We Can Either Talk or Fight

One isn’t working and never has. We are left with one choice.

“Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don’t believe is right.” — Jane Goodall

I was an International Relations major at university. My focus was on history, political science and economics.

I read multiple and politically varied news outlets every day. I’m 58, pretty well educated, lived around the world for over years. My wife is Canadian, my son born in Japan and my daughter born in Singapore. We spend a lot of time now in Indonesia.

I have an above-average perspective on the world. I’m interested in history. I’m spiritual, not religious. I have no affiliation to any religious group even though I live in a Hindu part of the part that sits in a Moslem country.

And I can’t figure this Middle East conflict out.

And neither can they.

Who Was There First?

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the longest ongoing conflicts in the world. Even over the past weeks both sides have killed members of the other.

The basic argument comes down to who was there first. Of course, one side says they were clearly there. The other states the opposite.

According to historians and researchers and very smart people, Canaanites were the first to live in the area of Jerusalem around 3,500 BC.

According to other historians and researchers and very smart people, Philistines were the first to live in the areas of Jerusalem as far back as 4,000 BC.

There are three very simple truths in all of this:

1. All of the experts who argue on this topic weren’t around to verify any of this. This has been true for over 5,950 years given the first claim was 6,000 years ago.
2. History is written by the victors. And victors change. And history gets rewritten.
3. We will never know the truth.

A Great Truth

I am no expert but I have seen enough in my life to know that stories change over time. I’ve seen stories change multiple times in a day. I’ve seen two people watch exactly the same situation and have two completely different stories.

We see 10,000 news outlets around the world report on the same story and there is a different perspective in every case.

We see billions of perspectives on social media where 99.999999% of the people commenting and declaring they know the truth weren’t anywhere near the reported event.

It is almost impossible to get to the truth. As I’ve repeated before the quote from Thomas Mann, “A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth.”

Every day that goes by on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict simply means we get farther away from the truth.

We will never know the truth.

Fighting

So why do we continue to fight over the truth?

We fight because we have stopped talking with each other.

Yuval Noah Harari is an historian and the bestselling author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. He is a professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Esther Perel is a psychotherapist and bestselling author. She is recognized as one of today’s most insightful and original voices on modern relationships.

In a fascinating conversation at the 2022 Alpine Fellowship Symposium, they discussed the issue of polarization in our world. Harari approaches the discussion from the macro level, Perel from the personal and micro level.

They both agree from their therapist and historian perspectives that when we stop talking the only thing left to do is fight.

The Middle East conflict is simply a reflection, metaphor and microcosm of the billions of divides that happen every day in our home and in our politics because we stop talking and only fight.

We talk, we disagree, we argue, we stop listening, we cancel the other perspective and then we fight.

This morning I was having a call with Benjamin Casteillo from New World Together about the current challenges of discussing climate and sustainability. Benjamin said, “We can only enlarge our perspectives by interacting with each other.”

As long as we are not open to change, nothing is going to move forward whether in our own personal lives or in global conflicts.

We will not resolve anything as long as we continue on this path of fighting and arguing.

Just ask the Israelis and Palestinians how this is working out for them.

Peace.

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