1. The root of missing themes: The Anglo-Saxon deep culture

A very rich conference. But: It was more about violence than about conflict, more about violence control than about conflict solution and peace, less about violence prevention than about the meaningless "conflict prevention", and more about security than about viability. So my list of missing themes becomes somewhat critical, covering the whole conference title:

Table 1. A catalogue of missing themes

CONFLICT = ATTITUDE + BEHAVIOR + CONTRADICTION

SOLUTION = INNER + OUTER + TRANSFORMATION

VIABLE = ACCEPTANCE + SUSTAINABILITY + PEACE-BUILDING

SEARCH = "POSITIVIST", EMPIRICAL + "NEGATIVIST", POTENTIAL

     Let me make a basic, overarching, point immediately. It is not that the papers were not very competent pieces of research. But something was wrong from the very beginning, something fundamental, some might say philosophical. The whole exercise was one-sidedly hard Anglo-Saxon,/1/ even Anglo-American. And the assumptions underlying that tradition were never disputed during the conference, not even identified as assumptions.

     Some of those assumptions, and how they affect any study and any analysis in the highly important field of conflicts and their possible solutions, will be explored below. In so doing the Anglo- American positions will not be rejected, but they will be relativized, seen as exactly that, as positions. The field demands a broader platform to yield valuable results.

     The opposite of "Anglo-American" is not continental Europe, in practice meaning Franco-German./2/ The opposite is the rest of the world, which is quite a rich resource to draw upon.

     Some notes on positions taken by Anglo-Saxon deep culture on Nature, Person, Society, World, Time, the Transpersonal and Episteme are in the Appendix. "Deep culture" is the "collective subconscious", shared assumptions about reality often unknown to the carriers of the assumptions, being subconscious; sometimes suppressed, sometimes so obvious not to be worth verbalizing.

     The Anglo-Saxon faith in Rules for games, sports, schools, business, courts, politics-parliament, war is important. Rules [1] exclude those who do not follow them (the "uncivilized"),/3/.

[2] define the winner/4/, [3] rank the rest ("ladies", "gentlemen").

     Our concern is with the implications for conflict:

General: Correct behavior=behavior according to the Rules will lead to peace with justice. Violence=conflict is against the Rules. Ceasefire=peace has to be imposed according to Rules. Disputes, between equals, and grievances, from below, must be settled and redressed according to Rules. The deep culture is about behavior control according to Rules, not transformation.

Conflict perspective: priorities in conflict, high to low:

I priority, high: Prevail, according to the Rules, if necessary by fighting, imposing Anglo-Saxon rules and Anglo-Saxon judges.

II priority: Compromise, merchant culture, according to Rules

III priority: Withdrawal, case is dismissed, according to Rules

IV priority, lowest: Transcend, why create new reality when the present is the best of all worlds, perfect=contradiction-free.

     Science in general, social science in particular, conflict and peace studies even more in particular, are not culture-free, but reflect the culture whence they emerge. Conflict matters, so does the violence that may come out of a conflict, so does peace as a negation of that violence. We would assume any culture to have sediments of their shared experiences in these fields in the deeper archaeological layers of their culture, so deep that they have become unreflected. Another word for that is "objective". Excavation is needed, for some daylight. And that is what we try here, to lay bare some Anglo-Saxon assumptions.

2. That dark elephant in the China shop

     Let us start at the surface. In US/UK inter-state studies US military interventions and UK punitive expeditions are often left out and US/UK dark politics made invisible. Uneasiness is accompanied by denial and cured with ignorance. The democratic aspects of the societies are invoked; the legitimacy of even atrocious behavior thereby being guaranteed.

     True, there may be mistakes, even tragic ones, like the killing of 3 million Vietnamese, leaving, maybe, 30 million bereaved. When one per mille of that is killed on 9/11 it is seen in terms of violence and hatred, not in terms of motives./5/ Self is judged by good intentions, Other by bad consequences. Self and Other are studied as different species. A major bias.

     Inter-state relations are studied with the same forensic detail as an art dealer studying broken pieces in a china shop. There are hypotheses about which pieces to glue together how. The only thing missing in the studies is that huge, husky elephant in the shadowy recesses of the china shop. "Who, me?"

     This BCS, Broken China Studies, approach is reflected in the analysis of many conflicts where the USA is involved in a major way in the Asia-Pacific, such as Indonesia 1965/66,/6/ East Timor 1975/7/, Korea all the time/8/, Sri Lanka/9/, Nepal/10/, the Philippines and others. Any study making that actor invisible, or inactive when not, is simply propaganda, not science. And that elephant studies you. Do you have elephant studies?

     But this is Anglo-American surface bias. The underlying Rule is "we are above the Rules, unlike the others, and unlike others above being studied". The Rules have deeper effects.

3. The conceptualization of conflict.

     The Rules perspective is behaviorist. Inner experience is not questioned, only outer performance. This has implications.

     "Conflict" comes from confligere, "shocking together". This is compatible with the Anglo-American behavioral interpretation as parties "shocking together", in other words violence. It also opens for a subjective attitudinal interpretation in the inner worlds of the parties as an inner shock, a hatred that then is expressed in violence. The remedy is clearly that stopping the hating will stop the violence.

     But there is also what can be called the objective, or contradiction interpretation that what is "shocking together" are goals held by the parties because the realization of one excludes the realization of other(s). There is incompatibility, or contradiction of goals, like between "independence" for a province and "integration" for the country. No violence or hatred is assumed. Nor that the "shocking together" has become an inner reality in the parties concerned, the goal-holders./11/

     Thus, there are A-, B- and C-oriented interpretations, for attitude, behavior and contradiction. A dynamism C-->A-->B can be hypothesized: a conflict starts objectively, takes on inner, subjective reality, and finds an outer expression as behavior that may or may not be verbally and/or physically violent. But all the other five ABC sequences are also empirically possible.

     So better pick up all three interpretations and define:

     CONFLICT = ATTITUDE + BEHAVIOR + CONTRADICTION

Our definition tilts in favor of the C-orientation by adding that C is the root conflict, and A and B the meta-conflicts./12/

     This broad definition enables us to talk about A, B and C orientations in conflict as was done above; about A, B and C phases in conflict dynamics as also was done above; about A, B and C approaches where solutions are concerned as will be done below. The argument is that any onesided A, B or C orientation will seriously distort conflict research, theory and practice.

     In the B-orientation dominating Anglo-American approaches two different terms, "conflict" and "violence", are used for the same concept, 'violent behavior'. "Violent conflict" is heard, but is an oxymoron with no clear conflict concept independent of violence. Violence is behavior, real, observable. If conflict equals violence then conflict is bracketed between outbreak (of violence) and ceasefire. If peace equals absence of violence, then the implication is that there was peace before, and there will be peace after the violence. That, in turn, makes work for peace equal to work for violence control. A grave reductionism.

     An A-oriented concept of 'grievance' can, if "reasonable", be considered. This adds to violence control a focus on the psyche of Other. Thus, the US-UK would predictably see Iraq only in "iraqological" terms, leaving their own psyche unexamined, and after attack and occupation see Iraq as a "security problem" where "violence control" has not worked. The focus on "trouble" is Other- oriented; autistic, not reciprocal in Piaget's terms.

     But A and C reductionisms are also problematic: A pure A- orientation denies objective existence to a contradiction not reflected in the party's life world;/13/ at a high or low level of consciousness (enter Freud and Jung). A pure C-orientation dehumanizes conflict to parties without attitude and behavior.

4. Some political consequences of behaviorism

     Behaviorism focuses on the outside of humans; seeing them like hordes of animals, fish shoals, cars in traffic studies, at times "shocking" in violence./14/ Violence has to be controlled to restore law and order. One is "send the Marines". Another would identify causes, not only effects, conditions, not only consequences, like time of the year, climate, any external correlate of the violent behavior except their inner reality. This focus on intersubjectively observable and confirmable factors, like eye-witnesses for due process of law, and natural science approaches to earthquakes, tsunamis and landslides looks scientific/15/. That opens for natural and social engineering with upside-down manipulation, even bribery and threats.

     Leaning on behaviorism, leaving out the subjective, inner definition of reality, three colossal mistakes have been made.

     First, the outer, behaviorist approach from the outside is so incompatible with the subjective, lived, experience of what the conflict is about that a sense of having been dehumanized, humiliated, sets in. By being "objective" it reduces subjects to objects, depriving Other of personality. A major conflict.

     Second, in their self-presentation they include an inner reality as filled with good attitudes as their view of other, dangerous classes, races, nations, states with violent behavior; in a classist, racist, nationalist, patriotic asymmetry.

A-orientation for Self, B-orientation for Other; C for neither.

     Third, in doing so one basic approach to violence control is

lost: by solving the underlying, objective, conflict through the inner, subjective, reflections before any violence sets in.

     The Other has already been made nameless, faceless, totally deindividualized. Only what is seen is believed about him/her: gender, age, color and physiognomy, in other words race, perhaps elements of class. "Male youth, black, poor" would be a typical description. This exhausts the external, descriptive repertory. But, what else does one need to know? These are not people for closer acquaintance anyhow. Distance is wanted, distance is demanded. They should be grateful that they exist due to our tolerance and humanity, should know their place, not be uppity and pay with compliance with Rules, our Rules. To train them in civilized behavior some games and sports may be useful.

     It might also be useful, however, to know the rules they have for themselves, not to learn from them but to predict them. Social anthropology was born, an Anglo-Saxon science of course, constructing Other as not only deindividualized, nameless and faceless, but also timeless and a-causal, deprived of diachronic causation, of historicity, giving them synchronic functionalism instead. They exist in space, not in time, like animals.

     For self-presentation the Anglo-Saxons produce superb history and drama, highly individualized, certainly with name and face and enormous amounts of inner life, particularly of those who were the cause of effects in others. And even more particularly those who through acts of creativity attained god-like characteristics and became their own cause, causa sui, even capable of laying down new rules, laws, for nature, for humans.

     Obviously A, B and C combine in a triangle,/16/ applicable to Other as also to Self in etic theory of conflict. Emic theory like that of the Anglo-Saxon tribe, is a major part of A.

     So let us look more closely at the implication of what is here seen as the emic fascination, even obsession, with Rules for conflict solution/resolution/transformation. Whatever term we choose, we are talking about an outcome that is not only acceptable to all parties, but also sustainable.

     The Anglo-Saxon Rules perspective constructs a reality that is dualistic, adversarial, actor-dependent and competitive. From "innocent" games and sports, via business and courts, to politics and even wars, there are two parties struggling with the same goal of winning, throwing into the effort all they have to offer, with a zero-sum outcome: I win, you win.

     The Rules regulate the struggle, and the victory is only deserved if obtained according to the Rules. The Rules define a level playing field and fair play, like Culbertson for bridge, cricket, business deals, due process, elections (free and secret ballot), Roberts for voting, laws of war. Any deviation, like hiding WMD from UN or US inspectors, is called cheating. In love and war everything is said to be permitted; that is of course not the case. Having two spouses is against the rules, fighting both parties is also against the rules. Why? - because it runs against a basic function of all Rules: predictability as seen from above, which is why guerrilla/terrorism is problematic.

     The Rules are there to decide who is the winner. There are also Rules to decide in the case of undecidability: that is where the umpire enters the scene. The ultimate umpire is God, an old man with long hair. His representative on earth is a Judge, older and more probably a man the higher the status of the parties involved, with a whig (he might be bald, unlike God).

     This is a very strong and very pervasive construction of reality, dominating journalism, for instance. Some key points:

- cooperation is absent, except inside a collective party, a team, subordinate to the ultimate competitive goal of winning;

- the perspective is actor-, not structure-oriented except for the level playing field; only what is in the actor counts;

- the perspective is behavior-, not attitude-oriented, based on behavior according to the Rules, not belief etc. in them.

     Enters conflict. The arly warning is verbal violence, or the first stone thrown, the first bullet fired in anger. Two parties are pitted against each other. The Rules approach does not question why, only that Rules are followed regardless of what stage they choose to decide who is the winner. They might use a game, even of chance, tossing a coin, a die - but not loaded, no cheating please. They may act out their emotions in a game of soccer and use the outcome to decide. Fight it out in the market place, in the courts, in politics. Or in war: "Theirs not to question why, theirs but to do and die".

     The implications of confusing conflict with violence, of a biased focus on the outer Other and the inner Self, and the Rules perspective to designate the winner, are numerous:

- conflict being ubiquitous the perspective normalizes violence;

- the outcome is seen in terms of winner and loser;

- conflict is seen as between two parties to fit the model;

- compromise is possible as part of a bargaining culture;

- "undecided" means the conflict is on hold;

- "peace with justice" is what follows when Rules are followed;

- peace means following, not challenging the Anglo-Saxon order;

- nothing new is needed for peace, only to follow the Rules;

- anyone who takes to violence will perish by violence.

5. Conflict, war and peace: The TRANSCEND paradigm

     Time has come for an alternative to the Anglo-Saxon approach. In that paradigm violence is seen as the third stage in a standard history, a standard narrative. The paradigm assumes two stages preceding violence, but assumes no need for violence like for air, water, food, sex, sleep. A rereading of the paradigm indicates how violence can be avoided or reduced.

     The first stage is an unresolved, untransformed conflict; a ubiquitous phenomenon in human reality, easily leading to frustration because of blocked, shocking goals, with a potential for aggression against parties perceived as standing in the way.

     The second stage is polarization, reduction to two actors, Self and Other. Under extreme polarization Other is dehumanized as Satan's chosen people and Self exalted as God's Chosen People and carrier of supreme values, sacred or secular. Holders of such premodern imagery enter conflicts pre-polarized, armed for inevitable final battle between God and Satan. And then, third:

     Untransformed conflict+Dehumanization lead to violence.

     This paradigm is similar to Exposure to pathogens + Low resistance, immunity lead to disease. Like disease violence is caused by the preceding stages; like disease violence can be prevented by removing those causes. To remove the conflict cause we must known the goals, also subconscious, and try to bridge the gap between legitimate goals through transformation. To remove the polarization cause, depolarization, we have to decrease the distance from Self to Other. The process humanizes both parties, giving them both light and shadow./17/ To reach the inner parties to know their goals we need dialogue.

     As violence is self-reinforcing through many mechanisms, introducing new conflicts and by being polarizing in itself, violence should be minimized. Violence makes things worse. Conflict transformation should be by peaceful means. Conflict transformation removes the bellogen of frustration/aggression and depolarization, adds a paxogen of humanization corresponding to the immune system. More generally, the peace homologue of the immune system is culture of peace + structure of peace.

     In UN jargon these two activities are known generically as peacemaking and peacebuilding. In medical jargon they are similar to primary and secondary prophylaxis, removing pathogens and strengthening the self-healing capacity of the body.

     Then comes peacekeeping, controlling the violence, reducing it, even removing it, like primary health care in a polyclinic. A fourth stage, reconciliation for healing and closure, is the homologue of rehabilitation in health care. In peace as in health the therapy is in the complete package, not in one stage.

     Removal of incompatibility is impossible with B-orientation; Other is even deprived of the right to have goals. Each party's self-presentation is indispensable. Not all goals are legitimate, but processes with a winner denies the loser all legitimacy.

     Three possibilities remain: compromise, usually unsatisfactory for all parties; positive transcendence, creating a new reality, so that both goals could come close to realization, or negative transcendence so that both goals are denied. This presuppose empathy with the parties, much creativity, and ability to work nonviolently. But at the end of the tunnel is the light of genuine conflict transformation, and something new created./18/

     What does peace look like in this paradigm? Peace includes the absence of direct violence engaged in by military and others. It also includes the absence of structural violence, the non-intended massive suffering built into economic and political structures. And absence of cultural violence legitimizing direct and/or structural violence. These three absences add up to negative peace. The simplest approach would be mutual isolation, no structural ties, no shared culture. Better than violence but not peace when positive peace is missing/19/:

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VIOLENCE   DIRECT =           STRUCTURAL =      CULTURAL =

           harming, hurting   harming, hurting  legitimizing

                                                violence

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NEGATIVE   [1] absence of=    [2]absence of=no  [3] absence of= no

PEACE      ceasefire          exploitation; or  justification; or

                              structure=atomie  culture=anomie

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POSITIVE   [4] presence of=   [5] presence of=  [6] presence of=

PEACE      cooperation        equity, equality  culture of peace,

                                                and dialogue

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PEACE      negative +         negative +        negative +

           positive           positive          positive

-------------------------------------------------------------------

     Peace implies six tasks. First, eliminating the direct violence that causes suffering. Second, eliminating the structures that cause suffering through exploitation, or walls placing Jews or Palestinians in ghettos,. Third, debunking cultural themes that justify one or the other. The first task, known as ceasefire, is only 1/6 of a complete peace process. Most "peace processes" are actually ceasefire processes.

     Then the three tasks of building direct, structural and cultural peace. Fourth, the parties exchange goods, not "bads", not violence. Fifth, the structural version of that builds cooperation into the structure as something sustainable under the heading of equity for the economy,/20/ equality for the polity/21/, reciprocity, equal rights, benefits and dignity, "what you want for yourself you should also be willing to give Other." And finally, sixth, a culture of peace positively confirming and stimulating direct and structural peace.

6. The F-word: Conflict in Indonesia.

     The F-word is "federalism", remarkably absent in an Anglo- Saxon culture no stranger to F-words. The reason is found in the U-word common to the USA and the UK, United, making them neighbors not only culturally and alphabetically, but also in state theory. Federalism, based on power-sharing, reduces the power of the center, and Washington and London wanted more than foreign, security and financial affairs.

     The USA is a fake federation where rulers have ruled with rulers as seen by the rectangular rectilinear division. True federalism would accommodate nationality differences, like in India and Switzerland, and even more true federalism might accommodate political differences beyond the limited political spectrum we have today. The USA might benefit from giving the Inuits, the Hawaiians, the First Nations, the Chicanos, maybe also the African Americans, autonomy in their own parts. The UK might have benefitted from a federal constitution in 1801 giving very high autonomy to the parts, and the Soviet Union from different projects on the capitalism-socialism and democracy scales in the 16 republics. Even jacobin France may one day benefit.

     How about the Republic of Indonesia? If state-building means political, economic, military and cultural cohesion, then there are obvious problems. This is no analysis, only a listing:

[1]  Politically there are many moves for autonomy, even independence.

[2]  Economically there are huge general and national inequalities.

[3]  Culturally there are intra-islamic and Islam-Christian tensions.

[4]  Militarily the army kills its own people because of [1], [2], [3]; East Timor, Aceh and many others being very sad examples.

     But one project succeeded: Takdir Alisjahbana's bahasa Indonesia, one language for this incredibly rich, beautiful, diverse archipelago. One of the most gifted persons it has ever ben my privilege to meet, I sense that his creative eclecticism might also help in the other fields. He created a new fact.

     Federalism should not be confused with administrative devolution, delegating the authority to implem ent centrally made decisions. The basic point about federalism is a center-part compact about which functions to be handled by the center and which by the parts, it being understood that the part has the final word over its functions. The assumption is, of course, that prior to any decision there is a center-part dialogue and a maximum of mutual accommodation.

     The many centrifugal forces away from Java in general and Jakarta in particular are built around cultural differences, we are of a different kind, the general wish of people to be ruled by their own kind, sometimes economic inequities, real or perceived and a wish to keep economic benefits where the (re)sources are. In all cases an intense hatred of the army, often seen as out for revenge, to punish, and to prevent any agreement to come about.

     The word independence is heard as often in the parts of Indonesia as integration in the center. Federalism is rejected-- like in China-Taiwan, for instance--in the center as a step toward independence, "autonomy" sounds to them like separatism. And in the parts federalism is one more centralist strategy. With two camps, "separatists" and "centralists", there should be only two alternatives, tertium non datur. Some of this is due to the Anglo- Saxon F-word taboo, with low attention to federalism.

     Rejectionists refer, rightly, to the cases of failure: the breakdown of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, unable to stand up against the centrifugal forces of separatism, and the centralism of present Nigerian and Russian constructions. They might add the low likelihood that Bosnia-Hercegovoina will succeed with Croats wanting to become a part of Croatia and the Serbs in Republika Srpska wanting independence; Croats + Serbs being the majority. Federalism tries to reconcile centrifugal and centripetal forces, with the latter by and large missing they have to be imposed from above, meaning another type of fake federalism. The more federalism, like centralism, is enforced from above, the stronger will the forces of separatism become. 

     The controversy would benefit from more knowledge of the successes, like Switzerland and Belgium in Europe, Ethiopia in Africa and India (and also Pakistan) in Asia. In all cases there is a reasonable balance between centrifugal and centripetal forces, with intermarriage, commercial and nongovernmental ties serving to cement the federations. When we hear from India and Pakistan it is mainly about separatist tendencies, the media are not so good at reporting how some centralism is also working.

     There are many federalisms to choose from, depending on

[1] Division of functions between Center and Periphery

[2] Level of autonomy

[3] Territorial vs nonterritorial federalism

[4] Monocameral vs bicameral federalism

[5] Symmetric vs asymmetric federalism

[6] Vertical vs horizontal federalism

[7] Single level vs multilevel federalism

[8] Hard vs soft borders

Technical, and "nobody gave their life for federalism". Possible, but as an argument in favor, not against. In Indonesia. Or Iraq, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Korea, China. All over.

7. Conclusion: Give dignity to all parties

     One bahasa word is so known that people do not even know where it comes from. It connotes violence: amok. A bellum omnium contra omnes; not only a person, a whole village can run amok. The imagery is behaviorist, the outer violent behavior. It is like a play by the Norwegian playwright Holberg about the alcoholic Jeppe, Jeppe pa berget: "everybody know that Jeppe is drinking, nobody asks why", he complains (something to do with wife, Pernille, according to him). So, why do people run amok? Ask them, get their story, their emic theory, and the word "humiliation" comes up? Who humiliated whom? What is their emic theory. Could a central government have privileged one village over another? What are their goals, in the center and in the periphery, in Jeppe and Pernille?

     The method is not a debate between the parties; that is only one more stage for a zero-sum loser-winner battle (again regulated by Anglo-Saxon Rules, like in the Oxford/Cambridge Student Union).

     The method is dialogue, the mutual search for understanding; the model is a good conversation, a good seminar, asking questions, exploring together. Start with a skilled mediator doing this with all parties, bringing the dialogue to mutual explorations of new realities, the negatively not (yet) existing, where what is good in all the goals to a large extent can be realized. Some behaviorism is necessary because that is how the parties, literally speaking, see each other; but certainly not sufficient. To take on the inner world of the parties is to give them dignity by respecting them, not accepting everything. To respect is also to probe, to challenge.

     The task of the mediator is to try to get the ball rolling. The conflict is transformed when the parties can continue, themselves.

     We try to come to grips with these problems in peace studies./22/ There is some but limited value in security studies. A genuine brain child of Anglo-Saxon deep rules and culture, its concern is violence that upsets law and order, read Rules and order according to Rules, in other words the status quo. There are no security studies to control the violence of US/UK interventions/punishment expeditions have not been seen. The conclusions of these studies tend to be some kind of topside-down control, and as there is nobody recognized as being on top of USA/UK, being causa sui, they are not objects of security studies. They are objects of peace studies, however, since in their view peace is what you get when you follow their rules, held to be universal. Democracy and human rights are among what they (think

they) have, hence parts of the peace package. Equality and equity are not, hence not included. They are convinced that their Rules are the best for everybody who really lives up to them.

     This type of conflict management is simply not good enough. It is also rather male, rather old, and rather stale. Insert in this a high number of women and young people, capable of having dialogues with all sides, like a good playwright having enough empathy to make transparent to all parties what it looks like to the others, searching together for creative new approaches, all the time proceeding nonviolently, by peaceful means. The women would often bring a higher level of empathy, including compassion, into the field; the young often a higher level of creativity. Together they might work miracles, like at the end of the deadlocked cold war in Europe, and balance topside-down with downside-up peace politics.

Appendix: SOME NOTES ON ANGLO-SAXON DEEP CULTURE

Nature: domesticated, undramatic; a penchant for cutting nature down to lawns. Food (sex?) also tame, tepid, undramatic.

Person: domesticated, undramatic; moderate Id, medium-strong individualist Egos, a superego ruling by Rules (Rule =Just=God) to define "the winner is", in games (bridge, Guinness Book of Records); sports (balls on lawns); business (regulated competition), courts (due process of law); parliaments (Robert's Rules of Order); wars, outruling dangerous arms, int'l tribunals with Anglo-Saxon judges.

Space in general: Star, London-centered, dualism in geography as an island with Other in Ireland, the Continent, overseas.

Social space: Star, as a union (UK) dominated by England/London, extreme fear of movements for sovereignty, even federalism.

World space: Star as Commonwealth with "special relation" to the USA, British Council using English culture as foreign policy.

Personal time: make it, an individually designed and executed career in public space, less focus on private and inner spaces.

Social time: Tremendous ups, small downs, loss of Empire a major down, hanging on to imperial pursuits as junior partner in US/UK belligerence, threatened as member of a possibly federal EU.

Transpersonal: God also domesticated, tamed, undramatic; a strong faith in ratio = God, a cult of science, the empirical.

Episteme: Very aristotelian/cartesian, atomistic/deductive; with deep skepticism of "sweeping generalizations". Very empiricist, with positivist cult of the empirical as the judge, pragmatic.

Chosenness: "Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves" was by divine mandate; but if no loner chosen by God to be chosen by somebody Anglo-Saxon chosen by God comes as a good second best.

Traumas:  Glories:

nothingness, Roman outpost Beowulf belligerence

Viking, Norman invasions Integration of cultural strands

Incessant Irish "troubles" Conquest of the British Isles   

Guy Fawkes etc. Institutional: 1214, 1688

1776-1812: triumphant USA The British Empire

Gandhi, the loss of India The Battle of Britain, "finest hour"

The loss of Empire Good sports, with stiff upper lip

Second rate military power joining US "peacekeeping" operations

Second rate cultural power joining US cultural dominance

Second rate economic/political power: vacillating between US&EU

Dichotomy: England/UK vs the rest, Anglo-Saxon vs the rest

Manicheism: the former good, the latter may even be Evil

Armageddon: final battle, end of Anglo-Saxon=End of civilization

General: Correct behavior=behavior according to the Rules, will lead to peace with justice. Violence=conflict is against the Rules. Ceasefire=peace has to be imposed according to Rules. Disputes, between equals, and grievances, from below, must be settled and redressed according to Rules. The deep culture is about behavior control according to Rules, not about "creative" transformation.

Conflict perspective: priorities in conflict, high to low:

I priority, high: Prevail, according to the Rules, if necessary by fighting, imposing Anglo-Saxon rules, and Anglo-Saxon judges.

II priority: Compromise, merchant culture, according to Rules

III priority: Withdrawal, case is dismissed, according to Rules

IV priority, lowest: Transcend, but why create new reality when the present is the best of all worlds, perfect=contradiction-free?

Nonviolence was a shock: neither by Anglo-Saxon rules, nor violent.

NOTES:

1.  Mentalities, or deep cultures, often come in hard and soft varieties.  What is described in the text is a hard version. Softer, more liberal versions certainly exist.  But this hard version has influenced Anglo-Saxon thinking about conflict and its solution, violence/war and its negation, peace all over the world.

2.  Just as the world has Big Powers politically and economically, it also has Big Powers culturally. The Four Big in science, including social science, and humanities including philosophy, are no doubt the USA, UK, France an Germany.  These are the countries setting the agendas for the rest, radiating the light to be reflected by lesser powers.

3.  This can also be done by putting the bar too high

4.  This is the nation producing the Guinness Book of Records.

5. One possible motive was the public execution of buildings held to be mega-sinners.

6.  Is this the CIA strategy - wait for/stimulate/provoke a coup attempt from the left, which then serves to trigger a massive coup from the right?  Indonesia 1965, Philippines 1986, Russia 1991?

7.  The US (the Ford administration) "go ahead" to Jakarta invading East Timor after the Portuguese withdrawal.

8.  From the division of Japan and the start of US aggression against Korean nationalists protesting US occupation (USA called them "communists") in Cheju from 1946 (the "April 3" incident) up till the present.

9.  To the best of my understanding Washington has for a long time wanted Trincomalee on the Sri Lanka East coast as a naval base, having the best port in South Asia.  Trinco as the town is called has an almost even distribution of Sinhalas, Tamils and (Tamil- speaking) Muslims, and is seen by the Tamils as  part of the Eastern province, in turn a part of the Tamil Eelam.  The Tamil Tigers, LTTE, are classified by Washington as a terrorist organization,  by the Sri Lanka government as a negotiation partner.  Thus, there is a conflict between US goals, the LTTE and the ceasefire process, possibly catching the Sri Lanka government in the middle - with the Prime Minister siding more with the USA and the President less?

10.  To the best of my understanding the Bush administration sees a maoist victory as a victory for terrorism, making Nepal a possible host for Al Qaeda after Afghanistan was lost.  US training of the Royal Nepalese Army in "killing maoists" would be a consequence.

11. A much more general, and hence more adequate expression than "stake-holder".

12.  Meta = after, in Greek; like in metaphysics = after physics.

In that there is a position taken, that the objective conflict conceptually comes before a subjective image is projected on empirical reality. But that is not a factual position.  As mentioned in the text any sequence is possible, including A-->C--B or even A-->B-->C, a subjective image of incompatibility (between my goals an his), enacted as violence, and then an objective conflict (between my goal, to inflict suffering, and his, to avoid suffering).

13.  Edmund Husserl.  The argument in favor of this position would be that only through the inner life worlds of the parties does the conflict re-enter the outer world.  A counter position could pick up a useful expression: "the parties are on a collision course", implying that it is entirely possible to see a collision = shock coming before the parties do.  But that position alone would reduce parties which we assume to be human, individual or collective, to billiard balls and their collisions to mechanics.

14.  Thus, the carriers of violent behavior, violent people, are looked upon like the carriers of such pathogens as viruses and micro-organisms, under the heading used during the "war against Viet Nam", "seek and destroy", or for the "war against terrorism", "identify and crush" (Colin Powell).  The approach is epidemiological.

15. "Scientistic" might be a better term.

16.  When I first formulated this triangle in 1971 as a broad approach to conflict it was based on extensive reading to see how others tried to come to grips with that phenomenon.  A, B and C were the three approaches identified.  I saw no reason not to ride on all three, but privileged the objective incompatibility orientation as A and B seemed to vary enormously with circumstances that belonged to the context, not to the essence of conflict. A and B, on the other hand, were treated symmetrically.  Human being = inner + outer, no reason to privilege one over the other.  The answer to that philosophical controversy, sometimes phrased as phenomenology vs positivism, was an obvious both-and in need of an interesting positive transcendence.

17.  Carl Gustav Jung: those aspects of ourselves we do not recognize, reject, and may project unto others under polarization.

18.  See Conflict Transformation By Peaceful Means, Geneva: United Nations, 2000, 189 pp; also in a shorter version.

19. For more in this see Peace By Peaceful Means, Part I.

20.  Very weak, a very undeveloped field, both in economic theory and practice, with the social, economic and cultural rights of 1966 being an effort, but not yet ratified by the leading state in the state system, the United States.

21.  And that is where democracy (one person one vote) and human rights (every one is entitled - -) enter, but not only within countries, also among them.

22.  For some of own efforts, see Peace By Peaceful Means London: SAGE, 1996, 280 pp. Searching for Peace(with CG, K Jacobsen):

London: Pluto, 2000, 2nd edition 2002. Conflict Transformation By Peaceful Means, Geneva: UN 2000, 189pp.