July 1, 2002
Report On The Peace
Conference,
Dubrovnik, Croatia
Anodea Judith
From June 4- 11, 2002, I had the distinct privilege of attending a conference entitled: "The Alchemy of Peace Building" put on by the Praxis Peace Institute in conjunction with the Institute of Noetic Sciences. The conference was held near the beautiful old city of Dubrovnik, in southern Croatia, along the coast, across the Adriatic Sea from southern Italy. Croatia is a beautiful country, dotted with green islands and limestone cliffs, partly ravaged by war, but Dubrovnik boasted 600 years of peace, even while wars flared around it through the centuries.
As the 200 or so pilgrims, mostly from diverse parts of the US, but also from other countries, as well as youth from Eastern Europe and US ghettos, assembled on the first day, our common question to each other was, "Why did you come?" I was surprised at the number of answers that were similarly non-specific: "I don't know, I just felt called."
As did I. With a country dropping bombs on Afghanistan, threatening war against Iraq, with horrendous violence in the Middle East, and India and Pakistan threatening use of nuclear weapons, it seemed there was no other conversation more important than the one upon which this conference was focused: the process of transmuting the "base" patterns of war and dominator systems into the "gold" of inner and outer transformation. In short, this purpose was to inquire into the deeper cultural pattenrs that drive us to war, looking through perspectives of whole systems analysis, gender issues, historical cycles, economic factors, creative problem solving, and inspiration for peace activism.
The first day of the conference was devoted to setting forth principles of conflict resolution and was placed solidly in the hands of Angeles Arrien, cultural anthropologist and author whose work with conflict resolution has been used by the International Human Rights Commission. Her gift was a rich treasury of indigenous wisdom, a view of conflict as an invitation to creativity, a humanistic look at the psychological causes of conflict in our own lives, and how the weakest link in a chain is the ones who do not participate: She ended with six qualities to success in conflict resolution:
1. Discipline, or slowing down to go step by step2. Flexibility, in style, opinion, goal
3. Following what has heart and meaning
4. Serving the values of honesty, authenticity, integrity
5. Effective communication, alignment of word, tone and body gesture
6. Sense of humor, playfulness
The second day of the conference focused on the Youth Forum, made up of some 30 or so young adults in their teens and twenties who had been through war of one kind or another, mostly Eastern Europeans who went through the ten years of war in the Balkans (250,000 dead), and a group from the Los Angeles ghetto of Watts, where there have been 10,000 gang related deaths in the last decade. The youth found commonality amongst themselves sharing their stories in their first day at the conference, and presented their truths to the rest of us through poetry, drama, music, and appeals for help. We learned of the Community Self Determination Institute, which lowered homicide in the area by 44% by using conflict resolution between the various towers of Watts' high rise low income housing. (However, law enforcement felt threatened and tried to shut the project down. They are still up and running though, publishing a newsletter, and have a website at www. csdiwatts.com.)
The third day of the conference focused on issues of gender. Will Keepin and Molly Dwyer led us through a powerful gender excercise where the room was divided into men and women, and each group in turn was asked a number of questions. If the answer was yes, a person was asked to stand while the other gender witnessed the numbers. The questions focused on such things as, "Have you ever been a victim of violence in a relationship?" "Have you ever caused violence in a relationship?" "Have you ever been raped?" "Have you ever feared being called to fight in a war?" "Have you ever feared to walk the streets?" etc. etc. The questions were many, revealing and deep, and the same set was asked to both men and women. The result was a deeper bonding among the group, and a stirring of feelings of vulnerabilty, and subsequent sharing. Each gender felt seen and witnessed by the other.
The afternoon brought us a presentation with Riane Eisler on replacing the dominator model with one that features the archetype of partnership, with a balance between the values of ancient matrifocal societies and our current male dominated structure. Her new book, The Power of Partnership was featured, and more information on her work can be found in this issue, as well as at www. partnershipway.org. Her husband, David Loye, also presented on the misrepresentation of Darwin, whose "survival of the fittest" mentality became a mainstay of evolutionary theory. In fact, however, Loye found that in Darwin's writing, "survival of the fittest" only occured twice, and the second time was to apologize for the first! Instead the writing focused more on love and cooperation, yet this was overlooked by the educational institutions that taught his theories.
Sam Keen gave us a brilliant presentation and slide show from his book, Faces of the Enemy, on the use of propaganda to project our shadow onto others and thereby justify our treatment of others as less than human, something he refers to as a "psychopathology of enmity."
As the conference continued, we also organized into smaller groups, called "Cafe discussion groups" which got together to discuss the presentations, questions put forth during the conference, like "What can we DO?" These groups of about 8 people each met for two hours each day, took notes and submitted their notes at the end of the day to be compiled in a daily newspaper which was distributed to all the next morning. That way the maximum amount of information could be distributed to the maximum amount of people, in a kind of large group think tank.
In the more positive aspect, Paul Ray presented on the growing predominance of the "Cultural Creatives" whose consitutencies overlap to create 40% of the population, and represent all of the social movements we care about, holding such common values as ecological preservation, human rights, gender equality, peace activism, etc., while the conservative right wing has dwindled to half its size since WW II. Also around WWII there were 200 NGO's (non-government organizations), while there are now over 200,000.
Larry Robinson, Green Party former mayor of Sebastopol, gave a poetic talk on the need for spirituality in politics, citing Rumi, Gandhi, Mary Oliver, and the need for all acts of our work in the world to be considered in the great work.
Chris Bache, head of IONS (Inst. of Noetic Sciences) presented on the deep archetypal rivers of the collective unconscious, the value of altered states of consciousness and psychedelic research, and the whole systems analysis of a system at its unstable point of bifurcation, a period of unprecedented historical crisis. The good news is that when a system is breaking down and highly unstable, it is also most sensitive to subtle conditions, and most subject to change. While we may be experiencing serious breakdown in the not-too-distant future, this is also an opportunity for break through and cultural awakening.
The high point of the conference however, was the keynote speaker, Dennis Kucinich, a congressman from Ohio, who has proposed creating a federal Department of Peace. His talk was inspiring, passionate, dedicated, well-informed, and humble. His dedication to non-violence as the organizing principle for the future has been informed by years of study of media, of non-dual conflict resolution, of politics, history, mythology (many references, such as "rescuing the human spirit form the arms of Morpheus.") His speech on the House floor challenging the Bush administration is available on his website.
I felt as I listened to him that he might be a man on the order of Martin Luther King or perhaps a Gandhi. He stated that only 43 people of Congress currently support the Department of Peace, but one thing anyone can do is write their representatives and urge them to support its creation. He can be found on the web with information on his views, his speeches, and his proposed Department. He may run for president in the future, so watch and support this man!!
The last day was spent looking at economics. Bernard Liataer, a Belgian, and author of The Future of Money, proposed a partnership economic model, harkening back to more peaceful times when a society had two currencies, one that was for local exchange, and the other for international trade. Patrice Flynn, who actually teaches in the Pentagon, proposed ways to make the IMF accountable and rethink the policies on international debt which is destroying ecosystems in the frantic effort to pay it off.
The final night was celebrated with a banquet, music and poetry, and fond farewells. I came away with hope, with inspiration, but not without a sense of how much work there is to do. But perhaps the following poem, written during the conference, puts it in a more personal perspective:
Peace by piece, the dance unfoldsWithin our reach the secrets told
of grievous wounds on soil and soul
so much destruction
moved by fears
now washed by tears
a new construction rises
out of description into prescription
hands and hearts across the land
women in partnership, balanced with man
With many as one, the deeds are undone
And now at last the healing begun.
for more information on how to order tapes from the conference, contact
www.PraxisPeace.org