What Hope Is There?
The following was an entry for this years Hubert Butler Essay Prize. The prompt was “With narratives of conflict currently distorted by misinformation and the substitution of memory for history, what are the chances of reconciliation?” It was originally written in April/May 2024. Please enjoy.
None.
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There is no chance for reconciliation.
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I wish I could leave it at that. Technically, I could; I am within the word limit, but I’ll explain.
There’s a sickening self-congratulatory belief that one well placed argument is enough to convince anyone of your position. I don’t disagree with the optimism, but it does nothing to recognise that some people don’t want to agree with you. It’s too convenient for their beliefs and careers. Some people can’t; they live in abusive relationships or theocratic communities. Denial is a survival technique. To be frank, it’s a little self-centred to think you’re their saviour. People need to understand for themselves, at their own pace, or else we’re just indoctrinating them. Just because you’re correct doesn’t mean you’re right.
Despite what we wish to believe, the truth doesn’t matter. What matters are the day-to-day moments that are defined by norms (e.g. culture, religions, and nationalism.) We allow ourselves brief glimpses into immutable facts, but rarely do we explore them fully without backlash. Many countries around the world are guilty of enslavement, savagery, war, and oppression, yet the discussion of these truisms is only ever permitted when accusing another of these same atrocities. You may say X nation or Y religion has done them, so long as you ignore the same crimes perpetrated at home. The only way to achieve this, within a populace, is to denote the other as so foreign, so different, that it would never occur to anyone both groups are equally culpable.
The result is that the opposing group (e.g. another race, religion, party, etc.) are demonised, and the home group is venerated as infallible.
This framing can act in the form of generational trauma. People who lived under former conflicts can carry that resentment with them, passing it down. Though official accounts and history sanitise and depoliticise narratives for the sake of simplicity and a more homogenous monoculture, old resentments proliferate, staining modern attitudes. Arcane slurs can still be used as a way of linking present groups to a related past. This results in debates and concerns becoming muddled, as there’s an expectation that repentance should be paid for something you didn’t do. The opposite can be true, where a state can refuse to admit crimes against humanity were conducted in the past.
As we speak, several states in America are limiting the breadth taught about slavery, land confiscation, and imperialism, all in the name of fighting “woke ideology”. The United Kingdom has passed a legacy act to protect soldiers from prosecution in relation to “The Troubles”. Russia continues to insist that Ukraine is a military operation, not a victim of their aggression, silencing their own journalists and politicians. And Israel accuses critics of their assaults on refugees, aid workers, and neighbouring states of antisemitism, even if they’re Israeli and/or Jewish themselves.
Reconciliation implies opposing sides can coexist while retaining their original identities, especially as antagonistic to one another. It’s built on the false idea of enlightened centralism and compromise. Sometimes an opposing idea is so morally wrong that the compromise is just as wrong (e.g. The compromise between slavery and abolition is still some form of slavery). While there is rarely ever a “good” side in conflicts, it’s naïve to ignore the possibility of one side being a shade darker. That’s to say nothing about the internal politics of said sides. Conflicts are prolonged not just by equal opposing aggression, but also by stubbornness and feelings of supremacy. Battles have raged longer than they needed to because surrender terms were deemed not subjugating enough, or because of the claims “we don’t negotiate with terrorists”.
A less romanticised account would be that reconciliation happens rather when there is nothing to reconcile.
Time has a unique opinion of us; it has little patience for our nonsense. Great men and women have been forgotten. Globe spanning empires have fallen. Languages that commanded great armies lie buried with them. Nothing means anything beyond the present, a fact we refuse to accept.
Perhaps it’s ego, or a need for stability. It’s comforting to think we are important. That our attributes are indestructible pinnacles of humanity. There’s an amusing paradox when it comes to overidentification, especially in the name of preserving it. We can simultaneously hold the conflicting ideas that our identity is deserving of our reverence because of how long standing and invincible it is, yet also how it is in constant danger and must be protected. An indestructible identity constantly on the verge of annihilation. A Prince Rupert’s drop of egoism. This is what has driven wars and genocides; superiority and inferiority. There’s little chance of peace unless a deepseated insecurity is satiated beyond reason. Losing countries in wars can’t just surrender; they must be demilitarised, bound to debt, and governed in part by the victors. A further failure occurs in this framework, namely the ignorance of the cyclical reenforcement of the opposing identity.
We build our sense of “side” on surrounding factors; race, religion, class, etc. But often these factors aren’t equal to one another. The United States is a country that values participation in religion, namely Christianity, as a stronger identifier of “Americanness” than just citizenship. China, however, is the opposite; civil participation is held more favourably than religious participation, which is viewed skeptically (as is the case of Uighur Muslims).
While there is some leeway given to non-threatening identifiers, there is still a hierarchy. This creates division even within groupings, which can lead to splintering and needless infighting. Countrymen can have sectarian skirmishes, as was the case with Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, or Hindus and Muslims in India. Racial tensions can emerge within the same class, as seen between white and black workers in the Jim Crow South. These divisions are used to bolster the power of identities, but also as justifications. One group must exist because of the other. And even when solidarity groups form like unions or intersectional organisations, they will still base themselves off their opposition. They do X, so we will do Y. Look, they do Y! That’s why we’re right to do X! Ironically, the two shape each other more in opposition than in alignment.
The existence of one politicised identity begets the other, which only reenforces their attitudes and practices. Yet we never admit this fault to ourselves. We never admit our involvement in an assault or conflict provokes a response, either in self-defence or retaliation, which in turn provokes our response.
Am I victim blaming? Absolutely not. What I am saying is that these events don’t exist within a vacuum, nor are they sudden escalations. They are single day atrocities that take decades. Though they occur in an instant, they have been permeating for years, morphing and evolving from one form to another, in leadership, politics, philosophy, and intensity. We do ourselves no favours in focusing on our shock in the moment, when the road leading up to it has been built by failed talks, broken promises, mistranslations, and disappointment. Destruction is an act of desperation. We are trapped within a never ending game of tit for tat, no better than children fighting. What hope is there for reconciliation when one side is convinced they can win? What hope is there for us if both sides think they can win?
And then let’s suppose the best has happened, that finally there can be talks. What good is reconciliation, when one side may be still the prevailing class, or owners of land? What good is reconciliation when the system of governance or economics that caused the division in the first place is still in play? It’s insulting. Once again, we’re faced with the hubris that two opposing groups are equal, only now in fault.
Yes, they may be equal in force, brutality, and stupidity, but those are results of the conflict, not causes. Yes, the Native Americans attacked American colonies, but that doesn’t mean they deserved to be robbed of their land. Yes, Palestinians resisted settlements, but that doesn’t mean they deserved to be kettled and shelled. Yes, the Irish rebelled against the British, but that doesn’t mean they deserved starvation. Reconciliation does little to adjust the world that created the divisions in the first place. To this day, the topic of reparations, the repayment for the economic gains of subjugation, is considered a moot point. It is incalculable to measure how any country benefited. To reconcile, one group must accept the inequity of the proposal.
There has never been any reconciliation. What there has been, however, is reformation.
When we think about former conflicts or divisions that have now evaporated, we can overromanticise history. It’s adjacent to the Great Man Myth; these narratives that peace is brought about through a noble pacifist, or long arduous talks retold in biopics. To some degree, agreements have happened this way, as was the case with the Oslo Accords and the Good Friday Agreement. But political machinations do little to rectify trauma still present in everyday life. In fact, it can lead to feelings of abandonment, as though it’s up to grassroot fighters to take to the streets. It’s these same streets that hold the secret to true growth and peace.
Since the conflict is (seemingly) over, the focus of the average person shifts from the massive stage of nationhood to the more insular and personal. If the previous conflict has been particularly savage, there is a lot of work to get on with. Rebuilding, reforming, re-instituting, and, if you’re lucky, rejoining your family. Life begins to become mundane, almost boring. There’s a hilarious anecdote making the rounds that former Taliban fighters, now administrators in Afghanistan, are bored out of their minds doing office work. But I digress.
Life returns, slowly but surely. Now the conflicts are less about bombs, bullets, and propaganda, and more about bills, jobs, and getting the kids to school. You shift your identity. What was once important, defining, is now trivial and meaningless without the original environment. It’s hard to be a zealot when you’re not under attack. It’s hard to know what you stand for when there’s nothing to stand against. For some, they double down. But for most, with a lack of news and excitement, you start to reorientate your focus, and by extension, your identity.
The greatest source of reconciliation isn’t in the big, sweeping changes. It’s in the everyday. It’s in the absence of conflict. Consider the case of Daryl Davis, an African American who has befriended, not antagonised, members of the white supremacist group, the Ku Klux Klan for thirty years, deradicalising two-hundred of them. Daryl clarifies, however, that these relationships are based on other factors besides race and politics. Daryl is a musician himself and has found it to be a shared interest. He does not go in to engage with KKK members on racial terms. Whether he’s aware of it or not, he breaks the cycle that would otherwise reenforce the division by forcing the members to identify outside of their dynamic. In this moment, Daryl isn’t the enemy, he’s a friend. With this new evidence, seeing Daryl as a person outside of his race, the old identity of a racist is deemed false and discarded. There is no reconciliation of diametric positions, but a reformation that allows for change.
The same can be seen time and time again when we are faced with non-threatening environments that allow for commonality to be fostered. People have given up on their staunch bigotry when they meet people just like them, but with their sexuality, sex, gender, race, religion, and politics coming second. Amusingly, this can be quite anticlimactic, only further distancing the old identity in favour of this new, inclusive one. My mother, for example, a woman of reserved sensibilities about conformity, was disappointed when she attended her first ever same-sex wedding. “It was just a normal wedding”, she sighed, dejected.
Maybe you think I’m splitting hairs. Reconcile, reform, what’s the difference? The difference is the shift in focus from disagreement to overidentification being the problem.
I am many things, as we all are. I have never found myself in conflict over complexity, but I have when I or others have honed in on a single trait. Men and women having differences does not lead to sexism; patriarchy does. The range of sexualities doesn’t cause assaults and book bands; heteronormitivity does. The coexistence of cultures and races doesn’t lead to racism; supremacy does. It’s understandable, to a degree, why a hierarchy of identities can occur. If you’re failing in one aspect of life, you can indulge more heavily in another. As touched on earlier, white workers compensate for poverty by seeing themselves above their non-white counterparts. Men, feeling emasculated by other men, can assert themselves over women. Again; overidentification is the cause.
This is the rich bounty culture wars and identity politics can assuade us with. Recession? It’s those damn kids with their pronouns! Inflation? Those sneaky lefties! Poor infrastructure? It’s the woke mob! The added bonus here is you can’t do anything wrong, because you’re not doing anything! None of this matters in the slightest.
When there is reformation, a reframing of the discussion, it forces you to either engage with the real issues at hand, in which both parties can agree upon as a shared commonality, or you’ll be outed as a fraud, repeating empty phrases. Time has a great way of robbing our egos. As the saying goes, “You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time”. All empires fall. Everything fails. All emergencies pass. You can only exist within the environment that created you. At some point, you will have to try something new.
The harsh reality is that not everyone will be saved. Some people are just too far gone. I take no joy in this. Similar to addiction, they must admit they have a problem before they can change. You can not reconcile people who don’t want to share with you. We can’t change people, but we can change our relationship to one another. Religious sectarianism vanishes where zealots become neighbours. Racial tensions dissipate where strangers become friends. Jingoism is extinguished where enemies become family.
Divisions evaporate when the struggle for reconciliation becomes the acceptance of reformation.
#HI
