Part 1: Engaging Community

Here is the first part of my paper "Engaging Community: Peacemaking as Method in Ethics", which continues from where the introduction left off in my last post. This may look like a long post, but on paper it is only four and a half pages double spaced, so it will only take you a few minutes to read. If you're interested in the footnotes, I've placed them in the comments link as not to take up too much space here. Enjoy.

Part 1: The Hub and Peacemaking

In methodically answering the question of how we can live together, we begin with what we have in common, namely that we both live. No matter how different our narratives may be, they are nonetheless narratives of our lives. My narrative -- who I am -- may be completely unknown to you, in which case you may not care enough about me to think about how we can live together. Or, if you know something of my narrative that is of a reprehensible character, you may dislike or even hate me. Yet both of us live in an evermore crowded space with increasingly limited resources for sustaining life. Since you value your life and I value mine, then it behooves us to enter into conversation about how we can live together. If we hold nothing else in common, no other bond, we at least both value life.(3) From this shared value we have a basis to converse.

And converse we must, for my experience of reality is unique to my subjective experience, as is yours. In order to grasp a fuller understanding of reality, of what we experience together in life, we consider other perspectives by talking to one another and consulting other resources. To guide this conversation, Maguire offers what he calls “reality revealing” questions. First, we must ask ourselves what experience of reality we are discussing. Often we tend to presume meaning of an experience or prejudge the circumstances surrounding that reality. Asking the simple question ‘what?’ ensures that we are discussing the same subject and focuses our attention on collecting the primary data.(4)

Second, once we have identified the subject of our conversation we then consider contextual factors to develop a fuller definition of our common experience. For example, the questions “why?” and “how?” reveal the motive and the manner, respectfully, of our course of action in any given scenario. Examining the motive helps us to see the purpose and goal of our actions, and being attentive to their manner shows us that certain means or the way we carry out the action also reflects the values of our character. Having a good goal does not entitle us to achieve it by any means necessary. I may want to get more money so I can share it with those who need it, but that motive does not warrant my kidnapping a rich person and holding her ransom to get that money.(5) Another example of a contextual question is “who?”. No two persons are exactly the same, and our social relations are all unique connections within the web of society. What is right for you may be wrong for me, and vice versa. In a state of emergency following a natural disaster, we may choose to give the limited resources of our aid for rebuilding homes to the poor before we offer assistance to the rich, who are more likely to have other options available to them. Otherwise, treating everyone as if they were the same ignores the sociality of our personhood, the narrative relations that identify who we are. Finally, we ask the questions “where?” and “when?” to reveal the context of place and time.(6) It is good to make love to your spouse, but the police may think otherwise if you are having sex in a public park during your lunch hour.

Already in the initial stage of asking “reality revealing” questions we detect a qualitative difference between various contextual factors. This qualitative difference reflects our basic question of how can we live together.(7) To live together in community requires intentional peacemaking. Therefore, peacemaking is the essential quality according to which we may then weigh the foreseeable effects and the viable alternatives of the course of action we decide to pursue in response to our experienced reality.

However, we must be specific in defining what we mean by ‘peace’. As Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said, “Peace is not merely the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice.” If peace were the absence of conflict, then the morally good course of action would be to avoid conflict, either by disengaging myself from you or by making sure you comply with my agenda. But the former option would not be peace but rather ignorance to the reality I experience and to my own personhood in relation to others, and the latter option would not be peace but rather oppression. On the other hand, justice is living together in such a way that affirms your personhood and my personhood in relation to each other and to the environment directly, as well as in relation to all persons and living creatures indirectly.
Living together in a just community requires us to love our neighbors and to forgive our enemies. Dr. King wrote that “love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend. . . . By its very nature, love creates and builds up. Love transforms with redemptive power.”(8) What is meant here by the word ‘love’ is not merely a romantic feeling, though it may include that at times. Rather ‘love’ is the action by which we relate to one another once we consciously recognize the value of life: yours and my own. Thus, Maguire writes:

The personal life that makes your neighbor valuable is a life in which you also share. . . . Out of love you may sacrifice yourself for another person as that person might also for you. Such sacrifice is not caused by low esteem for self; it is a mysterious response to the person-related values that at times merit such an awesome gift.(9)

It is no coincidence that where Martin Luther King, Jr. writes of the kind of love described by Maguire, he explains that this love entails forgiving our enemies. For King, there is no love absent the capacity to forgive. When we forgive those who have wronged us, we are not ignoring what they have done. Rather, forgiveness means remembering the harmful act in such a way that it no longer presents a barrier to living in relationship with one another but creates a new beginning to live together. We may forgive someone who has wronged us if we recognize that the harmful act does not exhaust the person’s identity. Much more has preceded that harmful episode in the person’s narrative, and through forgiveness the narrative of our relationship can continue past that episode toward living together in justice. In this way, forgiveness seeks to make an enemy into a friend within our community.(10) Likewise, Bishop Desmond Tutu, who received the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, writes, “in the act of forgiveness we are declaring our faith in the future of a relationship and in the capacity of the wrongdoer to make a new beginning on a course that will be different from the one that caused us the wrong.”(11) Only if our relation to one another has a future that values each of our lives can we then live together in community. A just community is no static state, nor is it possible by maintaining the status quo. Rather a just community is only possible through our continual actions of loving neighbors and forgiving enemies. This process of building a just community is what we mean by peacemaking.

In this regard, Peter Block provides insight into building community. Peacemaking challenges us not to focus on retribution in solving particular wrongs, but instead to reconcile the fragmented nature of the community in which those wrongs are symptoms of the fragmentation. The possibility of an alternative future for a restored community, for Block, starts with “a public conversation based on accountability and commitment.” Block explains that to be accountable as a partner in the conversation means that you take ownership of your involvement in the situation and of your creative role in improving it. Without this accountability, a person is powerless to help create an alternative future. Likewise, Block insists upon commitment such that you promise to participate in conversation and pursue the alternative future without expecting others to return that promise. The promise is unconditional, void of bartering with others or reacting to their choices. Without the commitment of this promise, we are likely to become increasingly cynical as we react to our relation with others.(12) It is our own cynicism that ultimately prevents us from being peacemakers.

I propose that Block’s work compliments the understanding of peacemaking in our model for doing ethics. The accountability of which Block speaks is possible by the self-love and neighbor-love inspired by the value of life. Similarly, the commitment of an unconditional promise -- not to allow our reaction of the upsetting things, which others do or fail to do, to determine our own creative resolve for an alternative future together -- is possible only by forgiving them. Dwelling on what others do to harm the process sets up an immoveable roadblock, and ignoring the wrong will only give cause to that behavior continuing. Forgiveness, however, identifies what was harmful to the process and frees us to remain committed to the process of creating an alternative future together. In Maguire’s wheel model for doing ethics, therefore, the accountability and love as well as the commitment and forgiveness involved in peacemaking are all necessary for understanding the reality of our experience and deciding upon a moral response. We cannot answer the “reality revealing” questions if we are not vulnerable in relation to others and open to future possibilities together.

{Image 1: "Coffee Conversation by Dale Wicks at www.artbywicks.com}
{Image 2: Howard Sochurek/LIFE at www.summit.mccsc/edu}
{Image 3: at www.hydrosapien.com}