Last summer, Ivan Coyote told me that I had to read
Conflict is not Abuse by Sarah
Schulman. I ordered a copy, read it, and my head has been reeling ever since. I
have not read any book as powerful as this when it comes to understanding the
roots of conflict within communities – at least not since Michael Ignatieff’s
The Warrior’s Honour (especially his
chapter on
The Narcisism of Minor
Difference). Both books examine, with surgical precision, what it is in
human relationships - as they are lived out in community - that can make
conflict escalate so readily and at such an inflated scale that it seems to
make no sense – at least on the surface.
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| A well-thumbed copy - resting on my dining room table. |
Sarah Schulman wrote this book after three decades of being committed
to resolving conflict at all levels – friends, family, community,
international. She is a feminist and a peace-activist (with a focus on the
needs of Palestinians and Israelis). She is also a lesbian dedicated to resolving the kinds of
issues that even though they affect all of us, are ones that
disproportionately impact the LGBT community. In addition to this lived experience,
she approaches this topic – that Conflict is
not Abuse - as a novelist with eleven published novels, and not as
an academic asking us to agree with everything. She only asks that we reflect
on what she has to offer here.
… read this book the way you would watch a
play: not to emerge, saying, “The play is right!” But rather to observe that
the play reveals human nuance, contradiction, limitation, joy, connection, and
the tragedy of separation.
As a novelist, she insists that we should always ask: What
came first? Was there something that happened before the trigger? What is cause
and what is effect? What are the desires, needs, and intentions that are part
of this story? What is the impulse for our own actions and what are the likely
effects of our actions, both on individuals and on communities? How will it
end?
As the saying goes, the hysterical is
usually historical. Often, when we experience an intense level of
oppositional passion, it can be because we believe that our cause is just and the impediments
are huge. At the same time, it can also be because there is a mix of felt truths and unmet needs which
are preventing our ability to step back, to think and to analyze. When this happens, and when others share their picture and their evidence of what has
actually happened, we can feel threatened - especially when it differs from our own version of events. The 2016 American election could not be a
better example of this, on a national level, not that Canadians can afford to be smug.
We are just as bad at using Facebook, or other such information-silos, to
confirm our own chosen facts and biases, while ignoring anything that might threaten the bunker of our own beliefs.
Schulman insists that if we can’t name something, then we
can’t change it. If we can’t tell a credible story about our shared conflict
from the point of view of The Other, then we actually don’t understand what our
conflict is all about. And we need to. After all, “The Duty of Repair” belongs to
us all, but especially to those who claim access to a social conscience.
Her central concern in this book is about what happens when
there is an overstating of harm, and when normal every day conflict – a healthy
part of being human – is conflated with Abuse.
This kind of conflation hurts us at both the individual as well as at the
community level. To unravel how this happens, she follows some of the cultural
shifts which have recently led us astray.
Ironically, the current reality of over-stating harm has
happened in part because we have understated it for so long. In Canada, we have
only to look at the fates of our missing and murdered indigenous women to see
the costs of this under-recognizing and under-responding. Our blindness has
been and continues to be part of the human tragedy. It is easy to follow all
the forms it has taken over the centuries, as well as all over the globe. We can see
its effects whenever individuals, corporations, cliques, governments or nations
act from a place of entitlement and use that to have power-over others. Schulman labels this: Supremacy. It makes no difference whether the tools of power-over are gender-based, racially
based, or economically based, the reality of how, where, and how often it
happens, has all been reliably researched and documented.
Rage, and sometimes even violence, are often turned to as a
last resort - the only way to be heard, and to be seen when we – as a culture
and as individuals - have been blind to the power-over
kind of abuse. As the late, great Ursula Franklin, a Canadian peace activist,
often said: Violence is resourcelessness.
Unfortunately, the use of violence can also lead to even more bullying and aggression, regardless
whether or not the violent approach has been “deserved”.
A second reality, described by Schulman, is likely to be contentious with
some, while offering the relief of recognition to others. I had never heard the
term mutant
feminism before, but it seems to me to be a good way to describe what
happens when people who claim to be victims are judged to be always right, and
those who are accused as perpetrators are judged to be always wrong - in
spite of the fact that no person is ever totally evil or totally saintly. If we
truly believe in genuine justice and effective resolution, then nuance matters.
So does asking all the right questions.
Members have to actively take responsibility
for the ethics and moral values that their small or large group claims to
represent and actually enact this responsibility. Nothing reveals this more
clearly than how difference is treated. Is difference a welcomed perspective to
keep the relationships honest, or is it a threat to shared myths of Supremacy
or vulnerability? How questions are asked fundamentally reveals the value
systems at play, particularly whether or not there is a real desire to know
what is true.
Schulman is also concerned about the impact of the recent
cultural drift in how we deploy words such as “violence” and “abuse” (my
emphasis beneath).
The word “violence” has expanded far beyond
the field of physical assault to also mean emotional abuse and, unfortunately, emotional conflict where there is no abuse.
… “Abuse” is also regularly used to describe disagreement and misunderstanding.
Accusations of “policing,” “shaming,” and other expressions of “call-out
culture” demanding “safety” from uncomfortable ideas represent people and
actions as laden with blame, refusing interactivity around the content of ideas
and perceptions. This is in line with a similar practice of calling racial
analysis “playing the race card.” Trying to understand and explain structures
of pathology is repressed by accusations of wrongdoing. Thinking is wrong.
Saying is wrong. Not only are revelations unwanted, they get mischaracterized
as harm.
When we conflate Abuse
with Conflict and when we juice up
the scale and intensity of the conflict in ways that make it more credible to claim
it as abuse, we end up harming both individuals and communities. It is easy to
see the damage to the person who has been named as a perpetrator, who is then shunned or blamed because of their
supposed guilt. It is often less obvious that the person who has been self-named
or named by others as a victim also suffers. By closing the doors on resolution – except on their own terms - they have stunted their own best opportunity for understanding what has
happened. On top of that, those who have felt forced to take sides, or to turn
away as if they can abdicate all responsibility, also suffer. The fabric of their community has been weakened.
Schulman feels compassionately towards those who do escalate
the experience of a mutual, human-level conflict into a claim of abuse.
Research, as well as the experiences of case workers, shows that often the victim has
believed - whether consciously or not - that the only way to receive
empathy is to claim abuse. This can lead to them, when they don't get the outcome that they seek, to feeling even more
certain that they haven’t been heard. From that place of experienced injustice
- real or not, it is a short step to turn The Other into a monster or
specter to be silenced and isolated and hopefully punished. The moral
clarity of having an enemy can be such a relief.
The traumatized person’s sense of their
ability to protect themselves has been damaged or destroyed. They feel
endangered, even if there is no actual danger in the present, because in the
past they’ve experienced profoundly invasive cruelty and they know it is
possible. Or in the case of ongoing systemic oppression, they receive cruelty
from one place, and project it onto another.
The best (or worst) thing about blame and projection, is
that it always comes with certainty, and the best (or worst) part of that
kind of certainty is that we then believe: I am not to
blame. Laying blame can be quite effective
in absolving ourselves of our part in the shared responsibility of problem-solving. It also means that my own sense of myself as perfect, or at least more perfect than the perpetrator, is left intact. Unfortunately,
the blame others defense is more like
a Trickster than a Healer. In the stories that Schulman shares, she shows time
and again - in both countries and communities - how this deflection of responsibility produces unnecessary separation and
perpetuates anxiety while producing cruelty, shunning, undeserved punishment,
incarceration, and occupation.
Anthropologists have shown how shame-based cultures and
guilt-based cultures both deal differently with conflict when it arises.
Schulman takes it down to the level of the individual.
…. There is a strong element of shame in Trauma that makes thinking and
behaviour so inflexible. The person cannot accept adjustment, an altering of
their self-concept; they won’t bear it and they won’t live with it. And if the
group, cliques, family, community, religion, or country also doesn’t support
self-criticism, they ultimately can’t live with that.
In a TED talk, Brené
Brown said: Shame is a focus on self, guilt is a focus on behavior. The first
is felt inside us; the second is observable by others. Shame is, "I am bad." Guilt is, "I did something
bad." Robert Bringhurst summed
it up in a few lines in his brilliant poem: Essay
on Adam. The central question:
is
only an issue of whether the demons
work
from the inside out or from the outside
in:
the one
theological
question.
I suspect that
Robert knows that the devil is
in the details, and that both are true.
Schulman explores
the question: Why does an experience of shame
more often lead to escalation of conflict, while the experience of guilt leads to a greater likelihood of
resolution? Partly it is because shame, being interior, can be hidden. This is why there is a temptation, for the person who feels shame, to project the blame for it
on to others. Even though shame is felt inside us, we can
release some of its pressure by the mere act of projection. Schulman notes: People coming from shame … direct anger,
aggression, and blame towards the other party. ,,, those who feel shame also feel more threatened and are more deeply
concerned about what other people think of them. Research shows that
bullies are more likely to have a shame-based conscience rather than a
guilt-based one. On the other hand, studies show that people who feel guilty very much want to negotiate, are able to
apologize and admit fault, can make concessions, and are invested in positive
resolution. It may seem counter-intuitive, but as Schulman puts it:
Guilt plays a prosocial function in
strengthening relationships; it encourages taking responsibility, motivates
amendatory behaviours such as apology or confession, leads to higher quality
solutions to crises and is associated with more constructive anger management.
… . Guilt is also associated with positive empathy and the ability to
acknowledge and understand others’ points of view. In contrast, shame is
associated with responses that are injurious to social relationships.
One of my favourite sections of the book is where Schulman
writes about the impact of emails. If it were not in violation of copyright, I
would just type it all up and share it right here and now. Instead you will
have to go buy the book. But here is a teaser:
This central role of anxiety in escalating
Conflict is one of the reasons why, in our contemporary time, email and text
are so often the source for tragic separations of potentially enriching
relationships. First of all, email and text are both unidirectional and don’t
allow for return information to enhance or transform comprehension. We must
speak to each other, especially when events or feelings are fraught. I wish
that all the people of the industrial world would sign a pledge that any
negative exchange that is created on email or text must be followed by a live,
in person conversation. And clearly we have a responsibility to encourage our
friends and colleagues to not make negative judgements based on emails or
texts.
When it comes to email conflict, Robert Frost’s poem Fire and Ice is surely worth recalling:
Some
say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favour fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Regardless of whether ongoing conflicts start or end with
either fire or ice, when they come from a place of unresolved trauma, they are often followed
by shunning – I won’t answer– and don’t
phone me either! Regrettably, that leads to even more
escalation of the hurt.
The real question is: Why would a person
rather have an enemy than a conversation? Why would they rather see themselves
as harassed and transgressed instead of have a conversation that could reveal
them as an equal participant in creating conflict? There should be a relief in
discovering that one is not being persecuted, but actually, in the way we have
misconstrued these responsibilities, sadly the relief is in confirming that one
has been victimized. It comes with the relieving abdication of responsibility.
So, where to from here? It is Schulman’s thesis that nothing
will happen until collectively we
make the mind-shift to move from being complicit bystanders to being agents for
change. When we witness over-reaction to conflict, then the injured parties
need us to help them to explore the causes and to look at the evidence, to
determine if the scale is appropriate, and then to put a stop to the kind of polarized
blaming which justifies shunning, and other forms of cruelty.
The community holds the crucial
responsibility to resist overreaction to difference, and offer alternatives of
understanding and complexity. We have to help each other illuminate and counter
the role of overstating harm instead of using it to justify cruelty.
Any pain that human beings can create, human
beings can transcend. But we have to understand what we are doing. This
transformation also requires a critical mass, a small, effective, focused, and
inspired group of people who can combine clear moral thinking with the taking
of responsibility, as expressed through direct challenge to brutality and organized
action. It can be a small group of conscious friends helping a person
conflating Conflict with Abuse find alternatives. It can be two family members
who don’t jump on an unethical bandwagon falsely construed as “loyalty”.
I don’t want to underestimate the challenge of achieving all
this. Actions – particularly sustained actions - are much harder than words, but
at least Sarah Schulman has dared to shed light on a particularly tricky part
of the path. She at least has got us started.
