People tell us we should forgive and forget but forgiveness does not necessarily include ‘forgetting.’ To forgive is to remember an event without resentment or wanting revenge. We can forgive someone even while we are angry and hurt, or wanting our hurting to be recognized.

Some people believe that forgiving means  wrongdoers don’t have to face the consequences of their actions, or have to make amends, but neither of these has to be part of forgiveness. Forgiving is not about letting the wrongdoer off the hook, it’s about freeing yourself from the destructive torment of hate and resentment. Not forgiving can condemn yourself to a life of misery; of being battered in a stormy sea while the wrongdoer goes sailing on in calm waters, happily unaware of the hate that threatens to drag you down.  

It can be quite foolish for a woman in a domestic vioence situation to ‘forget’ this man is likely to react violently in certain circumstances.  It can be foolish because the same thing is likely to happen next time he is faced with the same circumstances. It can be irresponsible because it fails to protect other people from being affected by his actions. It also fails to help the perpetrator, and that can sometimes be the most serious failing because helping the perpetrator face up and make amends helps all those he will have dealings with in the future. 

Forgive and forget’ can contribute to continued violence, to the extent that forgiveness  becomes just another part of the ‘cycle of violence.’ When that happens, forgiveness is still necessary for your own sake, but there should be conditions attached to any reconciliation. This is important in domestic violence. Many people find it difficult to understand why a woman remains in a violent  relationship being beaten by her partner, especially if she has opportunities to leave. However, the emotional and psychological forces involved can make it very difficult for her to leave, especially if the man is well aware of those forces and uses them to trap her in a power game he may actually believe is love. He is partly right in that belief but it is his love of power, rather than love for his partner. 

Women in domestic violence situations can mistake feelings of dependency as love, which can be made more complex by cultural or religious beliefs about a woman’s role in regard to sex and love. When she does muster the courage to leave, her partner may be devastated and crumble into a broken, sobbing mess pleading for forgiveness and making all sorts of promises to be good. This part of the game is an attempt to hook the woman’s compassion and her need to be wanted, which often works. So she forgives him and after a blissful few weeks he slowly returns to his old habits, and the cycle of violence continues.

Reconciliation does not have to be part of forgiveness. Before reconciliation can be successful, the cycle of violence needs to be broken by the abuser successfully completing an attitude-changing course on establishing and maintaining a relationship based on equality. Ideally, the woman should also successfully complete such a course before considering reconciliation. Forgiveness, forgetting and reconciliation are three distinct and independent concepts that may or may not be tied together.

Bob Myers.

We usually think of peace in terms of 'being calm and peaceful.' We may picture something tranquil. However, if that is the true meaning of peace, no human relationship can be peaceful, because conflict is inevitable in human relationships. World peace would also be impossible to achieve. As well as being unachievable, perpetual tranquility could become incredibly boring. Just imagine what life would be like without novelty; or without the unexpected and the bloopers that make The Funniest Home Videos Show so popular. A great deal of humour is based on mistakes, accidents and out of the ordinary events. Disputes between close friends can be hilarious to audiences and, with hindsight, even to the friends involved. Even constant disputes can be positive. Many wonderful friendships, and marriages, have existed between people who argue about almost everything while enjoying a strong spiritual bond.

The word dynamic means lively, vigorous, vibrant or changing. Therefore vibrant peace can include the differences, disputes and conflicts that seem to strengthen some relationships rather than cause harm. Dynamic peace allows a relationship to grow through, or because of, the existence of conflict. The difference is in how the people involved respond to the conflict and what they are centred on as they express their views. People can be very assertive in ‘robust discussions’ and still keep within the guidelines of conflict resolution. They strike a balance, without being aware of it, between their need to belong and their need to assert themselves as individuals.

In 1996 this concept inspired me to register the business name Harmony in Dispute. To me, that captures the fundamental of dynamic peace in human relationships at every level, from the interpersonal to the international. And the guidelines for establishing dynamic peace are the same at all levels too. No matter what age or position we hold in life, we are still struggling to resolve the childhood inner conflict between the need to belong and the need to assert ourselves as individuals. All adults are just grownup children who mainly learned how to resolve conflicts in their family setting and, if that early experience was negative, they may continue to resolve conflict in a negative way. However, it’s never too late to learn to transform conflict into the creative conflict that is part of dynamic peace. 


Bob Myers

It’s true that we are born with the need to be an individual and the conflicting need to belong, not only to belong to other people but to nature and the cosmos (or God). We are also born with incredible potential to satisfy these conflicting needs and enjoy peace and happiness. Each of us arrives in this world with the potential of the full range of human characteristics, traits, virtues or whatever else you want to call them. We have the potential to be whatever it is possible for a human person to be and to maybe surpass the achievements, positive or negative, of any person who has lived before us.  

Which of our characteristics or traits are encouraged or restricted is determined by the culture we are born into, and by the beliefs and values of the people around us, especially our carers and teachers, who experienced the same process.  And although they loved and cared for us, and wanted us to feel we belong in a spiritual way, the social structures of our culture strongly encourage the opposite. Our economic system is competitive and so is the majority of our recreational activity. Our parliamentary and legal systems are adversarial and emphasise the fear of punishment for maintaining social order; these systems only succeed in perpetuating the desire to dominate rather than belong.

To a large extent, our culture encourages the characteristics or traits that cause us to judge our self esteem and self confidence by comparing ourselves against the wealth, possessions, power, knowledge and skills of other people. Winning, status and image is portrayed as giving us importance and happiness. This is false because the balance between the need to belong and the need to be an individual is upset when one person’s gain in self esteem is another person’s loss. All the violence in the world stems from our failure to set up social systems with values and beliefs that maintain a balance between the need to belong and the need for individuality.

There is no happiness without peace; no peace without justice; and no justice without equality. Difference doesn’t disappear with equality. It’s possible to have importance and equality. It’s possible to have authority and equality. By changing what we base our sense of importance on, we can also change our sense of belonging and bring the two into balance.
Bob Myers.

Whether the setting is the home, workplace or community, the single most important thing affecting our happiness and peace of mind is how we resolve the life-long conflict between two deep human needs: the need to belong and the need to be an individual. This conflict affects the aims and achievements of every person in our groups and every relationship we have. It is an inner conflict as well as a social conflict and each affects the other.    

We first experience this conflict between satisfying our own needs and considering the needs of others around the age of two as we begin to discover our place in the family group. The level of self esteem we develop at that age and the way we judge our worth in regard to other people sets the stage for the next crisis period in our human struggle. That crisis period occurs at teenage as we break away from the control of our parents and face the give and take of fitting into the wider community.  But the basic struggle continues throughout life and affects all our relationships with other people. Therefore it’s important to understand how to use conflict to strengthen relationships.

Peace of mind and a sense of satisfaction in relationships result from striking a balance between these two needs. Not from giving or from gaining, but from a balance of the two. The further we stray from that balance, in either direction, the more stressed the relationship becomes. Regardless of whether we call it balance, justice or equality, it’s necessary for peace and happiness in relationships involving two people or a million people. In practice, the balance is better described as an average rather than a constant. It could even be thought of as dynamic because of rapid variations but the important thing is that the people involved have a sense that there is balance between their need to belong and their need to be an individual. People in such relationships stand tall as individuals who belong. And for many, that extends to include their relationship with nature and the cosmos.  

Bob Myers.

People spend millions of dollars on what often turns out to be a fruitless search for some form of peace and happiness. The sad news is that most just waste their money because they can’t recognise peace and happiness when they find it. So they just pass it by. Part of the reason is because we think of peace as being something calm and tranquil. We don’t think of finding peace in the midst of a heated argument. Nor do we think of finding happiness in a catastrophe if we think of happiness as being a constant state of euphoria. Constant tranquillity and constant euphoria might sound like a promise of heaven but it certainly isn’t life.

The best we seem to be able to manage in life is to experience short periods of tranquillity or feelings of euphoria that pass too quickly. Most are just fleeting moments that become wonderful memories we carry with us for the rest of our lives. However, we can do better. We can have both peace of mind and a sense of harmony as normal parts of daily life, even in the midst of turmoil and sadness, if we are realistic and aim for dynamic peace and happiness.

The word dynamic means vibrant, lively, energetic and surprising. Dynamic peace immediately becomes more appealing and exciting than constant tranquillity over the long term. Therefore, peace and happiness can vary without being lost, because it is really based on something deeper than the fluctuations and disturbances appearing on the surface. Large fluctuations can occur without destroying the overall sense of stability within human relationships when the people involved follow the guidelines that transform conflict into creative conflict. They can learn from nature and experience harmony in disputes.   

Four themes run through the material on the Harmony in Dispute website and I will explore these in future blogs. Using these four themes as the framework was inspired by the work of Brendan McKeague, lead trainer with Pace e Bene Australia.   

1.    Exploring our relationship to other people; to the environment and to the cosmos
         (or God, by whatever name). 
                    Included under this heading are things like identity, self esteem, self confidence and
                     morals, as well as beliefs and values regarding authority (ours and theirs).
2.    The ways in which our culture affects how we relate to each other. 
                    Included under this heading are things like love, sexism, racism, social status,
                    structural and systemic inequality and discrimination.
3.    Where and how to regain spiritual and emotional strength when life gets tough. 
                    Included under this heading are the myriad of ‘self esteem service stations’ people
                    use to lift their spirits, ranging from religious practices to secular activities such as
                    shopping and sport.
4.    Exploring new and better ways to enhance problem solving and conflict resolution skills. 
                    Included under this heading are various sets of conflict resolution methods and
                    guidelines, as well as the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Dorothy Day,
                    and various religious figures.  

Bob Myers.

NEW RELATIONSHIP BUILDING EBOOK to boost parents' confidence and self-esteem.

Family relationship problems? My new eBook on family problems is invaluable for parents or for anyone filling the parenting role temporarily or permanently.

I know from long experience that parents want easy-to-understand ways of coping when faced with the everyday difficulties adolescent children experience. This book makes complex theory simple, and explains how to build, maintain, repair and strengthen relationships with teenagers.

While acknowledging that parents are the real 'experts' in dealing with their families, this self improvement eBook encourages parents to take control of the parenting situation by taking control of their own actions and reactions. It describes how to remove destructive conflict from parent/child relationships and identifies the traps that block good communication.

Every child can be thought of as an apprentice adult and the adolescent child can be thought of as very nearly through that apprenticeship. You have passed on many of the skills needed for your child to make a good job of being an adult and the time is very near for some solo flying practice. However, there are just a few things that need tweaking during this period of 'letting go'. 

Parents, teachers, residential youth workers and anyone working with young people will find much in this conflict transformation book to support them in the often difficult task of teaching, guiding and assisting children prepare for life as responsible independent adults.

Bob Myers.

Everything written on this website, including these tips, is based on the principle: There is no happiness without peace; no peace without justice; and no justice without equality, even in the home.  

• Reward your child just for ‘being,’ not just when they are achieving. Children deserve love and affection simply for existing. This can be shown often through hugs, affectionate play or verbal expressions of love and concern.
• Every child has a unique identity. Some are shy, others are confident, and you cannot force a child to change her basic nature. Every child should be accepted and appreciated as they are, if only because they had no say in what attributes and disposition they inherited. Nor do they have a say in what they have learned since birth.
• Trying to force a child to do something he is not ready to do can lead to trouble. When he is ready he may need guidance and encouragement but will not need to be forced.
• To encourage a positive attitude towards work, make a list of routine tasks and think about the fairness and safety reasons for those tasks, as well as the short and long term consequences (effects) when those tasks are not carried out, so you can explain it to the kids when they ask that annoying question, ‘Why?’
• To encourage a positive attitude towards rules, do the same as you did with the tasks. Then you can explain the fairness and safety reasons for the rules.
• If you normally make the rules, ask the kids to suggest how the rules could be improved. If they suggest something that is fairer or safer, adjust or replace the rule. This helps them to develop ownership of the rules.
• Try not to criticize a child’s behaviour in front of others. You want the child’s behaviour to change; you don’t want to damage their self- esteem.
• If you think of the child as being separate from her behaviour, you can strongly condemn the behaviour without condemning the child. You can be angry at the behaviour without being angry with her. The behaviour is unloved; the child is loved. The behaviour is rejected but the child is simply taught a more acceptable way of acting.
• Give children age-appropriate choices so they get practice at making decisions. This will increase their sense of self and of their importance in the family.
• When going shopping remember to ask your child what he likes and dislikes. This is a way of helping children develop the confidence that accompanies a sense of equality with others.
• Parents and children have different responsibilities and different problems but the child’s problems are just as important to the child as the parent’s problems are to the parent. This sometimes causes a conflict that could get out of hand if it turns into a power struggle. If possible, solve the child’s problem first, so peace is restored, and then tackle your problem.
• Every problem is an opportunity to spend healthy time bonding with the child and passing on knowledge and skills as you encourage the child’s efforts.
• Teaching kids habits, rituals and routines is essential for helping them develop a sense of security, especially if you explain the safety and fairness reasons for each action. For example ‘look right, look left, look right again before crossing a road’ is obviously based on safety, and knowing the reason can help them to think about consequences.

Bob Myers

Most people rate honesty very highly, especially in regard to money and telling the truth, so it seems logical that our social systems would reflect that attitude. Do they?

A person who is convicted in a court of law for stealing money or telling lies is branded as a thief and a liar for life and may find it difficult to find employment. However, a person who appeals and has the evidence against him dismissed on a technicality has a clean slate, even though the inadmissible evidence proved his guilt beyond doubt.

The point is that, in the legal system, the law and its interpretation is more important than the truth. Our legal system is an adversarial system which means the lawyers involved are competing against each other to convince a judge or jury to accept their version of what is legally right, not what is the truth. In any adversarial situation, winning becomes more important than the truth.

Our parliamentary system is based on what is called the Westminster adversarial system and anyone who has watched politicians in action quickly become aware that winning an argument is far more important than giving a straight answer. There is probably no better example of the adversarial debating process than parliament. Every politician is by definition trying to increase their power and influence in the parliament and most work to become cabinet ministers or maybe even prime minister.

In the general community, most committees adopt a version of the Westminster adversarial system for making decisions, and even sporting tribunals adopt a legalistic system. Religious institutions are often described as both adversarial and legalistic in dealing with complaints and disputes. So it is little wonder that in everyday life we also adopt an adversarial attitude to settling differences with other people, even loved ones.  

The effect of this influence on the way we relate to others can damage relationships because the main aim of the adversarial approach is to win and we feel somehow inferior if we lose. That means the whole thing is more self-serving than advancing our knowledge of the truth or finding a solution that everyone can live with.

• The example from parliament and the legal system is that the winning argument somehow becomes the truth, rather like deciding who is right by having a fist fight, or who can drink the most alcohol. That means there is no real requirement for the content of a person’s argument to be actual truth.
• In order to win, it is an acceptable tactic to discredit the opposition’s intelligence to weaken their argument, even though you may secretly agree with it. Winning may therefore promote something neither side actually believes is right.
• This method of debating is being taught to our children in the schools as a legitimate way of advancing our knowledge and skills

All the above throws some light on why children can be confused when we suddenly get upset over them being a little untruthful  and refusing to admit to doing something.

I suggest that we would have more credibility with our children if our social systems, including churches and schools, were to adopt and teach the Gandhian truth-seeking method of debating. Gandhi taught about the importance of hanging onto what we believe to be the truth because our beliefs and values help us make sense of the world as we make decisions about what to do.

Truth-seeking debates.
Some of our beliefs are deeply held, especially religious beliefs, and we feel very threatened and defensive when they are attacked. However, other people hold strong opposing views which they claim as being the truth. Obviously, opposing views cannot both be the absolute truth.

Gandhi maintained that everyone knows part of the truth and part of the untruth. He taught that it is only through listening to understand the other’s views that we can take little bits that make sense to us and add these to our truth, so our truth grows. And if we listen to enough people and gain a little from each of them, our truth gets bigger and bigger. This was a deep belief for him because he believed Truth was God, so his search for truth was a search for God.

Our beliefs and values are important to hang onto but, if we believe our truth is the truth and are not prepared to modify it under any circumstances, those beliefs and values become more like prison walls restricting our knowledge.

A genuine search for the truth sets us free from the prison of false beliefs but it’s also important to hold fast to what we believe to be true as we assess what others are saying.

The rules of the truth-seeking debate method are:

• Be open and honest in expressing your views.
• Listen  to, and respect, the views of others.
• Be prepared to vary your views if you are convinced by what you hear.
• Then be open and honest in sharing your new level of awareness.
  

I wonder what kind of social structures and systems we would have now had our ancestors adopted a cooperative, truth-seeking debating method rather than the adversarial method. 

Bob Myers. 

Many studies have shown that a strong link exists between inequality and all kinds of social diseases. My latest book, Travelling the Road of Peace and Happiness, contains information from some of those studies, including the following:

Based on thirty years of research by leading organisations, various universities and independent social scientists, (The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always do Better) argues that inequality is the root cause of many of society’s ills.

 The authors claim that if an affluent society suffers from one social disease – for example high levels of stress – we can be reasonably sure it will also have high rates of obesity, drug use, mental illness, imprisonment, violent crime, distrust, depression, and illiteracy. And the more unequal the society is, the higher will be the rate of those diseases. Although most of the evidence is centred on income inequality, they make a strong link between perceived social inequality (judging ourselves in relation to other people) and all the stress-related social diseases.

They emphasise that inequality doesn’t just affect the poor of society; the affluent are also adversely affected. To put that in a more positive way, reducing inequality also benefits the affluent members of the society.

Most people think of equality in terms of income but reality makes it very unlikely that there will ever be a society in which everyone has the same income. At the beginning of board games like Monopoly every player has an equal amount of money but it isn’t long before that equality is upset. Some social analysts use equal opportunity to rate a society’s level of equality, which is certainly more practical than rating it by income.

 The studies mentioned above indicate that money is very important for health and happiness only up to a point, but past that point it makes little difference to health or happiness. What then becomes important is the perceived social equality, which is so delicate and at the mercy of a society obsessed with domination and competition in almost every area of daily life. The obsession with domination is seen in our parliamentary system and legal system, both of which set and reflect the adversarial nature of our culture in regard to conflict resolution and differences of opinions.

The obsession with competition is seen in sport, which has become unhealthy because of the high emphasis placed on winning. Instead, the emphasis should be on participation, or on the comradeship of team sport, or on the social side of individual sport. The harm caused by the attitude of ‘winning is everything’ comes out when elite athletes reveal their battles with depression or their thoughts of suicide to escape the pressure to be constantly winning.

Violence begets violence and what these studies are revealing is that socioeconomic inequality is a form of violence built into our normal social systems producing the violence that we call ‘social diseases.’ None of us are to blame for the system we were born into but each of us can do something to change the system. Our politicians are well aware of the studies linking inequality to all the social ills and that the social ills are increasing because the gap is increasing. They are also the ones who can have the most influence on changing the system, simply by adopting policies and making laws that reduce the gap between the advantaged and the disadvantaged.  However, we are the ones who could put pressure on our politicians to base their bid for power on their ability to come up with policies centred on reducing the present socioeconomic gap. And the good news is that it appears we would all benefit from reversing the trend of the past twenty years (according to the Salvation Army reports).

An added bonus is that it would provide the means by which we can hold our politicians accountable. If the gap between the haves and have nots is decreasing under whatever party is in power, we would know their policies are working. If the gap is increasing, we would know their policies are not working and we probably should give the opposition a chance.

Bob Myers.

Many people argue that violence is a natural reaction to threats. This means we are born with that protective reaction and therefore we are naturally violent. Since I partly agree with this, I am willing to concede that point but add that we are also born illiterate.
Professor Colman McCarthy of Maryland USA asked his students to write a paper along those lines and he described the response from one student as “a masterpiece of brevity and breadth.” It consisted of just 13 words:

“Why are we violent but not illiterate? Because we are taught to read.”

Does this mean our society is becoming more violent because we teach our kids to be violent? No. The student was pointing out that just as each child is born with the potential to learn to read and write, and gain all the benefits of literacy, each child is born with the potential to learn the ways of nonviolence, and gain all the benefits attached. Violent behaviour comes from not teaching our kids to be nonviolent. That may seem to be a double negative but it isn’t. Most people teach kids to be ‘not violent,’ which is very different to teaching kids to be nonviolent. Teaching kids to be ‘not violent’ may achieve some level of ‘peace’ but it actually perpetuates violence.

The main way most of us teach children to be ‘not violent’ is through the use of punishment or the threat of punishment , which means the natural violent reaction is suppressed by the fear of punishment. Take the fear of punishment away by lowering the chance of being caught or raising the potential reward to be gained and a child is more likely to use violence.

Nonviolence is difficult to define because it is not just the absence of violence. It is the opposite of violence; the antidote of violence. It is an attitude towards other people and to ‘rules of behaviour.’ Nonviolence defies violence and deprives it of any victory. Nonviolence disarms an aggressor without using violence. Nonviolent discipline can be aggressively confrontational, and even take a zero tolerance stand in holding people accountable for their violent behaviour, without resorting to any kind of punishment. Imposing a punishment often sets up a cycle of revenge that prevents any worthwhile lesson being learned. The real consequence of behaviour is the most effective way people learn what acceptable and responsible behaviour is.  

One of the great advantages of nonviolent discipline in the home, school or workplace is the distinction it makes between punishment and consequences, allowing ‘restorative action’ to be taken instead of imposing punishment. This is not just spin because ‘taking restorative action’ and ‘imposing a punishment’ are mutually exclusive opposites. All of us are capable of thinking in both ways, and we do sometimes take restorative action depending on the circumstances of a situation, but we cannot think in both ways at the same time. 

The above could explain why school discipline programs based on restorative practices, such as the Responsible Thinking Classes, are not as effective as they could be. Maybe some of those running the programs are caught up by our cultural addiction to punishment. That could also be the reason why restorative programs in the criminal justice system don’t always produce excellent results. A punishment-minded person cannot effectively operate a program designed to be run by a restorative-minded person.

Parents can introduce kids to the ways of nonviolence in the very first year of a child’s life. School children can be taught the art of nonviolence from day one. And it's never too late to start. It won’t always work in every situation because few parents or teachers have the nonviolence training to recognise how their own attitudes are effected by the institutional, structural and social violence built into the culture we live in. Once we become aware of our own attitude we can help children to live nonviolently in a violent world, and change it.

Bob Myers.