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.
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