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.