Conflict Resolution
Mary Eng
9-2-10
for Amanda Byron
As we make it through the week what I feel like I am gaining from this class is a vocabulary. One student said that it was giving her words for things she already knows. I think beyond words, the class is giving us a methodology. It would not be in my nature to gradate different responses on a scale or a graph, but the usefulness of plotting out a scale of responses to conflict is helping me find a logical or methodological way of understanding different ways of relating to conflict.
When this class covers so many ideas I think very deeply about a book which profoundly altered my consciousness, the Writing of the Disaster by Maurice Blanchot. He wrote of the impossibility of describing the Holocaust. He wrote about forgiveness, how in a way, the moment of forgiveness is a moment of accusation.
i think what i am learning above and beyond conflict resolution is educational theory. I am learning about being an active person in the classroom and not sliding by as a passive and submissive student. Many teachers are still using the authoritarian style to propound economics, or anthropology, or any other subject. What is so exciting about this class is the way the mind stays engagaed. There is little time for daydreaming because we are all giving voice and learning to communicate.
i think this even gives evidence to a lot of the problems inherent in conflict resolution. People feel disempowered. They submit and assume they have no voice. Here, in this classroom, I feel like a wide range of voices are heard. I feel like we are all building our confidence and our ability to vocalize. I feel like the substance of the class is weighty and indeed I hope I absorb the hypersyllabic fluency of speech in the lectures. Yesterday i was trying to silently mouth the words, as a memory tool and a linguistic builder. This was how i used to learn new languages, by repeating and letting my mouth muscles get practice, as language is a physical thing.
The first day in class i felt so happy, because I felt like being in such an enlightened atmosphere would serve as therapy for bad experiences I had in education. I felt so profoundly touched that my words were valued, and those of my classmates.
I think the mention of Paulo Freire was very exciting to me too. I am new to his theories, but found him earlier this year when I was trying to get to the bottom of why i felt so bad about a another class i was taking. The patterns were of total linguistic dominance. Most people were afraid to speak. If you spoke your words would be devalued. The teacher was so obviously insecure that he had to turn everything into a why i am right and you are wrong dynamic. It was painfully disturbing to my consciousness. Despite liking the course material, I wondered if being near the bad energy would be more destructive than helpful. But the positive outcome of this is that i wrote in a blog for therapy, attempted to engage administrative support, and considered it the inspiration for research in educational theory.
A friend of mine who was a teacher would hang out for long talks and we would assess the social and psychological significance of this class. I learned about the Hawthorne effect in which the observed workers improve their output. I felt that by engaging my teacher and writing about how the aggressive teaching style and the sexist vocabulary affected me, he might strive to recognize that we as students are human beings and not empty paper cut-outs.
In this class i feel like I am gaining valuable insights in how to deal with situations in the future should they occur. i am very happy to be studying Gandhi, MLK, and Thich Nhat Hanh.
My attraction to Jainism and Buddhism, and more recently to Kundalini and Kabbalah gives me an inner balance to my cerebral interest in government and law. One of my lawyer friends spends every possible moment in buddhist retreat and meditation. It is really amazing because she radiates grace and light, even though she has a very demanding job in corporate law.
One of my best friends is a film-maker who’s family is Hindu and Jain. He knows a lot about vedic astrology and channeling. He supports me in everything. He is one of my two best friends in the world and i was writing about him and thinking about him a lot this last week. One of his colleagues at film school committed suicide 13 days ago. So my mood has been in synchrony with my friend, who organized a memorial. I feel his pain. But am sending him spiritually the strength to be a spiritual leader, because that is what he is. In his films and his words and his consultations, he helps others get in touch with their hidden divinity. He is a fighter for women and mysticism. He is writing a book about the displacement of mysticism in acceptable western thought. it is in respect for the divine feminine, and for the mystical experiences, that we will fight war. His next film is about iran in the 1950’s. He went to Calcutta as a producer for a new film on spirituality. His mother, like Gandhi’s mother, grew up in the Jain tradition, reverential to all life.
In a sense i feel that the academic engagement of my cognitive potential, which is growing as i gain a new vocabulary in this class---will ironically send me back to a place of spiritual discovery. That my tendency towards emptiness, or existentialism, or despair, is not something i am afraid of. To me, my knowledge of this might help me to understand human violence and fear. When we are violent, are we aware? Can we empathize? Like in the sit-ins, can we turn the power of available medias towards the future of peace? Can we put a spotlight on suffering?
For me, forgiveness is not so simple. it is compassion and understanding, acceptance of the animal nature. i fear retaliatory actions, and think we should question the language of forgiveness. if to forgive is to accuse, as Blanchot asserts, then forgiveness is hurtful, accusatory, an infantile blaming. What might be better, is to retain an eye on the subjectivity of self and other, and know we can can never fully know each other. Our rules are so vastly culturally divergent. Our programming and propaganda too! And in compassion we might better spend our time protecting others and heralding in the future. So justice will require a modicum of blame. But our hearts should move into a future of justice future tense, of change, of growth.
