 'we need to justify this wall.'
"'Justify, Father?' I asked.
"'Yes, Son. When something is crooked and we need to make it straight, we call it justifying. This wall is crooked, so it needs to be justified.'"
With that, Yusuf looked around at the group.
"With that story as an analogy," he said, "take another look at the diagram."
Carol's quiet voice came in immediate reply. "You needed to be justified in the story," she said. "That's the need you're talking about, isn't it?"
"Yes, Carol," Yusuf smiled, "it is. And did I have any need to be justified when I had the desire to help Mordechai?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because you weren't being crooked toward him in that moment."
"Exactly," Yusuf agreed, landing heavily and happily on the word. "Did everyone catch that?" he asked the group.
Heads nodded around the room, but not convincingly enough for Yusuf's taste.
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FROM PEACE TO WAR
"Let's be really clear on this," he said. "What was crooked when I turned my back on Mordechai that wasn't crooked be¬fore?"
"Your view of him," Carol answered.
"Yes," Yusuf agreed. "And what was crooked about that view of him?"
"You weren't seeing him as a person any longer," Pettis an¬swered. "He didn't count any more. At least not like you counted."
"Exactly. In fact, it was precisely because I was seeing him as a person at the beginning of the story that I wanted to help him. But the moment I began to violate the basic call of his hu¬manity upon me, I created within me a new need, a need that didn't exist the moment before; I needed to be justified for vio¬lating the truth I knew in that moment—that he was as human and legitimate as I was.
"Having violated this truth, my entire perception now raced to make me justified. Think about it. When do you suppose Mordechai's personal quirks, whatever they might have been, seemed larger to me, before I betrayed my sense to help him, or after?"
"After," the group answered.
"And when do you suppose the group I lumped Mordechai in with, the Israelis, seemed worse to me? In the moment I had the sense to help Mordechai, or after I failed to help him?"
"After," the group repeated.
"So notice," Yusuf continued, "when I betray myself, others' faults become immediately inflated in my heart and mind. I begin to 'horribilize' others. That is, I begin to make them out to be worse than they really are. And I do this because the worse they are, the more justified I feel. A needy man on the street suddenly represents a threat to my very peace and freedom. A person to help becomes an object to blame."
A NEED FOR WAR • 95
At this, Yusuf turned to the board and added to the diagram they were discussing. As he was finishing, Gwyn asked, "But what if Mordechai really was a problem? What if he wasn't some gentle blind man but an out-and-out racist jerk? What if he outwardly agreed with the people who had thrust your fam¬ily from your home? Wouldn't you be justified in that case?"
"What need would I have to be justified if I wasn't somehow crooked?" Yusuf asked, turning from the board to face the group.
Gwyn was clearly frustrated by that answer. "I'm sorry, Yusuf," she said, "but I don't know if I can accept that. It seems like you're just giving bad people a pass."
Yusuf's eyes seemed to soften at this comment. "I appreci¬ate how seriously you are grappling with this, Gwyn," he said. "I am wondering if you would be willing to grapple with another question just as seriously."
"Maybe," she answered pensively.
Yusuf smiled. Being reflexively cynical himself, he appreci¬ated those who listened with a healthy dose of careful skepti¬cism. "You are worried that I might be giving Mordechai a pass, that I might not be holding him accountable for wrongs he or his clan have perpetrated. Am I right?"
Gwyn nodded. "Yes."
"There is a question I have learned to ask myself, Gwyn, when I am feeling bothered about others: am I holding myself to the same standard I am demanding of them? In other words, if I am worried that others are getting a pass, am I also worried about whether I am giving myself one? Am I as vigilant in de¬manding the eradication of my own bigotry as I am in demand¬ing the eradication of theirs?"
He paused a moment to let that settle.
"If I'm not, I will be living in a kind of fog that obscures all the reality around and within me. Like a pilot in a cloud bank
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whose senses are telling him just the opposite of what his instru¬ment panel is saying, my senses will be systematically lying to me—about myself, about others, and about my circumstances." Focusing clearly on Gwyn and capturing her gaze, he added, "My Mordechais may not be as prejudiced as I think they are."
"Yours may not be," Gwyn challenged him. "I wouldn't know. But mine are."
Yusuf looked thoughtfully at Gwyn. "You may be right," he said, a touch of resignation in his voice. "Your Mordechais might be prejudiced. Some people are, after all. And to the larger point, you might have suffered some terrible mistreatments at others' hands. All of you who are parents here, for example," he said, looking around the semicircle, "have undoubtedly been treated terribly at times—unjustly, unfairly, ungratefully. Right?"
Heads nodded.
"And you may have been railroaded at work as well — blamed, overlooked, unappreciated. Or perhaps you have been mistreated by society generally. Maybe you belong to a religion that you feel is treated prejudicially, or to an ethnic group that you feel is systematically disenfranchised, or to a class that is ignored or despised. I know a thing or two about each of these mistreatments. I know what they feel like, and I know how ter¬rible they are. I can say from experience that there are few things so painful as contempt from others."
"That's right," Gwyn readily agreed. Others nodded as well.
"Few things except one," Yusuf continued. "As painful as it is to receive contempt from another, it is more debilitating by far to be filled with contempt for another. In this too I speak from painful experience. My own contempt for others is the most debilitating pain of all, for when I am in the middle of it— when I'm seeing resentfully and disdainfully—I condemn my¬self to living in a disdained, resented world.
A NEED FOR WAR • 97
"Which brings me back to Mordechai," he said. "Would you say I was filled with resentment or contempt when I had the sense to help him?"
The group looked back at the diagram.
THE CHOICE DIAGRAM
Sense/Desire
"Help Mordechai by gathering his coins for him/
^(I'm seeing Mordechai as a PERSON with needs, cares,] worries, and fears that matter, like mine do) My Heart Is at Peace
CHOICE
Honor the sense
Y
I continue to see
Mordechai is a person like myself
Betray the sense
Y
I begin to see Mordechai in ways that justify my self-betrayal. He becomes an OBJECT of blame
My Heart Goes to War
View of Myself View of Mordechai
Better than No right to be there
A victim (so owed) Robs me of peace
Bad (but made to be) Zionist threat
Want to be seen well Bigot
Feelings View