On Peace: Column, Treaty of Utrecht Concert, 29 May 2009.
By Merlijn Twaalfhoven.
A friend recently told me that “conflict is the
natural state of human relationships”.
I don’t believe that for a moment.
How much conflict do you see on an average day?
A touch of road rage, perhaps. Or irritation at
somebody else’s clumsiness or difference.
But people only really start looking for a fight when
they’re drunk. When they no longer realise that their actions can end in
beer-soaked hair or a broken nose. When they’ve lost sight of the relationship
between cause and effect.
Some time ago, an Austrian artist conducted a rather
sick experiment.
He tied an explosive belt around a dog and asked
people to vote online on whether or not he should set it off. Protected by
anonymity, the majority chose to blow the animal to pieces.
Their cruelty wasn’t prompted by revenge for some
injustice. They had nothing to gain and they certainly weren’t expressing some
form of religious extremism. It was simply the result of detachment.
People are less cheerful being when they have no
social ties.
Robinson Crusoe had nobody around him, so he had to
fight to stay civilised. By imposing a strict daily routine upon himself,
including shaving, working the land and keeping track of time, he did everything
he could to avoid becoming an animal.
Humanity is our most valuable possession, and the key
to it is contact. As long as there’s contact, there’s peace.
A few years ago I devised a music project in Cyprus.
Inspired by the beautiful location of the capital, Nicosia, I thought would be
a great idea to place musicians on roofs and balconies on either side of the
buffer zone separating the Turkish and Greek sections of the city. Their music
could strengthen the idea that they had something in common, that they shared
the here and now. I initiated that project because I simply couldn’t understand
what inspired people to cut their country in two and refuse to make peace with
the other side. What’s wrong with peace? Only bad people out for power or profit
can be against it, surely?
Some people, musicians and other Cypriots, though it
was a good idea. They agreed that the hostility had lasted long enough.
But I also talked to people who literally grimaced
when I mentioned the word “peace”. They had heard it far too often. And for
them it meant only failure and disappointment.
In Israel, too, peace doesn’t sound like the friendly
“shalom” you greet one another with. Mention it and you often elicit – how can
I put it? – an expression of pity. A sneer. A sigh. “Peace” there means empty
talk, political games and, above all, endless delay. Many Israelis believe that
peace is the same as security. The more fences, walls and deterrents they have,
the more peace there will be.
A Palestinian friend explained to me that the concept
of peace only really means anything if two sides are in conflict. To me, it
seemed pretty obvious that that was the case with Israel and Palestine. But he
saw things differently.
The Palestinians are occupied. They’re not claiming
anything that isn’t rightly theirs. They haven’t done anything to the Israelis
which would justify this situation. They don’t even have anything against the
presence of Jews, just as long as they can stay in their own homes. But if you
oppress people, drive them to desperation even, then you get resistance.
Revolt. Ending the occupation and stopping the oppression isn’t a peace
process, it’s simple justice. Just like a child giving back stolen marbles
isn’t making peace but just doing the right thing.
The basic precondition for peace is that each party
considers the other as its equal and both agree that there has to be a new
reality. Equality is an important concept in the West, upon which all laws are
based. But in many other parts of the world it’s a modern idea that doesn’t
always chime with the way society has been organised for many hundreds of
years.
What counts there is dignity, not equality. A man may
be poor, but his dignity gives him self-confidence. Respect is worth more than
wealth.
Years ago, I learned how Germany wasn’t respected
after her defeat in the First World War. The Treaty of Versailles was imposed
by the victors with the aim of making Germany pay for the damage caused by
conflict. A reasonable demand, you might think: punish the guilty. But instead
this humiliation proved the ideal breeding ground for a totally crazy ideology
of superiority and reckless confidence. With disastrous results.
Instead of being punished again, after 1945 Germany
was given economic support. And with great success. The fact that we now have
really friendly neighbours is down to the fact that, as well as making peace,
we have forged mutual respect.
Yet “forging respect” is a term that (in Dutch
“respect stichten’) produces not a single hit on Google. So it’s clearly a
concept which doesn’t really exist.
To me, though, it seems a valuable corollary to the
idea of peace.
What exactly constitutes peace is determined by the
standards, values and principles of the strongest party: the victor or the
majority. Respect, on the other hand, is dependent upon a subtle relationship
in which both sides develop a mutual understanding. Without that, peace remains
nothing more than a contractual state, its terms enforced coldly or even
imposed unilaterally.
A good example of this situation is the Netherlands.
We currently have a rule that people with a different
cultural background have to adapt if they come to live here, trading in their
own traditional customs for our fresh, blond truths. That’s how you create a
neat, orderly society. A respectable peace, you might say, and nothing wrong
with that.
But this adaptation is all one-way traffic. How many
native Dutch people take the trouble to learn how to say so much as “good
morning” in Turkish? Without any interest in the culture, the constructs and
the traditions the immigrant brings with him, without any sense of or curiosity
about the manners, the values and the subtleties of the newcomer, that peace
may be respectable but it’s hardly respectful.
If I were to come from another culture to live in the
Netherlands now, I wouldn’t know what to do. I would find myself judged not on
who I am but on how well I’m able to fit into a society overheated with sterile
efficiency and obsessive productivity. The native Dutch, I would find, seems to
have little sense of or curiosity about the manners, the values and the
subtleties of the newcomer. They only way I can demonstrate my value is by
earning vast sums of money, by becoming director of something or by driving
around in a flashy car. But if I don’t speak fluent Dutch and my parents don’t
have the right connections in the business world, then I’m not going to get
very far towards that end.
The Netherlands is missing the vocabulary of respect.
We know the word well enough, but not the values it represents. In that
respect, this is a developing country. Even next door, in Belgium, we’re famous
for our rudeness.
At a cheap hotel in Damascus, I was accosted by a man
who had never met a Westerner before. He admired Europe enormously, but didn’t
understand why we were so critical of the position of women in the Muslim
world. A woman in the Middle East is shrouded in a web of protection, honour
and esteem, whilst girls in the West are treated the same as boys or – even
worse – pose in their underwear in newspaper advertisements.
Everyone in the Middle East lives in different groups,
families and often even religious communities. And the modern world has only
made these distinctions even more diverse.
A hundred years ago, the Palestinians were Christians,
Muslims, Alevis, Druze, Jews, Romany, Bedouins – you name it. Now, as well as
all that, they are Lebanese, Canadian, Amsterdammers, Vlaardingers and so on.
Everyone in the Netherlands is equal. At least, that’s
the rule. There are differences, but we try to organise our society in such a
way that they are minimised, that they don’t get in the way.
That’s why our notion of peace is so limited. When we
make peace, it’s a business deal – an agreement whereby mutual disagreements
are quelled in line with clear rules. Rules make real contact unnecessary. As
long as you live according to them, you don’t have to be sensitive to the
subtle reality that is other people.
But peace without contact is cold and lifeless. Where
there’s no contact, prejudice forms. Only at a distance do people make
decisions that cause others huge suffering. If you have contact, respect
follows of its own accord. Peace then becomes a natural and automatic result of
human interaction.
I was recently asked to share my thoughts about an
ambitious peace concert. What I proposed was finding a new name for it. After
all, that word “peace” is wearing thin. It has been applied to idle promises,
cold deals, naïve plans or sly ambitions too often to be credible any more.
We didn’t manage to find an alternative, though. To be
honest, I didn’t think much of the title “contact concert”, either.
I also hereby withdraw my proposal that today we
celebrate the “Contact of Utrecht”.
Let’s keep the Peace. But let the Peace of Utrecht for
the 21st century be more than just a business deal. Let it be a place where
sensitivity to others’ non-material wealth can flourish. A secluded place where
we can discover each other’s values without have to take an exam in equality.
Let it be a laboratory for a truly open society, one in which people can
blossom in their own individuality.