Mistakes Were Made - Carol Tavris [102]
Even as we criticize the way the Israeli military is killing Lebanese civilians and U.N. monitors in the name of recovering Goldwasser…, we must remember that all of this almost certainly would not be happening if some Europeans had not attempted, a few decades back, to remove everyone named Goldwasser from the face of Europe—if not the Earth.21
And Ash is only moving the start date back a couple of centuries. Others would move it back a couple of millennia.
Once people commit themselves to an opinion about “Who started this?,” whatever the “this” may be—a family quarrel or an international conflict—they become less able to accept information that is dissonant with their position. Once they have decided who the perpetrator is and who the victim is, their ability to empathize with the other side is weakened, even destroyed. How many arguments have you been in that sputtered out with unanswerable “but what about?”s? As soon as you describe the atrocities that one side has committed, someone will protest: “But what about the other side’s atrocities?”
We can all understand why victims would want to retaliate. But retaliation often makes the original perpetrator minimize the severity and harm of its side’s actions and also claim the mantle of victim, thereby setting in motion a cycle of oppression and revenge. “Every successful revolution,” observed the historian Barbara Tuchman, “puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.” Why not? The victors, former victims, feel justified.
Truth and Reconciliation
In our favorite version of an ancient Buddhist parable, a group of monks is returning to their monastery from a long pilgrimage. Over high mountains and across low valleys they trek, until one day they come to a raging river, where a beautiful young woman stands. She approaches the eldest monk and says, “Forgive me, Roshi, but would you be so kind as to carry me across the river? I cannot swim, and if I remain here or attempt to cross on my own I shall surely perish.” The monk smiles at her warmly and says, “Of course I will help you.” With that he picks her up and carries her across the river. On the other side, he gently sets her down. She thanks him, departs, and the monks continue their journey.
After five more days of arduous travel, the monks arrive at their monastery, and the moment they do, they turn on the elder in a fury. “How could you do that?” they admonish him. “You broke your vow—you touched that woman!”
The elder replies, “I only carried her across the river. You have been carrying her for five days.”
The monks carried the woman in their hearts for days; some perpetrators and victims carry their burdens of guilt, grief, anger, and revenge for years. What does it take to set those burdens down? Anyone who has tried to intervene between warring couples or nations knows how painfully difficult it is for both sides to let go of self-justification, especially after years of fighting, defending their position, and moving farther down the pyramid away from compromise and common ground. Mediators and negotiators therefore have two challenging tasks: to require perpetrators to acknowledge and atone for the harm they caused; and to require victims to relinquish the impulse for revenge while helping them feel validated in the harm they have suffered.
For example, in their work with married couples in which one partner had deeply hurt or betrayed the other, clinical psychologists Andrew Christensen and Neil Jacobson described three possible ways out of the emotional impasse. In the first, the perpetrator unilaterally puts aside his or her own feelings and, realizing that the victim’s anger masks enormous suffering, responds to that suffering with genuine remorse and apology. In the second, the victim unilaterally lets go of his or