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The Beginning of an Idea
Chapter 9 of The Anatomy of Peace
By The Arbinger Institute
Lou picked at the Mexican food Carol
had brought him while the group assembled back into the room. The
mood was much lighter among them than it had been at the beginning,
when they were sizing each other up. And the tension that had filled
the interchange during much of the morning session seemed to have
faded away. Gwyn, in fact, was deep in conversation with Miguel
and seemed to be enjoying it. Elizabeth and Carol were in the back
of the room browsing a Camp Moriah leaflet together.
Just then, Pettis walked up to Lou
from behind.
“So, Lou,” he said, as if they were
just picking up on a conversation that had been recently interrupted,
“four years in ‘Nam.”
Lou nodded.
“Hat’s off to you, my friend. I was
there, but it’s different flying above the jungle than it was down
below. I know that.”
Lou nodded appreciatively. In peace
time, pilots always think themselves superior to the so-called grunts
on the ground. And the infantrymen carry around an inferiority complex
about it as well, although they’d never admit it.
In wartime, however, the psychology
changes. The high-flying pilots quickly develop a deep admiration
for their partners on the ground. And soldiers on the ground, although
grateful for their cover when they hear the roar of supportive aircraft
overhead, would tell you, if pressed, that those well-heeled flyboys
never get their uniforms dirty enough or their vital parts close
enough to the crosshairs of the enemy to know real bravery — or
fear, for that matter. In Vietnam and elsewhere, the grunts receive
the lion’s share of the admiration and respect of fellow soldiers.
“Thanks, Pettis. It’s good to be with
a fellow vet. Tell me,” he continued, “what is it you do in Texas?”
Five minutes or so later, Avi and Yusuf
walked in the room, and everyone, Lou and Pettis included, took
their seats. Lou looked across at Jenny’s parents who appeared to
be okay, a surprise to him under the circumstances.
“Well, welcome back,” Avi greeted them.
“Before we move forward, does anyone have any questions about anything.”
Lou shot his hand up — the first time
he hadn’t just blurted out a comment. “What happened to Jenny?”
“Jenny is fine,” Yusuf answered. “As
some of you may know,” he continued, “she took off running soon
after we started this morning.”
“Have you caught her?” Lou followed
up.
“Actually, Lou, we’re not trying to
catch her,” Yusuf answered. “This is a voluntary program, so we
won’t force anyone into it. But we will make sure she stays safe.
And we’ll do that in a way that invites her, as much as possible,
to choose to join with us.”
Lou was perplexed. “So what does that
mean you’re doing?” he asked.
“It means two of our workers are following
her, trying to engage her in meaningful conversation, and a truck
with backup if we need it is following behind but out of sight.
Everything will be fine,” he smiled. “Anything else?”
Lou raised his hand again.
“This whole ‘see people as people or
see them as objects’ distinction,” he said with a hint of disdain
in his voice, “where does it come from?”
Avi spoke first. “It comes out of an
exploration in philosophy,” he said. “Perhaps it would help to give
a brief overview.” He looked over at Yusuf, who nodded.
Avi turned back to the group. “I hesitate
doing philosophy with you,” he said with an apologetic smile. “Especially
first thing after lunch. But I’ll take a chance on it, for a minute
or two anyway. If you’re pretty sure you don’t want any philosophy,
just plug your ears for a minute.” He looked around the room. “You
are all familiar with the philosopher Rene Descartes?”
“Not a bad philosopher — for a Frenchman,”
Elizabeth cracked. Her hands were no longer clasped together, and
she was leaning back comfortably in her chair.
“Not bad indeed,” Avi grinned. Turning
to the rest, he continued. “Descartes is the father of what is known
as the modern period of philosophy, and he is famous still to this
day for the starting point of his very ambitious philosophical theory,
which he hoped would explain all of existence. His foundational
assumption was the famous line, Cogito ergo sum — or, ‘I
think therefore I am.’”
Familiarity shown in the eyes of most
in the room.
“You will notice there are big assumptions
in Descartes’ starting point,” Avi continued. “The biggest of these
is the assumption of the primacy of the separate human consciousness
— what Descartes called the I.
“Hundreds of years after Descartes,
a series of philosophers began to call into question the modern
philosophical arguments that Descartes started in motion, in particular
this central individualistic assumption that undergirded Descartes’
work. One of these philosophers was a man named Martin Heidegger.
If Heidegger had been a contemporary of Descartes, he might have
asked him this question: ‘Rene, tell me — from where did you acquire
the language that enabled you to formulate the thought, ‘I think
therefore I am’?”
Avi looked around the group to let
that question settle on them. “Of course,” he continued, “Descartes
acquired those words, and the ability to think with them, from others.
Which is to say, he did not conjure them from a separate, individualized
I.
“Consider what this means for Descartes’
theory,” he continued. “There is a kind of brute fact that just
is — the fact of being in the world with others. Descartes
was able to postulate that the separate self was what was most fundamental
only because he acquired language in a world with others.”
“Ah,” Elizabeth interjected, “so being
in the world with others, and not the idea of a separate self, is
what is fundamental. Is that what you are suggesting?”
“Exactly,” Avi agreed. “Descartes’
foundational assumption is disproved by the conditions that made
it possible for him to state it in the first place. So Heidegger,
among others,” he continued, “with his attack on individualism,
shifted the focus of the philosophical world away from the separate
self and onto the idea of being with others.
“A contemporary of Heidegger named
Martin Buber, whom I mentioned this morning, agreed with Heidegger
that way of being in the world is what is most fundamental to human
experience. He observed that there are basically two ways of being
in the world: we can be in the world seeing others as people or
we can be in the world seeing others as objects. He called the first
way of being the I-Thou way, and the second the I-It way, and he
argued that we are always, in every moment, being either I-Thou
or I-It — seeing others as people or seeing others as objects.
“So, Lou,” he said, turning to face
him, “that is a long way of saying that it was Martin Buber who
first observed these two basic ways of being, or at least formulated
them that way. He was the first to articulate the differences in
human experience when we are seeing others as objects as opposed
to seeing them as they are, as people.”
Looking around at the rest of the group,
he said, “Okay, it’s safe to unplug your ears now.”
“Well, almost,” Yusuf interjected with
a smile. “Let me add one more thought. Buber’s observation of these
two ways of being raised the question of how we move from one way
of being to another — from seeing people as people, for example,
to seeing others as objects, and vice versa. But this is a question
Buber never answered. He simply observed the two ways of being and
their differences. It is left to us, now, to figure out how we can
change our way of being — if we want to, that is.
“For our purposes,” he continued, “the
question Buber did not address is the question we must answer. We
have been suggesting that the foundational problem in our homes,
our workplaces, and our battlefields is that our hearts are too
often at war — that is, we too often insist on seeing people as
objects. And we have seen how one warring heart invites more ‘object-seeing’
and war in others. It follows from this that in order to find peace,
we must first understand how we and others have forgone peace and
chosen war.”
“Sometimes we don’t choose war,” Lou
butted in. “Rather, it chooses us.”
“Yes, Lou,” Yusuf agreed. “Sometimes
we might be forced to defend ourselves, you’re exactly right. But
that is a different thing than saying that we are forced to despise,
to rage, to denigrate, to belittle. No one can force a warring heart
upon us. When our hearts go to war, we ourselves have chosen it.”
“How?” Lou asked.
“That is exactly what we will now explore,”
Yusuf answered.
Copyright © 2006 by
The Arbinger Institute
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