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

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Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. San Francisco a BK Life book
The Anatomy of Peace
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First Edition
Hardcover print edition ISBN 978-1-57675-334-7 Paperback print edition ISBN 978-1-57675-584-6 PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-57675-955-4 Mobipocket e-book ISBN 978-1-57675-956-1 Amazon Kindle e-book ISBN 978-1-57675-957-8
2008-1
Copyediting and proofreading by PeopleSpeak.
Book design and composition by Beverly Butterfield, Girl of the West
Productions.
Indexing by Rachel Rice.
Cover design by Mark van Bronkhorst, MvB Design
BK
Our fate is shaped from within ourselves outward, never from without inward.
JACQUES LUSSEYRAN
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Contents
Preface xix
Part I The Heart of Peace
1 Enemies in the Desert 3
2 Deeper Matters 10
3 Peace in Wartime 20
4 Beneath Behavior 28
5 The Pattern of Conflict 38
6 Escalation 50
7 The Right Thing and the Right Way 56
Part II From Peace to War
8 Reality 69
9 The Beginning of an Idea 76
10 Choosing War 81
11 A Need for War 92
12 Germs of Warfare 106
13 More Germ Warfare 115
14 The Path to War 124
Part III From War to Peace
15 Apologies 141
16 A Gift in Wartime 147
17 Marching Bootless 155
18 Surrender 163
19 Locating the Peace Within 171
20 Finding Outward Peace 178
21 Action 191
xvii
xviii • THE ANATOMY OF PEACE
Part IV Spreading Peace
22 A Strategy of Peace 201
23 Lessons 214
24 Peace on Mount Moriah 221
Index 225
About THE ARBINGER INSTITUTE 229
Preface
Typically we assume that people who are in conflict want solutions. And they do, of course. Parents of belligerent children want the belligerence to end. Those who work for tyrannical managers want an end to the tyranny. Citizens of weakened nations want to be treated with respect. And so on. People want solutions. But notice that the preferred solution in each case is that others change. Should we be surprised, then, when con¬flicts linger and problems remain?
What if in our conflicts with others there is something we want more than solutions? What if conflicts at home, conflicts at work, and conflicts in the world stem from the same root cause? And what if, individually and collectively, we systemati-cally misunderstand that cause and unwittingly perpetuate the very problems we think we are trying to solve? These are among the important questions explored in The Anatomy of Peace.
Through an intriguing story of parents struggling with their children and with problems that have come to consume their lives, we learn from once-bitter enemies the way to find peace whenever war is upon us. Yusuf al-Falah, an Arab, and Avi Rozen, a Jew, each lost his father at the hands of the other's eth¬nic cousins. The Anatomy of Peace is the story of how they came together, how they help warring parents and children to come together, and how we too can find our way out of the struggles that weigh us down.
xix
xx
• THE ANATOMY OF PEACE
"But home, workplace, and world conflicts are entirely dif¬ferent issues," you might say. "Few families and companies in the world do internal battle with artillery and tanks."
True enough. But not all weapons are aimed at the flesh. Look around. Home and workplace casualties are everywhere. Bitterness, envy, indifference, resentment—these are hallmarks of the hot and cold wars that fester in the hearts of family mem-bers, neighbors, colleagues, and former friends the world over. If we can't find the way to peace in these relationships, what hope have we for finding it between nations at war?
For those who have not read our prior book, Leadership and Self-Deception, The Anatomy of Peace stands on its own as a thought-provoking exploration of a body of ideas that points the way to peace in all of our interactions. Those who have read Leadership and Self-Deception know about the issue of self- deception (the problem of not knowing one has a problem) and how it affects all other problems. They will not be surprised, therefore, to encounter some of the same ideas in The Anatomy of Peace and to learn how those issues play a pivotal role in con¬flict situations at home, at work, and between countries through¬out the world. They will also recognize one of the key characters from Leadership and Self-Deception, Lou Herbert, as The Anatomy of Peace takes the reader back in time to when Lou first learned the ideas that ultimately transformed his family life and his company.
While Leadership and Self-Deception focused on the work¬place, The Anatomy of Peace explores the freeing and surprising implications of these ideas in all aspects of life. In addition, while Leadership and Self-Deception explored how to solve self- deception in oneself, The Anatomy of Peace goes beyond, ex¬ploring how to spread that solution among others.
PREFACE
xxi
Although some of the stories in this book were inspired by actual events, no character or organization described in this book represents any specific person or organization. In many re¬spects, these characters are each of us. They share our strengths and our weaknesses, our aspiration and our despair. They are seeking solutions to problems that weigh us down. They are us, and we are them. So their lessons offer us hope.
Hope? Yes. Because our problems, as theirs, are not what they seem. This is at once our challenge and our opportunity.
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PART I The Heart of Peace
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1 • Enemies in the Desert
"I'm not going!" The teenage girl's shriek pulled everyone's attention to her. "You can't make me go!"
The woman she was yelling at attempted a reply. "Jenny, lis¬ten to me."
"I'm not going!" Jenny screamed. "I don't care what you say. I won't!"
At this, the girl turned and faced a middle-aged man who seemed torn between taking her into his arms and slinking away unnoticed. "Daddy, please!" she bawled.
Lou Herbert, who was watching the scene from across the parking lot, knew before Jenny spoke that this was her father. He could see himself in the man. He recognized the ambivalence he felt toward his own child, eighteen-year-old Cory, who was standing stiffly at his side.
Cory had recently spent a year in prison for a drug convic¬tion. Less than three months after his release, he was arrested for stealing a thousand dollars' worth of prescription painkillers, bringing more shame upon himself and, Lou thought, the fam-ily. This treatment program better do something to shape Cory up, Lou said to himself. He looked back at Jenny and her father, whom she was now clutching in desperation. Lou was glad Cory had been sent here by court order. It meant that a stunt like Jenny's would earn Cory another stint in jail. Lou was pretty sure their morning would pass without incident.
"Lou, over here."
3
4
• THE HEART OF PEACE
Carol, Lou's wife, was motioning for him to join her. He tugged at Cory's arm. "Come on, your mom wants us."
"Lou, this is Yusuf al-Falah," she said, introducing the man standing next to her. "Mr. al-Falah's the one who's been helping us get everything arranged for Cory."
"Of course," Lou said, forcing a smile.
Yusuf al-Falah was the Arab half of an odd partnership in the Arizona desert. An immigrant from Jerusalem by way of Jor¬dan in the 1960s, he came to the United States to further his education and ended up staying, eventually becoming a profes-sor of education at Arizona State University. In the summer of 1978, he befriended a young and bitter Israeli man, Avi Rozen, who had come to the States following the death of his father in the Yom Kippur War of 1973. At the time, Avi was flunking out of school. In an experimental program, he and others struggling with their grades were given a chance to rehabilitate their col¬lege careers and transcripts during a long summer in the high mountains and deserts of Arizona. Al-Falah, Rozen's elder by fif-teen years, led the program.
It was a forty-day course in survival, the kind of experience Arabs and Israelis of al-Falah and Rozen's era had been steeped in from their youth. Over those forty days, the two men made a connection. Muslim and Jewish, both regarded land —some-times the very same land—as sacred. Out of this shared respect for the soil gradually grew a respect for each other, despite their differences in belief and the strife that divided their people.
Or so Lou had been told.
In truth, Lou was skeptical of the happy face that had been painted on the relationship between al-Falah and Rozen. To him it smelled like PR, a game Lou knew from his own corpo¬rate marketing experience. Come be healed by two former ene¬
ENEMIES IN THE DESERT • 5
mies who now raise their families together in peace. The more he thought about the al-Falah/Rozen story, the less he believed it.
If he had examined himself at that moment, Lou would have been forced to admit that it was precisely this Middle East¬ern intrigue surrounding Camp Moriah, as it was called, that