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.

In a three-minute introduction, the MC spoke in glowing terms of the guest speaker’s attributes and accomplishments, and at the very end winked to the audience. That single wink reversed three hundred words and maybe led the audience to doubt anything the speaker subsequently said. Why is a single action so powerful?

While driving across a desert in Western Australia, my wife and I came across two Japanese bikers who obviously had a problem. Neither of them spoke English and we didn’t speak Japanese but we soon worked out that one had fallen and damaged his ankle. We convinced them to leave one motorbike hidden behind a bush while we transported the injured rider to a roadhouse, where the Flying Doctor Service could be contacted. The second rider could then bring someone back to retrieve the bike. All this was achieved without understanding one word of each other’s language. We also learned they had something illegal hidden in their luggage but that was not our concern. How can people communicate all that without words?

According to communication theory, words convey only 7% of a communication. Vocals such as pitch, tone and volume account for 38% and the other 55% is made up of non-verbals, such as gestures, facial expressions, posture and so on. When reading, we have to use imagination because none of the vocals are there to help us understand what is written. Sometimes we get it right and sometimes our imagination is way off target. Combining a speaker’s words and vocals gives verbals 45%, which means there is only a 10% difference between verbals and non-verbals and yet we take much more notice of non-verbals than we do of verbals. Why?

Lucy is the name given to Ethiopia's world-acclaimed archaeological find. Lucy’s almost complete hominid skeleton was dug up in 1974, and was estimated to be at least 3.2 million years old. Hominids are the family of primates from which humans supposedly emerged about 200,000 years ago. The ability to use language defines what is known as ‘modern humans’, but language, as we know it, has only been around for about 35,000 years This means that for 165,000 years people communicated with each other non-verbally, with gestures, expressions, and movements, as well as the pitch, tone and volume of grunts. So, for the vast majority of human history our ancestors relied on reading the signs of human behaviour, and the signs in nature, to understand the world they lived in. The human race has had far more experience communicating in, and learning from, non-verbals than from words. It’s no wonder we place more importance on non-verbals and trust them when someone’s words and actions don’t match up. As the saying goes, ‘actions speak louder than words’.

Archaeologists claim that  religion has been part of human existence for at least 70,000 years, which means that for 35,000 years before language fully developed, people believed in life after death and buried things with people to help them in that life. It doesn’t seem logical that God would only start communicating with people after they invented language; less than 25% of human history. Wasn’t God capable of communicating before human language developed? Were humans smart enough to try to communicate with God, but God had no way to communicate with humans? The communication theory mentioned above suggests that God could use non-verbals to communicate very effectively with people, and did so for all of the time before language was invented. The medium for that communication was the natural environment.

People felt they were part of the land and of nature in general. They were as one in spirit with the plants and animals and could ‘read’ the signs carried on the wind, buried in the soil, transformed by fire, floating on or immersed in water. Nature was their provider and teacher and was present with them and in them every moment of every day. There was an intensity and intimacy involved that we sometimes fleetingly experience in sport, when the perfect shot seems effortless and almost automatic.    

Non-verbal communication, like the burning of incense or lighting of candles, still plays a big part in religious ceremonies and rituals, but the three main religions are ‘religions of the book’, which means they are driven by the word of God contained in their respective holy book; the Torah, Bible and Koran. Although these books were written by people, each religion claims their book was dictated by God and therefore contains ‘the word of God’.

I’m not concerned here with comparing religions or holding one book higher than the others. I’m not even concerned with whether those books really do contain the word of God. The point I make is that the words contained in the books, important as they are, are just a small part of the overall communication package and I wonder whether it would really matter if we no longer had access to them, and God was again experienced as speechless. We would still have the great majority of God’s communication to guide us, and it would be the communication that is specifically aimed at us personally, since it is what we experience. We could study that communication without the sense of already knowing the truth. Much of the violence in the world occurs as a result of people being certain they already know the truth, and anything else has to be rejected and destroyed. 

The Torah, the Bible and the Koran are valuable inspirational books that contain the spiritual experiences of many of our ancestors, expressed in the words available to them and guided by their knowledge of the make-up of the universe. We certainly need the accumulated knowledge of past generations about our relationship to each other and to God. But unfortunately those words are now being interpreted by people who have not had the same experiences. We are no smarter than our distant ancestors, but our knowledge and experience is different and so our interpretation is different. However, God doesn’t change as our knowledge or understanding changes. God’s communication is still through the world around us and in us and is available to refer to whenever there is doubt about ‘the truth’ of what our ancestors recorded. The disaster is that so many people are intent on changing or destroying the environment God communicates through and we are left with less and less to study in its natural state. We would be better off working to understand it and cooperate with it instead of seeing it as something to conquer and change.

Disregarding the non-verbals makes communication as accurate as trying to picture what someone looks like from listening to their voice. People who disregard the environment as part of God’s communication not only miss out on the majority of God’s actual communication, but also miss out on using the main way we have of expressing our beliefs and values to God.

My dream is for all people to look at ‘the word’ in the context of the non-verbals formed by the whole of creation. Ideally, that would result in us seeing the environment as the interface between ourselves and God and therefore alter the way we treat that interface.

Imaginings, dreams and ‘what ifs’ are usually about impossible or highly unlikely events, like winning Tattslotto, but they are also little rays of hope for the future, and my ray of hope is that the religions will one day discover that the Torah, Bible and Koran all contain part of the truth that will emerge if we continue to verify it against the non-verbal communication from a God choosing to remain silent.

Bob Myers.

The importance of peace of mind became obvious to me during the years I spent working with dysfunctional families, involving all sorts of conflict and violence against people and property. The unhappiness and angst in these relationships motivated me to find a starting point that anyone could use to help people gain peace of mind; one that would fit in with any religion. Studying people in conflict made me aware that peace of mind doesn’t mean being free of problems and conflicts because these are just part of life’s journey. So at first it didn’t seem like rocket science; all anyone needs is the knowledge and the skills to handle whatever happens. However, life is never that simple. Knowledge and skills are reasonably easy to pick up but everyone is different so the problem is ‘what knowledge and what skills will be right for every person?’

All journeys have a starting point and a destination, with a road between the two. All adults already have a great deal of experience in dealing with problems and conflict and the ability to learn more along the way. That is for the starting point for the rest of our journey. Happiness is the goal that we all seek, although some people may refer to it as ‘peace of mind’ or ‘having a sense of security.’ To complete the plan we need to choose a path to the destination and pack a compass to keep us on track when we can’t see our way forward.

Fortunately, nature has installed a belief deep within all of us that will take us to that destination but since we have freedom of choice, it’s up to us whether we go that way. The compass that comes with that choice will show us the way through, over, or around problems and conflicts, and help us to avoid creating new obstacles. However, it only works if we practice using the many tools that come with it. ‘The equality of all people’ is the name of the road to peace of mind, and ‘nonviolence’ is the name of the compass that keeps us on the road, or shows us the way back to the road if we wander off it.

I began consciously using the tools of nonviolence as an honorary probation officer, and managing a youth centre, where many opportunities arose to help angry youths and adults resolve disputes. But the big test came as the supervisor of a non-government residential facility for teenagers who, for various reasons, were labelled ‘homeless’ and/or ‘uncontrollable.’ The young people in our care constantly tested and questioned society’s values, beliefs and rules, and for what seemed like a long, stressful time I went along with the general community’s expectation that the staff of the facility should control these young people. The reality was that it was often a ‘them and us’ power struggle that no one really won, partly because we represented the social system that had failed to meet the needs of the residents, and then put the blame on them.

Anyone who looks back can probably see a pattern in their life but I believe the experience of working with the residents, the parents of residents, and the staff of the facility strengthened a subconscious belief I already held that ‘the equality of all people’ is the base for resolving relationship problems. The equality of people is what I now try to ground my thinking in, because I can see how it has strengthened and guided me through some stressful times. I can also see how much strife I got into, and how much strife I caused, when I failed to act in accordance with that belief.

Most people intuitively know we are all equal, and this is why being made feel inferior is so stressful.  The intuitive sense of equality persists in spite of the huge differences in wealth, power, abilities, knowledge and health between people in the social systems we created, and that we may well pass on to our children.

We don’t usually think of people as being part of nature, probably because we inherited age-old beliefs and traditions that portray us as constantly fighting against nature. In recent years our awareness of climate change, and the threat it poses for life on earth, makes it obvious that we need to cooperate with nature if we and the planet are to survive. As part of nature, humans are subject to the natural law but, over time, we came to believe we are superior to all creation and set up social systems to control and exploit the earth to meet our needs. However, to nature we are still all of equal value. The rain falls on everyone and the sun shines on everyone. A tsunami sweeps rich and poor from the beach, and an earthquake takes no notice of a person’s social status. Nature doesn’t make one person more important than another, people developed social systems, so it was people who decided:

• who is important and who isn’t;
• what is important and what isn’t;
• who has power over others;
• and how people should behave.

Accepting that people are part of nature leads to the thought that, If I were in harmony with nature, I would not only be in harmony with the environment and other people, I would be in harmony with me, and to be in harmony with oneself is to have peace of mind. Fortunately for us, peace of mind doesn’t only come when our relationships are equal. If it did, we would probably never have peace of mind, or peace would be a fleeting experience, because of all the inequalities, disputes and conflicts in daily life. We can have peace of mind amongst all of that by actively responding to inequalities, disputes and conflicts in a nonviolent way. And as we persist in experimenting with creative ways to use the tools of nonviolence, we are already in harmony with nature. The magic of our compass is that equality, nonviolence and peace of mind are names attached to the many faces of the same thing.  

Although we live in a violent world, most of us believe we are nonviolent and seldom experience violence. When asked to give examples of violence, most people refer to the physical harm caused by bashings, guns, knives and bottles but the great majority of violence between people in everyday life is emotional violence, delivered personally or increasingly via cyberspace: hurtful rumours, putdowns, insults, and the like. The effects of emotional violence can be devastating and has resulted in suicide.

One definition of violence is: ‘any verbal, nonverbal, emotional or physical behaviour that dominates, divides, diminishes or destroys ourselves, or others’ (From Violence to Wholeness). All these behaviours harm or weaken relationships, so a shorter definition of violence is ‘any behaviour that harms or weakens relationships.’

Violence can also be just part of a system, such as family, community or nation, if the rules favour one person or group of people at the expense of others. An example of systemic violence in a wealthy economy such as ours would be when the laws ensure that certain groups of people will remain in poverty.

  Competition, domination and inequality.

Most problem relationships, even in families, are affected by one of two things, either competition or domination. A conflict does not become harmful until either competition or domination creeps into it. Both of these cause inequality by putting distance between people. Our culture puts great pressure on us to follow scripts involving competition and domination every day of our life. The urge comes from within us but is made ‘normal’ by:

·         the fear of losing face or being judged as ‘not good enough;’

·         clever advertisers getting us to judge ourselves by our possessions; and

·         the level of competition and violence in our entertainment and socialising.

The pressure from the influence of competition affects how we respond to differences with our loved ones as well as with those we don’t like. Competition is present when we feel a need to win, or to at least save face, and makes it difficult to sort out differences without getting into a harmful conflict or giving in.

 It’s natural to want to achieve. However, what we try to achieve and how we measure success can cause problems. Unfortunately, ‘the need to achieve what I am capable of achieving,’ has become ‘the need to win’ which means to be better than other people. Competition is now so much a part of our culture that it is regarded as part of human nature. Winning has become the main goal in so many things, boosted by the wide-spread belief in the myth that competition is necessary for advancement, development or progress. For people who shun competition and simply give in, life can be very difficult.

Competition is one way but there are other ways that non-competitive people can learn about. Cooperative achievement is one alternative to competition, consensus and a method inspired by Gandhi called truth-seeking are also available. Open Space Technology is yet another alternative. Alternatives like these have been around for a long time and work very well but are not widely taught. However, if we are to solve the problems and conflicts unique to this century, the alternatives to our adversarial ways need to become part of the culture our children and grandchildren live by.

That’s why parenting is an important part of discussions about conflict resolution. It’s said that the only certainties in life are taxes and death, but there are two more.

• Family life is where we mainly learn how to resolve conflict because healthy conflict occurs in all families.
• Healthy conflict can become destructive when we follow the urge to win, or the urge to dominate (control or punish).