Last week I was a guest at a Mini-Conference hosted by Concordis International, a small British organisation working to help individuals and groups in conflict situations to seek out paths towards lasting peace. In particular, the topic was to address breaking the vicious cycle of conflict. It was hosted in the Canary Wharf offices of the largest global law firm and dealt with real life in its raw and dirty details which no one wants to know about and few could even dream up to make into a Hollywood plot.What I love about going to events like this is meeting people, experts in their own field, whom I would never probably have come across before. How's this for an introduction from a man I met over a cup of Tea before the main event? "I'm an expert in nomadic pastoralism, accessing the impact of international policy on local life and livelihood, specifically in Africa, to find solutions which defend and maintain these people." Punchy. It was a gripping conversation where I learnt some very important information about the roles of women and seers.
He told me that International Aid has been given to fund a caravan of local women to go from village to village to preach about peace. So far so good. Only it hasn't worked quite how it was intended to. The women came back to their villages and said to their men-folk that they've been out and about a bit in the world now and saw that some of the neighbouring village women had much nicer big white cows than they did, and nag, nag, nag until the men got off their arses and went to fight to get the cows to get some sort of peace back home. Only it rekindled existing inter-village feuds and everything went back to square one again.
It was a similar story with the role of the village seers. Somehow they just seemed to see a white cow in a neighbouring field which then turned up in the village seer's own pasture. Praise and glory for the men who made this happen.
In days of yore, this may not have been such a big problem because the villagers would simply have gone on a marauding outing to get replacements from another unsuspecting village, in a sort of musical chairs. Now though modern weaponry, on the scene since the late 1970s, devalues human life through indiscriminate killing, and the cows get sold on to pay for the guns.
Here are the very roots of conflict: uncontained emotions of lust and greed expanding out of control putting a personal perspective above the collective well-being. And before you think that this is only happens in subsistence level African villages then think again. In the West we call it Keeping Up with the Jones: you don't know you want it until you lust after it.
The conference itself focussed on the impact of conflict in Sudan. First we had the harrowing and emotionally charged story of a young girl who was told by rebels to chop her father's head off, he begged her to do so to save her life. She did and became a slave instead of the rebels, then escaping three years later she was rejected by her village for what she had done. In doing so, she became yet another of the countless child-soldiers in the world. Next we heard about the impact of displaced people, in human and economic terms, and the risks for the future of the area, not least from disrupted education. It was a far cry from the slews of people losing their jobs in Canary Wharf or having to face the in-laws on Sunday lunch. You may think that such things don't affect you but they do, not least because refugees create political and economic instability.
It is all very murky business, stuff that no one wants to think about. Yet here we were in the opulence of corporate slavery being asked to consider this expose on the effects of conflict. Concordis' role, operating as it does below the radar, is to move those who influence the grass roots and have the ear of the leadership at least towards community. It recognises that community starts with open communication.
As a student here in London over 25 years ago now, I was walking innocently along Whitehall as a CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) march went past. My lasting memory is of two of the peace protesters fighting with each other in the march and the police intervening to break it up. It had a profound effect on me: peace needs to start within each person and then spread around the world.
This conference was at a much deeper level: it was about victims and victim mentality on the one hand, and community and communication on the other. They are at the opposite ends of spectrum, similar perhaps to base camp and the summit of Everest. It's seemingly impossible, but it has to be done.
Most of all though this was about the devastating impact of falling into extreme victim mode and the destruction, almost annihilation, which then follows.
We need to invigorate the feminine spirit of community, find the inspiration of valuing all human life and to abandon once and for all any residual victim attitudes we have, not least to our own emotions. It starts within you, right now. What roots of inner conflict still reside in you? What's your next step on the long, and possibly weary, journey to community?
