The Wardman Wire

Simon Barrow reflects on conflict and confusion, and suggests that the place to focus is on the human beings in the middle - and work outwards from there. I am reminded of a quote that was current in interfaith and ecumenical dialogue some years ago: From meeting to encounter.

The Problem has a Face

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way.

Charles Dickens’ famous Tale of Two Cities remains the narrative of the world today, with voices of gloom and optimism seeking to colonise the complex reality of the post-modern condition for their own ruling purposes.

So we have apocalyptic movements addicted to religious violence and governments wedded to a righteous war against terror speaking of their own nirvana and the hell of the other as the defining characteristic of the age. Side with us and eliminate the infidel, they say.

Then heaven, or Nasdaq, will be on your vindicator. Then again, the evangelists of bio- and techno-science, like genomics magnate Craig Ventnor and superstring theorist Michio Kaku, believe that only our lack of imagination and trust in the the capacity to re-design life is holding humanity back from a future of unimagined prospering. Entrepreneurialism not politics is the key to the new era, they say.

Personally, I am inclined to disbelieve both the apostles of doom and the soothsayers of paradise – whether the garb they wear looks “religious” or “secular”. Indeed an endless rhetorical battle over what is religious and what is non-religious is liable to miss the real point – which is that false hopes and false promises usually dress themselves up in what you are tempted towards, not what you are inclined against. This should be a warning to all persons – Christian, Muslim, humanist, atheist or whatever – who want to think that if only their system could prevail and the others be confounded, all would be fine.

The more difficult truth is that we often cannot separate the wheat and the tares, and we do not really know where we are and where we are going. The one thing we can decide is who our companions will be – whether we will care for our own and damn the rest, whether we will seek to embrace friends only or reach out to enemies.

This is what ex-US president Jimmy Carter is attempting in the Middle East right now. Of course he is being derided as a fool and a dupe for doing so, most especially because of his willingness to talk to Hamas alongside others.

Carter was a flawed president. His undoubted principle was not matched by the kind of decisiveness that the role needs. Though seen as a liberal, he propped up the ailing dictator Samosa in Nicaragua beyond the point of return and at the cost of many lives. He was, as we know, royally stitched up by Iran over the American hostage crisis, because those holding the cards thought they could get more from Reagan than they ever would from him. Strongmen are like that.

But whatever his past political flaws, Carter is a good person. And goodness is a severely underrated virtue in a world that thinks cynicism is wisdom and armed belligerence is realpolitik – when in fact courageous imagination is what is most often needed to find our way out of scrapes that seem politically intractable.

Turning the corner in Northern Ireland is a good example, though the full story has yet to be told of how the mostly overlooked and often extraordinarily small and vulnerable work of people at the grassroots (not just shuttle diplomacy and the gradual repositioning of key protagonists) came to be a crucial factor in redefining what was politically possible.

Back to Mr Carter. In seeking direct contact with those ‘beyond the pale’ in Israel-Palestine, the Democrat politician turned Baptist ambassador for human compassion is not going in as part of any great political plan. That is not his role or strength. He simply believes that you cannot make progress without talking to people who represent, not least electorally, a huge swathe of wounded and angry opinion, even if you deplore both their ideology and their tactics.

He is right. There is nothing ‘naïve’ about thinking that, nothing that leads inexorably to the victory of evil. Comparisons with Chamberlain and Hitler are politically illiterate, mistaking the darkening symmetry of mid-twentieth century European power politics for the powder keg asymmetry of today’s Middle east, where the consequences of failure are likely to be far more drastic than the risks associated with trying something different.

What Jimmy Carter has is faith. Not faith in the niceness of Hamas, the pleasantness of peace or the rhetoric of reconciliation, but in the possibility that when human beings look each other in the eye – when they really look – it becomes more difficult (though sadly far from impossible) for them simply to murder or anathematize. That is why de-humanization is so vital in training people to kill and hate.

Archbishop Elias Chacour, a Palestinian and a Jewish citizen who has worked tirelessly for a different future on the West Bank over several decades, has put the matter with startling simplicity – which is not to say simplistically. Both Jews and Palestinians are deeply wounded, hurting peoples, he says. Yet they have got themselves into a situation politically where they are deepening the wounds and building up the pain and loathing those wounds create every day.

The political and interpersonal solution, says Chacour, cannot avoid a change of heart. This will only come, he suggests, when Palestinians and Jews are able to look upon each others’ wounds, not simply their own, when they are able at least to perceive that the other is angry out of hurt too, and when they can contemplate the other as a fellow-suffer seeking healing, not just an enemy seeking revenge.

In the cold hard world of political diplomacy, that may be laughed out of court. But it arises from encounter with real human beings, not woolly optimism. And it is profoundly, disturbingly true.

The problem we confront has a face, Indeed it has many, many faces. Only when we face that can we begin to see hope, not just demons and spells.

Tags: simon barrow, thinking aloud, jimmy carter, elias chacour, ekklesia