Wednesday, May 25, 2016

The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict (Book Review by Bob Racine)



     Authorship: The Arbinger Institute
           Distributed in 2006 by Barrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
                                     
Self-help books are easy to come by.  They are so plentiful that they are given an entire section of a book store, under one heading or another, all by themselves.  For that reason I was not brimming with eager anticipation when yet another one was handed to me.  So many well-meaning advocates of better mental, emotional and social health have seen fit to come forth with their individual schemes for success and happiness.  Each seems to be written by someone who imagines that she/he has found at last the path to wholeness, something the literate world and the souls of humankind have been in need of since Day One.  Read enough of them and you may find yourself asking if there is really anything new under the sun. 
                                     
But “The Anatomy of Peace” I will value forever; it is quite special.
                                     
The book is not the creation of a lone author but of the Arbinger Institute, an international affiliate devoted to educating the world in how to bring about disarmament, personal as well as military.  Whereas the average self-help book is an instructive treatise, this one is constructed around a narrative.  It tells a story of how a group of temperamental, reactionary people begin to be transformed into peaceful individuals over the space of a weekend.  You could call it a novella.
                                     
On the opening page action is taking place.   We are at Camp Moriah somewhere in the southwest where troubled parents and children are invited, the adults to spend the weekend indoors in a seminar and the kids to spend the subsequent three months outdoors living off the land.  The commotion taking place at the start of the first chapter is incited by a teenage girl who has just found out upon arrival what she should have been told ahead of time – that she will be camping out for the summer; she rebels by running away.  Though the reader does not encounter the girl again, she comes to play a very vital role in the adults’ learning process, as the reader will see. 
                                     
Two men preside over the adult seminar.  One of the first things they tell the participants that challenges their barriers and assumptions is this: “Most problems in life are not solved merely by correction”.   The statement is appropriate because grownups come to the seminar expecting to be given tips on how to handle their problem children or how to straighten things out between themselves and troublesome co-workers where they are employed.  But the leaders at Moriah manage to get them to see themselves as being at war with the people they want to change and put right.  Yes, at war!
                                     
We are led step by step to reacquaint ourselves with Martin Buber’s distinction between the I-Thou and the I-It.  When we engage with others we either see them as an It or as a Thou, an object or a person.  When we consider a person or a group an obstacle in our path, we are relegating them to the status of a thing.  And the condition of the heart that allows that to be so is a state of war.  By the weekend’s conclusion they have all learned about moving from the war within themselves toward the peace they come to desire.  And the process of transformation that is set in motion is not only fascinating but one that challenges readers to examine the sources of either conflict or peace within themselves. 
                                     
The most astounding thing we find out about the two men who are in charge is their ethnic and racial identities.  Yusuf al-Falah is an Arab; Avi Rozen is a Jew.  They were once bitter enemies, both of them having lost a father in the Israeli/Palestinian hostilities; both have been rendered refugees away from their places of birth.  Fate brought them together in the States over the years and together they have created Camp Moriah.  They are not in the slightest heavy-handed or professorial.  The way they probe without putting anyone on the defensive is exemplary in every facet.  Every teacher or seminar leader the world over could learn a great deal from following them as they guide the group. 
                                     
Actually for me the most absorbing and emotionally consuming sections of the text are the ones in which Yusuf and Avi share their histories – in extensive detail.  Those histories read like autobiographies in the middle of Arbinger’s narrative.  They could have a literary life unto themselves.  They give a full account of their struggles and the maturing experiences they underwent in shedding their hate and their prejudice and liberating themselves from the political and social bigotry of their separate nations.  These men have been scarred and scourged and battered around.  No one could have a better excuse for hate-mongering or for extremist warfare.  But here they are exuding peace.
                                     
To create peace one must proceed from a peaceful place within one’s self.  That is the bottom line of the book, and we see how it impacts the lives of the seminar’s participants.  With the aid of diagrams drawn on a blackboard and printed in the pages of the book they/we learn procedures of internal change – processes of the mind and heart!  They are quite intricate.   They involve the struggle humans waste seeking justification, making wrong, treating others as obstacles, vehicles, or even at worst irrelevances.  Peace is only possible when we can accept others as people with hopes, needs, cares and fears as real as our own.  That sounds logical and perhaps familiar, but arriving at such a state of being is easier stated than learned, as we observe. 
                                     
Not that Yusuf and Avi are paragons of perfection.  They are not monkish; they are not gurus.  They are just ordinary humans.  They do as much personal sharing and confessing about their current lives as they do about their former ones.  They give report of fights with their spouses; they admit that they have been obstinate and close-minded on some issues in recent weeks that involve their families.  They seem eager to confess their current failings and by so doing incite members of the group to do the same.  It cannot be said about them they in any sense “have it all together”.   For this reason they are anything but intimidating. 
                                     
Among the adult participants is a married couple named Lou and Carol Herbert.  Lou is the owner of a business back home in New England that is foundering.  It seems his staff is in hot rebellion against his heavy-handed policy of leadership and they are all on the verge of jumping ship.  He is also entangled with a very hostile labor union leader.  And if that were not enough, he and Carol have a delinquent teenage son named Cory who has accompanied them to Moriah, but not by any means willingly.  The kid has recently been before a Juvenile Court judge who has agreed to let him take part in the three month campout in the hopes that it will do more for his possible rehabilitation than a jail cell.  A kind of parole!  Unlike Jenny, Cory cannot afford to run away, else he would pay the full penalty for his crimes.    
                                     
Much of Lou’s past history also comes to light, even his youth.  The interactions between himself and other participants in the seminar provoke memories, some of which he does not share verbally; we the readers are allowed to follow the course of his silent recall.  His story is almost as detailed and stirring as that of Yusuf and Avi; it is another narrative within the larger one.  Lou has reluctantly agreed to take part in the hopes that he will pick up tangible tips on how to get his recalcitrant staff in line and how to assume better control over Cory.  But what he finds is something far more valuable, and how he works his way from a place of war to the beginnings of a place of peace is quite a fascination. 
                                     
It becomes clear during the passage of the story that this transformational  principle has implications for the nations and tribes and races and religions of the world just as much, probably more so.  It has been said that people in this world can get along better than nations; it is the latter that make war, and individuals get caught up in it.  That may be a bit of an oversimplification, but what it oversimplifies is a kernel of truth that keeps proving itself worthy of attention. 
                                     
I once saw an animated short film in which two giants growl and threaten each other, while two miniature creatures keep their arms wrapped around the giants’ feet, one attached to each giant.  The two little guys hurl insults and condemnations and nasty epithets at each other, hanging on to the giant for safety and protection, like kids hollering at each other across a street.  The film’s climax is the vanquishing and death of both giants, leaving the little creatures shivering and fearfully hugging each other and murmuring, “What will we ever do without our giants?”  Left to themselves they take refuge together.  The reading of the book and the reportage on Yusuf’s and Avi’s lives reminded me of that film.  Arbinger’s tale, I am glad to say, goes a blessed step beyond.  People can break free of a nation’s or a culture’s dominance.  
                                     
Yes, “The Anatomy of Peace” is a rich read, smart and imaginative and focused.  It calls forth a tremendous degree of self-examination and inspires further thought and maybe action beyond the limits of the narrative.  The only slight flaw I found was in the two final short chapters when it seems to get repetitious.  It is as if the writers wanted to make doubly sure that they have gotten the basic point across.  Those who already have absorbed the point may feel just a little irritated, but let us be thankful that it comes at the end of the publication, not earlier.  By that point I felt as if I had attended a feast and eaten my fill.  I hope all other readers feel the same.     


To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com. To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.

Thursday, May 5, 2016

Concussion (Movie Review by Bob Racine)



                                   2 hrs & 3 min, color, 2015
                                     
In view of the fact that football is statistically and in every other regard the country’s favorite sport, I would expect that any motion picture pertaining to the game would be a big attraction at the box office.  But that would be true only if the film celebrates the game by taking us right onto the gridiron and highlighting the moment by moment contest.  Viewers would be looking for the excitement of competition.  The failure of “Concussion” to sweep audiences off their feet is attributable to the fact that what it has to say about the sport is quite disturbing from the get-go.  I am not a sports fan myself, but even I was shaken to my foundations by what this film uncovers.   To say that it is an indictment of pro football as such would not be entirely accurate; to say that it indicts the National Football League is right on the money.
                                     
That is not to say that Writer/Director Peter Landesman’s screenplay was created precisely to deliver a black eye.  He had something much more crucial in mind, I am sure.  At the very least he wanted to enlighten his audience concerning the intricacies of what has come to be known as Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) and take us through the personal ordeal of a brave, committed pathologist intent upon “fixing the problem”.  

The man is a multi-degreed physician hailing from Nigeria named Bennet Omalu.  In 2002 he was employed at the coroner’s office in Pittsburgh and was asked to examine the deceased body of Steelers star Mike Webster following his suicide at age 50.  Bennet was not yet a naturalized U.S. citizen but had more than the required credentials for the job.  His investigation of Webster, a seemingly routine procedure expected to take a modicum of time, was soon to set the NFL on its head.  He expected to find evidence of severe brain damage commensurate with early Alzheimer’s but nothing of that sort showed up.  Later, at his own expense, he reconstructed the brain and its tissue and saw the deadly workings of CTE.  Top medical authorities he consulted verified his findings and within the space of a few years an article appeared in a medical journal based upon his work which contended that playing football and sustaining thousands of blows to his head from collisions killed Webster.  Needless to say the NFL was not delighted at his report.
                                     
Will Smith gives what I consider a very moving as well as studiedly professional portrayal of Bennet.  He combines a soft spoken delicacy with furor and fire when the script calls for them.  His romance with a young African woman immigrant Prema Mutiso (played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is one of honesty, good-humor and tenderness.  The two players together are a wonderful study.  I hope we will be seeing more of her.  By the film’s end they are married and starting a family.  She is a consistent support to him and shares the slings and arrows that the NFL deals out to her husband, and there are many. 
                                     
Quite a number of other casualties turn up after Webster.  All these men are top grade players who after early retirement began losing control of their mental processes and ended their lives in a most pathetic manner.  Meanwhile the NFL keeps sending men out into the game, doing whatever it takes, one drug or another, one enhancement of performance after another, just to keep them going.  A neurosurgeon named Julian Bailes, who once worked for the NFL and the Steelers and was a friend of Webster, joins forces with Bennet to get the story told.  By the time the two men link up Bailes has left both positions and devotes himself to exposing the truth.  Alec Baldwin gives a strong convincing portrayal of the man, who takes a huge salary cut by his decision, aside from the loss of popularity that results.  He turns out to be of enormous help to Bennet.  
                                     
The abuse Bennet endures is quite shocking.  He is called a quack; he is denied the opportunity to address the NFL’s governing board himself, treated as a nondescript non-entity who is not worth listening to.  (One snide individual even notes the fact that he is not an American citizen, as if that should have any bearing.)  One thing that really hurts is the opposition of medical authorities on the NFL’s payroll, none of whom is a brain surgeon or anyone who has made a study of the brain.  Bennet is told that football is the golden goose that lays golden eggs and that he is threatening to cost the institution millions of dollars in revenue.  He is even told that the NFL now owns a whole day of the week (Sunday), the one the Church once did.  Ownership!?  Hmmm!!!  Football has presumably become the new national religion.  This mindset is what Bennet is up against, as well as the gargantuan monolith of big business.
                                     
After many years in a kind of exile away from the east coast, it takes one player’s suicide to tip the scales in Bennet’s favor and bring him to national attention.  It seems this ball player in his suicide note requests that his brain be studied after he is gone.  Lawsuits against the NFL then follow filed by relatives of many of the victims.      
                                     
Sometimes it requires an outsider to discover what is not obvious to insiders.  Bennet knew next to nothing about football when he came to the States.  He has no vested interest in the NFL or its reputation.  His approach is pure science.  He regards the dead bodies he works with as his patients.  Fellow employees at the coroner’s office are annoyed at his conversation with each body as it is brought in.  He asks the deceased to help him find out what really happened that meant the end of life for that individual.  It is a kind of ritual.  In one touching scene he tells his soon-to-be wife Prema that since early teens he has envisioned America as the nearest thing to heaven – literally.  His treatment as a pariah is a rude awakening from that dream.  Prema, at a moment when he is on the verge of despairing, tells him “If you don’t speak for the dead, who will?” 
                                     
One fact about this Nigerian that is of enormous importance to me is his Christian faith; he is a devout Catholic and so is his wife.  There is a very beautiful scene in the picture in which he talks to his unborn child.  It is late at night, Prema is in bed on her back, and Bennet puts his hands upon her swollen stomach and asks the child to speak to the Heavenly Father on his behalf.  He considers the child at that moment to be closer to God than he is.  This happens when Bennet is in a state of abiding sorrow over what he is enduring at the hands of the NFL; he asks the child to intercede for divine help.  To my recollection that is a first in dramatic motion pictures.  Whatever we may believe about the accessibility of God in the human struggle, I could not help but be in profound awe of this man’s devotion. 
                                     
When I had completed my viewing of “Concussion”, I felt a strong antipathy toward pro football.  I felt like taking an oath never to watch another minute of the game on television.  Basketball – yes!  Baseball – yes!  Golf – yes!  Hockey – yes!  Tennis – yes!  Football – no!  At least not until they find a way to modify the game so that heads do not collide!   But let me not mislead; these are my individual feelings.  The film is not a diatribe.  It invites contemplation more than condemnation.   I recommend it for everyone who wishes to be well informed and likes a quality docudrama as much as I do.


To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com. To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.