{"id":18886,"date":"2012-04-30T12:00:20","date_gmt":"2012-04-30T11:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=18886"},"modified":"2019-08-04T06:59:55","modified_gmt":"2019-08-04T05:59:55","slug":"memories-conscious-and-subconscious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2012\/04\/memories-conscious-and-subconscious\/","title":{"rendered":"Memories Conscious and Subconscious"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><em>Gernika-Basque Country, Spain, 28 April 2012<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>75 years ago Germany-Italy bombed this sacred Basque-Spanish town, adding state terrorism to the destruction of arms factories.\u00a0 Picasso made the atrocity enter world collective memory forever.\u00a0 As a testimony to the power of art, and memory, the painting was ordered covered when USA tried to make the case that Iraq was producing mass destruction weapons for the UN Security Council.<\/p>\n<p>Two kinds of memories serve politics: glories and traumas.\u00a0 The glories&#8211;victory, liberation, constitution&#8211;are celebrated as the birth of a nation.\u00a0 The traumas&#8211;defeat, invasion-occupation, decline and fall&#8211;are surrounded with the oath NEVER AGAIN!\u00a0 We are guided not only by future goals, but also by past memories.\u00a0 They set the discourse, the frame for what happens.\u00a0 Anybody attacking the USA on US territory invokes Pearl Harbor; 9\/11 is then sedimented on top of that, tripling the response should there ever be one more.<\/p>\n<p>Better know the wounds imprinted on the collective soul.\u00a0 Thus, Baghdad&#8217;s were colossal: the 1258 massacre by Djengis Khan&#8217;s grandson, Mongols on rapid horses, Armenian Christians blessed by the Pope; a million killed, Christians saved.\u00a0 HERE THEY GO AGAIN: planes and missiles for horses, Bush for Hulagu, and Christians.\u00a0 But Pope John Paul II argued dialogue; and was silenced by mainstream Western media.<\/p>\n<p>When the Portuguese and the English destroyed buddhist-muslim trade from East China to Somalia around 1500, founding Macao and Hong Kong, two nations were deeply traumatized.\u00a0 They still are.<\/p>\n<p>Here are four rules close to social laws about traumas; often sending traumas inflicted deep down into the collective subconscious:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Rule I:\u00a0 <em>The perpetrator forgets easily; the victim never forgets<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>Rule II: <em>The victim can use a trauma to cover up traumas on others<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>Rule III: <em>To be both perpetrator and victim is difficult to handle<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>Rule IV: <em>A key source of trauma is to have traumatized others<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Thus, how many Italians were conscious of the first state terrorism ever from the air, their 1911 bombing and killing women and children in oases in Libya, making a colony?\u00a0 How many Spaniards are aware of Franco&#8217;s bombing, using US-French planes, of the sacred city of Xauen in &#8220;Spanish&#8221; Morocco in 1925?\u00a0 Germany-Italy-Spain-France-USA all attacked Iraq till Zapatero pulled Spain out in 2004.<\/p>\n<p>Japan suffered a terrible trauma in Hiroshima-Nagasaki; and 6 August is a day of infamy on par with 7 December 1941, Pearl Harbor.\u00a0 But can also serve, consciously or not, to forget Japan&#8217;s misdeeds in China and Korea. Some in Israel act as if unspeakable horrors like Russian pogroms and the <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">s<\/span><em>hoa<\/em> is a carte blanche for the <em>naqba<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Norway is right now experiencing the existential dilemma of being victim of Breivik&#8217;s islamophobic atrocity, an unparalleled one man&#8217;s war against his own country, <em>and<\/em> at the same time killing Afghan muslims.\u00a0 One way out is to depoliticize him, even dehumanize him, by declaring him insane.\u00a0 The court will ultimately decide.<\/p>\n<p>Germany was, indeed, both victim and perpetrator, the victim of two defeats, Versailles-invasion-occupation, nazism, Germany&#8217;s fall from within, of state terrorist bombing, <em>and<\/em> perpetrator: Auschwitz, and much, much more. Germany presents itself only as perpetrator lest their suffering is used to legitimize their atrocities; more traumatized than many victims.\u00a0 NO MORE AUSCHWITZ, not NO MORE WAR.<\/p>\n<p>So much to illustrate the four rules.\u00a0 We are dealing with a basic violence ingredient: traumas that have remained un-handled.\u00a0 Some more cases.<\/p>\n<p>There was another 9\/11: Chile-Pinochet-USA, 1973.\u00a0 Not handled.<\/p>\n<p>There was a background for 9\/11: the traumas suffered by the Arab nations fighting the Turkish empire when the freedom promised turned into colonization by the imperial successors (Italy)-England-France: the Sykes-Picot betrayal. And a Jewish homeland: the Balfour declaration.\u00a0 For Turkey, on top of that: Istanbul occupied.<\/p>\n<p>Russia: traumatized by Napoleon and Hitler, traumatizing Eastern Europe, by tsars and bolsheviks. Enormities.\u00a0 Not handled.<\/p>\n<p>England: traumatizing the Scots, the Welsh, the Irish and the colonies, shredding the evidence; traumatized by the Blitz (between 7\u00a0September 1940 and 10\u00a0May 1941) after they started the bombing of Nazi Germany at Wihelmshafen in December 1939 and Berlin on the 25th of August 1940.\u00a0 Then there is Guy Fawkes, institutionalizing 5 November as a day of infamy-nevermore: treason from within being more significant than to attack or be attacked.<\/p>\n<p>Africa:\u00a0 slavery-colonialism-neocolonialism makes the others pale; destroying a continent.\u00a0 Not handled: the perpetrators walk out of conferences.<\/p>\n<p>Latin America: genocide-colonialism-neocolonialism.\u00a0 Destroying a continent.\u00a0 Not handled; the perpetrators still celebrate Columbus and &#8220;discoveries&#8221; each 12 October, forgetting that their glory may be traumas for countless others.\u00a0 Like April 1, Fools Day, today a joke day, mindless of the many promised access to the coast only to be killed as a part of the ethnic cleansing by the <em>reyes cat\u00f3licos<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Serbia: 29 June 1389 Kosovo Polje trauma, 500 years struggle to defeat the Turks.\u00a0 Now, 500 years of struggle against the new Turks?<\/p>\n<p>Iran:\u00a0 1953, the CIA-MI6 coup against the elected PM Mossadegh followed by 25 years of the Shah dictatorship.\u00a0 Deep, very deep, and unhandled.<\/p>\n<p>There is much, much more, all waiting to erupt.\u00a0 The way out?\u00a0 Reconciliation. Easily said, hard to do.<a title=\"\" href=\"#_edn1\">[i]<\/a>\u00a0 Two countries stand out.\u00a0 South Africa: Truth and Reconciliation by Tutu, Mandela and de Klerk.\u00a0 Germany: acknowledging what they did, conveying it through school textbooks, embracing democracy and human rights.\u00a0 Gustav Heinemann.<\/p>\n<p>And Roman Herzog, another German president, who apologized for Gernika and rightly received the Gernika prize on the anniversary.<\/p>\n<p>And Gernika itself, the Gogoratuz peace research center, and museum, and work to unearth the past, now planning to apologize for arms produced by that factory (some used in the Nanjing massacre).\u00a0 Turning trauma into positive action.\u00a0 May there be many others.<\/p>\n<p><strong>NOTE:<\/strong><\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref1\">[i]<\/a>.\u00a0 See Joanna Santa Barbara, Johan Galtung, Diane Perlman: <em>Reconciliation: Clearing the Past\u00a0 Building a Future<\/em> TRANSCEND University Press, 2012, <a href=\"http:\/\/transcend.org\/tup\/\" title=\"\" >www.transcend.org\/tup<\/a>.\u00a0 We the authors are painfully aware of how inadequate many of the approaches in the book are relative to the immensity of the traumas.\u00a0 We call upon everybody to produce better theories and practices.<\/p>\n<p><em>__________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/johan-galtung4.jpeg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-133847\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/johan-galtung4-150x150.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><\/em><em>Johan Galtung, a professor of peace studies, dr hc mult, is founder of <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/\" >TRANSCEND International<\/a><em> and rector of <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tpu\/\" >TRANSCEND Peace University<\/a><em>. <\/em><em>He was awarded among others the 1987 Right Livelihood Award, known as the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize.<\/em> <em>Galtung\u00a0has mediated in\u00a0over 150 conflicts in more than 150 countries, and written more than 170 books on peace and related issues<\/em>,<em> 96 as the sole author. More than 40 have been translated to other languages, including <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tup\/index.php?book=1\" >50 Years-100 Peace and Conflict Perspectives<\/a><em> published by <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tup\/\" >TRANSCEND University Press<\/a><em>. His book, <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tup\/index.php?book=46\" >Transcend and Transform<\/a>, <em>was translated to 25 languages<\/em>.<em> He has published more than 1700 articles\u00a0and book\u00a0chapters and over 500 Editorials for <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/\" >TRANSCEND Media Service<\/a>.<em> More<a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/galtung\/\" > information about Prof. Galtung<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/galtung\/#publications\" >all of his publications<\/a> can be found at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/galtung\/\" >transcend.org\/galtung<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two kinds of memories serve politics: glories and traumas.  The glories&#8211;victory, liberation, constitution&#8211;are celebrated as the birth of a nation.  The traumas&#8211;defeat, invasion-occupation, decline and fall&#8211;are surrounded with the oath NEVER AGAIN!  We are guided not only by future goals, but also by past memories.  They set the discourse, the frame for what happens.  Anybody attacking the USA on US territory invokes Pearl Harbor; 9\/11 is then sedimented on top of that, tripling the response should there ever be one more. Better know the wounds imprinted on the collective soul<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18886\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}