A Need for War
Chapter 11 of The
Anatomy of Peace
By The Arbinger Institute
Editor’s note:
The Anatomy of Peace, an important new book by the writers
of Leadership and Self-Deception, shows us the cause
of human conflict so that we can learn to live in peace. Look
for the continuation next Monday.
“How is a choice to betray oneself
a choice to go to war?” Lou asked, troubled by the claim.
“Because when I betray myself,” Yusuf
answered, “I create within myself a new need — a need that causes
me to see others accusingly, a need that causes me to care about
something other than truth and solutions, and a need that invites
others to do the same in response.”
“What need is that?” Pettis asked.
Yusuf turned back to the diagram.
“At the beginning here, when I had the desire to help Mordechai,
how would you say I was seeing him? Was he a person or an object
to me?”
The group collectively murmured,
“He was a person.”
“How about down here at the end,
when I was in this box. Was he still a person to me then?”
They looked at the diagram.
Pettis spoke up. “No, you’d dehumanized
him. He’s almost a caricature.”
“So what was he to me at that point,
a person or an object?”
“An object,” Pettis answered.
“Which gives rise to what need?”
Yusuf asked.
Pettis and the others puzzled over
that. “I’m not sure what you mean,” he said.
“At the end of this story, when I
was seeing Mordechai as an object, I had a need for something
— something I had no need for at the beginning of the story, when
I was seeing him as a person. What did I now need?”
Still, the group sat in silence.
“Look at the diagram,” Yusuf invited.
“The answer is on the diagram.”
After a moment, he said, “Perhaps
an analogy would help. My father was a carpenter. When I was four
or five, I remember going with him on a job where he was helping
to rebuild a house. I remember in particular a wall in the kitchen
area of the home. It turned out that the wall was crooked. I remember
this because of something my father taught me about it. ‘Here,
Yusuf,’ I remember him saying, although in Arabic, of course,
‘we need to justify this wall.’
“‘Justify, Father?’ I asked.
“‘Yes, Son. When something is crooked
and we need to make it straight, we call it justifying. This wall
is crooked, so it needs to be justified.’”
With that, Yusuf looked around at
the group.
“With that story as an analogy,”
he said, “take another look at the diagram.”
Carol’s quiet voice came in immediate
reply. “You needed to be justified in the story,” she said. “That’s
the need you’re talking about, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Carol,” Yusuf smiled, “it is.
And did I have any need to be justified when I just felt to help
Mordechai?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you weren’t being crooked
toward him in that moment.”
“Exactly,” Yusuf agreed, landing
heavily and happily on the word. “Did everyone catch that?” he
asked the group.
Heads nodded around the room, but
not convincingly enough for Yusuf’s taste.
“Let’s be really clear on this,”
he said. “What was crooked when I turned my back on Mordechai
that wasn’t crooked before?”
“Your view of him,” Carol answered.
“Yes,” Yusuf agreed. “And what was
crooked about that view of him?”
“You weren’t seeing him as a person
any longer,” Pettis answered. “He didn’t count any more. At least
not like you counted.”
“Exactly. In fact, it was precisely
because I was seeing him as a person at the beginning of
the story that I felt to help him. But in the moment I began
to violate the basic call of his humanity upon me, I created within
me a new need, a need that didn’t exist the moment before; I needed
to be justified for violating the truth I knew in that moment
— that he was as human and legitimate as I was.
“Having violated this truth, my entire
perception now raced to make me justified. Think about it. When
do you suppose Mordechai’s personal quirks, whatever they might
have been, seemed larger to me, before I betrayed my sense to
help him, or after?”
“After,” the group answered.
“And when do you suppose the group
I lumped Mordechai in with, the Israelis, seemed worse to me?
In the moment I felt to help Mordechai, or after I failed to help
him?
“After,” the group repeated.
“So notice,” Yusuf continued, “when
I betray myself, others’ faults become immediately inflated in
my heart and mind. I begin to ‘horribilize’ others. That is, I
begin to make them out to be worse than they really are. And I
do this because the worse they are, the more justified I feel.
A needy man on the street suddenly represents a threat to my very
peace and freedom. A person to help becomes an object to blame.”
At this, Yusuf turned to the board
and added to the diagram they were discussing. As he was finishing,
Gwyn asked, “But what if Mordechai really was a problem? What
if he wasn’t some gentle blind man but an out-and-out racist jerk?
What if he outwardly agreed with the people who had thrust your
family from your home? Wouldn’t you be justified in that case?”
“What need would I have to be justified
if I wasn’t somehow crooked?” Yusuf asked, turning from the board
to face the group.
Gwyn was clearly frustrated by that
answer. “I’m sorry, Yusuf,” she said, “but I don’t know if I can
accept that. It seems like you’re just giving bad people a pass.”
Yusuf’s eyes seemed to soften at
this comment. “I appreciate how seriously you are grappling with
this, Gwyn,” he said. “I am wondering if you would be willing
to grapple with another question just as seriously.”
“Maybe,” she answered pensively.
Yusuf smiled. Being reflexively cynical
himself, he appreciated those who listened with a healthy dose
of careful skepticism. “You are worried that I might be giving
Mordechai a pass, that I might not be holding him accountable
for wrongs he or his clan have perpetrated. Am I right?”
Gwyn nodded. “Yes.”
“There is a question I have learned
to ask myself, Gwyn, when I am feeling bothered about others:
am I holding myself to the same standard I am demanding of them?
In other words, if I am worried that others are getting a pass,
am I also worried about whether I am giving myself one? Am I as
vigilant in demanding the eradication of my own bigotry as I am
in demanding the eradication of theirs?”
He paused a moment to let that settle.
“If I’m not, I will be living in
a kind of fog that obscures all the reality around and within
me. Like a pilot in a cloud bank whose senses are telling him
just the opposite of what his instrument panel is saying, my senses
will be systematically lying to me — about myself, about others,
and about my circumstances.” Focusing clearly on Gwyn and capturing
her gaze, he added, “My Mordechais may not be as prejudiced as
I think they are.”
“Yours may not be,” Gwyn challenged
him. “I wouldn’t know. But mine are.”
Yusuf looked thoughtfully at Gwyn.
“You may be right,” he said, a touch of resignation in his voice.
“Your Mordechais might be prejudiced. Some people are, after all.
And to the larger point, you might have suffered some terrible
mistreatments at others’ hands. All of you who are parents here,
for example,” he said, looking around the semicircle, “have undoubtedly
been treated terribly at times — unjustly, unfairly, ungratefully.
Right?”
Heads nodded.
“And you may have been railroaded
at work as well — blamed, overlooked, unappreciated. Or perhaps
you have been mistreated by society generally. Maybe you belong
to a religion that you feel is treated prejudicially, or to an
ethnic group that you feel is systematically disenfranchised,
or to a class that is ignored or despised. I know a thing or two
about each of these mistreatments. I know what they feel like,
and I know how terrible they are. I can say from experience that
there are few things so painful as contempt from others.”
“That’s right,” Gwyn readily agreed.
Others nodded as well.
“Few things except one,” Yusuf continued.
“As painful as it is to receive contempt from another, it is more
debilitating by far to be filled with contempt for another. In
this too I speak from painful experience. My own contempt for
others is the most debilitating pain of all, for when I am in
the middle of it — when I’m seeing resentfully and disdainfully
— I condemn myself to living in a disdained, resented world.
“Which brings me back to Mordechai,”
he said. “Would you say I was filled with resentment or contempt
when I just felt to help him?”
The group looked back at the diagram.
“No,” Ria answered, followed by the
others saying the same thing.
“But how about at the end of the
story,” Yusuf asked, “when I was down in this box seeing him as
a bigot and Zionist threat? Was I feeling resentful then?”
The group looked at the feelings
that were listed in the box: angry, depressed, bitter, justified.
“Yes,” they nodded.
“So why was I feeling that way?”
Yusuf asked. “I had certainly suffered my share of hardships.
Was that the cause of my bitterness, my anger, my resentment,
and my contempt?”
“Probably,” Gwyn answered.
“Look at the diagram again,” Yusuf
said.
“No,” Pettis answered, “your hardships
did not cause your feelings.”
“Why do you say that?” Yusuf asked.
“Because whatever hardships you had
suffered you had already suffered at the beginning of this story.
But those hardships didn’t prevent you from seeing Mordechai as
a person when you felt to help him with his coins.”
“Exactly,” Yusuf said. “So what’s
the only thing that happened between the time at the beginning
of this story when I wasn’t feeling angry and bitter and
the time at the end when I was? What’s the only thing that
happened between the time that I saw Mordechai as a person and
the time I saw him as an object?”
“Your choice to betray yourself,”
Pettis answered.
“So what was the cause of my anger,
my bitterness, my resentment, my contempt, my lack of peace? Was
it Mordechai and his people? Or was it me?”
“Well, the diagram says it was you,”
Lou answered.
“But you’re not convinced.”
“No, I’m not sure that I am,” Lou
said. “Look, isn’t it possible you simply had a momentary lapse
of memory when the coins spilled from Mordechai’s purse, a moment
when your hardships weren’t foremost on your mind? It seems to
me that’s what likely happened. And then a moment later you came
back to reality and remembered all the trouble you’d suffered
at the hands of the Israelis. It’s not like your bitterness just
started in this moment. You’d felt it before. And you might have
felt it, like Gwyn said, because of what the Israelis had done
to you and your family.”
“What, you’re siding with me now?”
Gwyn asked in jest.
“I know. It has me worried too,”
Lou smirked.
Yusuf smiled. “That’s a great question,
Lou. You’re right, of course, that this wasn’t the first time
I had felt angry and bitter toward the Israelis. And you are right
as well when you imply that my father’s death, and the hardships
it caused my family, certainly played a role. But I believe it
played a different role than the one you are suggesting. You seem
to be saying that I ended up feeling the way I did about Mordechai
because of what his people had done to me and my family. In other
words, the hardships I had suffered caused the feelings
I came to have about Mordechai. Is that what you are suggesting?”
“It’s what I’m wondering, anyway.
Yes.”
“And I’m suggesting something entirely
different,” Yusuf responded. “I’m suggesting that my feelings
about Mordechai were not caused by something others had done to
me but by something I was doing to Mordechai. They were the result
of a choice I was making relative to Mordechai. So,” he continued,
“how shall we evaluate these very different theories?” He looked
around at the group.
“I don’t know about evaluating them,”
Elizabeth said, “but Lou’s theory leads to a pretty depressing
outcome.”
“Which is what?” Yusuf asked.
“That we’re all just victims, powerless
in the face of difficulty, inevitably doomed to be bitter and
angry.”
“I’m not saying that,” Lou disagreed.
“I think you are,” Elizabeth countered.
“You said the only reason Yusuf wasn’t bitter at the beginning
of the story was because he simply wasn’t thinking about his hardships
for a moment. Remembering them caused him to feel bitter and angry
again. If that doesn’t make one powerless in the face of hardship,
I don’t know what does.”
Lou had to admit she had a point.
He didn’t believe in that kind of helpless victimhood either.
He knew of too many great souls who had passed through terrible
mistreatment without becoming embittered by it to believe that
mistreatment left us without choices. But it does have an impact,
doesn’t it? he wondered to himself, thinking of Cory.
“Excellent points, Elizabeth,” Yusuf
said. “I’d like to continue with your idea if I might.”
“Certainly.”
Yusuf looked around at the group.
“Not having a memory at the forefront of my mind is different
than having forgotten it. I can assure you that there has never
been a moment in my life since my father’s death that I haven’t
remembered that he died and how he died.
“Having said that, Lou is right that
the level and nature of my focus is often very different from
moment to moment. Lou reasoned that that fact allowed me to see
Mordechai differently in the moment I felt to help him. Actually,
however, Lou’s theory has it exactly backwards. It isn’t that
I saw Mordechai as a person because I wasn’t dwelling on my hardships.
Rather, it was that I wasn’t dwelling on my hardships because
I was seeing Mordechai as a person.
“I needed to dwell on my hardships
only when I needed to be justified for treating Mordechai poorly.
My hardships were my excuse at that point. When I didn’t need
an excuse, I was free not to dwell on them.”
“Oh, so an abused woman is at fault
for hating her abuser?” Gwyn mocked. “I’m sorry if I can’t go
there.”
Yusuf paused and took in a deep breath.
“I couldn’t go there either, Gwyn,” he said. “May I share a story
with you?”
Gwyn didn’t respond. Yusuf took a
piece of paper out of a folder on a table in the front corner
of the room. “This is from a letter I received in the mail a few
years ago,” he said. “It was written by one of our former students
here who had fallen on very difficult times in her marriage. Rather
than try to give you the context for it, I will let her speak
for herself.” He began reading.
