Sunday, September 26, 2010

Conciliation Via Amnesia

There's a fascinating article in this weeks Economist on the Pope's recent visit to England, and how easings in the old Catholic/Anglican rivalries made it a surprisingly non-controversial event. This isn't the product of rapprochement, peace treaty, or interfaith dialog. It's a much more mundane matter of amnesia - the British "national genius for forgetting rather than forgiving."
"...the tradition of sectarian enmity was not so much purged from the body politic as mislaid. Anti-Catholic prejudice was rife in polite English society until surprisingly recently: countless families can tell tales of scandals or feuds triggered by a mixed Anglican-Catholic marriage, up to the 1960s or 1970s. Sectarianism lingers on in Northern Ireland, bits of Scotland and some English cities like Liverpool. Yet in much of England, people under 40 cannot remember why Catholicism caused their grandparents such alarm."
This small glimmer of hope deserves to be analyzed and applied elsewhere.
"An optimist might see a chance there for Islam, another conservative religion currently causing alarm. A bit of affluence here, a bit less defensiveness there, and before you know it, the English cannot remember why a minority worried them so much. It is a muddled, imperfect solution (just ask Catholics offended by this week’s pope-bashing). But with the English, muddle is often as good as it gets."
If it's true that forgetting's as good as forgiving, one can't help but contemplate the Palestinian/Israeli mess. If a Palestinian state were established, and a thriving Palestinian middle class fostered, might a few generations of muddle dampen the vindictiveness?

Well, Bloody Mary reigned back in the 16th Century, so that one took a while, but a mere two generations after the holocaust it's hard to imagine Jews socially rebuffing Germans, much less dreaming of returning to Austria to retake the family land. As with England, this may well be attributable to a secular, thriving middle class with more to do than lick old wounds (it's fortunate that the Jewish "Never forget!" slogan has remained a call to beware man's inherent dark potential, rather than a call for Germans to be despised for all eternity).

But cultural factors seem to make different people forgive - or at least forget - at different rates. Few of my secular, middle class, thriving Armenian friends or acquaintances can make it through a half hour conversation without making reference to the 1915 Armenian Genocide.

4 comments:

vhliv said...

Forgetting is indeed an important, and much overlooked factor in creating stability. One of the factors that makes the idea of "ancient ethnic hatreds" so insidious is that when invoked by parties they direct people's attention away from decades and often centuries of coexistence. Incidentally, the 19th century French thinker Ernest Renan argues quite convincingly that it is forgetting, in this case historic provincial rivalries, that made the modern French nation possible.

Of course, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is problematic in part because, no one would really claim that it is of ancient origins. The grievances whether before 1948, during 1948, or after are within living memory.

Jim Leff said...

But, then again, for a very long time Jews and Palestinians got along just fine. Even during the early to mid years of Israel's existence, there were always cross-cultural ties, friendships, marriages, business partnerships, etc. The sort of situation where generalized hatred could be overcome in individual relations.

That, alas, is just about over. Enmity tends to ratchet up. Forgetting helps, but I dream of a world where enmity can be deliberately ratcheted down, per
http://jimleff.blogspot.com/2009/01/route-of-escalating-reconciliation.html

vhliv said...

Yes, the Jews and Palestinians in the region got along fine, and it would be nice to remember that and forget the last 60 years or so of conflict. I might add here that another issue not much talked about is the extent to which later immigrants to the region, also affect the memory. The ex-Soviet Jews who started arriving may not have experienced the worst of the conflict, but appear to be very susceptible to the arguments about Israel's survival.

As to the notion that enmity tends to ratchet up, I'm think that is over stated. Peace breeds more peace, and that is why the extremists on both sides are so busy trying to scuttle the peace process. Once the deal is announced and becomes reality, the vast majority of people who are brought out for the moment out of anxiety tend to return to the sidelines, and the longer people live with the deal the more they accept it. Here one can draw a parallel with human behavior that leads to economic bubbles. People tend to assume a trend will continue, and it often will and can for a long time, but it is unlikely to go on forever, and this is one bubble sensible people on all sides would like to see burst.

Jim Leff said...

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" The ex-Soviet Jews who started arriving may not have experienced the worst of the conflict, but appear to be very susceptible to the arguments about Israel's survival."
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Many actually aren't Jewish, it turns out. Enterprising Russians just rode that route out of the USSR. Hard to disprove, as even genuine Russian Jews had little means to prove their heritage, after generations of persecution and suppression. It's like ex-smokers being especially rabid in their anti-smoking sentiment. I'm hardly pro-Jewish at all, because I was born soaking in it. But if I'd made a conscious life upheaval decision (out of whatever motivation) to Be This New Thing, you can bet I'd be a lot more staunchly group-identified.

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"As to the notion that enmity tends to ratchet up, I'm think that is over stated. Peace breeds more peace"
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Ok. Yet, not to be overly negative, but I think you'd agree enmity breeds more enmity faster than peace breeds more peace. That's the crux of the problem.


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"that is why the extremists on both sides are so busy trying to scuttle the peace process. "
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The freedom-fighting rhetoric of Palestinian extremists would indeed be more believable if they tended to bomb Israeli hawks in yeshivas rather than secular doves in shopping malls and dance clubs. And I'd have a little more confidence in the Palestinian mainstream if bombers of secular doves in shopping malls and dance clubs weren't popularly lionized. This is the thing that keeps me from being entirely sympathetic to the Palestinians. Instead, I'm revulsed equally by both sides. Few mensches in this scene.


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"People tend to assume a trend will continue"
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True; that's a fundamental flaw in the human OS (otoh, it's also a "feature", because we need to adapt at least as much as we need to remain ready for change). It also presents a great opportunity for more clear-eyed people to make a killing in the stock market.

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