part i: in trust we trust
This instalment explores the relationship between trust, conflict, and violence as well as the vagaries of community building. It highlights that when trust is relinquished and tribalistic or insular notions of the Self and Other are upheld, violence emerges. However, conflict that upholds the principle of trust as a socio-biological mandate that objectively structures our relationship to others and the environments we inhabit irrespective of our own subjective experience or understanding of our capacity to trust, can be fruitful and beautiful. The instalment ends with an invitation for readers to embrace trust and reject bordered thinking that creates barriers between ‘us’ and ‘others’. It underscores that we are always already Other, marching, always marching towards our fellow man and dreams of another tomorrow.
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The morning dew sows the seeds of discontent as weary bodies rest their eyes on the verge of despair. Pointed or minor arguments leave etchings as large as the Kalgoorlie super pit deep in the hearts and minds of each party to the conflict. Vows are made that there can be no reconciliation as pouts turn into days, into weeks, months, years, decades, millennia. This is the corroding effect of conflict, that it is governed by pride and the seeming inability of all parties to a conflict to surrender it and pave the path to compromise and mutual understanding. Of course, we must differentiate between violence and conflict, for the two are not identical. The latter entails the rejection of the equality principle which naturally holds between all persons irrespective of one’s individual beliefs about the equality of mankind. The infliction of harm on another entails this rejection and the erection of oneself on a hubristic pedestal that imagines one as existing in a hierarchical relationship with/to others. This distancing of the self from others by positioning one as superior or, at the very least, as being better than others by virtue of race, gender, socio-economic status, intellect, physical desirability, achievements, and much more, breeds contempt.
From the negation of equality and the erection of hierarchy comes the exclusionary and discriminatory distribution of one’s compassion, as one enacts relations based on factionary similitude where other people must continuously prove themselves to be worthy to be considered with a modicum of care. This is indicative of a type of territoriality wherein one emerges as sovereign above all else and assimilates all others to their value system, thereby charting out who does or does not belong to this family of one. In this sense, some bodies are marked as belonging based on parameters set by the sovereign individual who rejects equality. Together, they form a ‘community’ of hubristic individuals who seek to discipline others into their ways of being by rejecting difference and advocating homogeneity. Theirs is a politics of opposition, for they define themselves in opposition to others, thereby upholding a polarising mode of moving through the world. Violence, then, is opposed to equality. It is hierarchising, territorialising, and oppositional. It elevates the desires, aspirations, and wellbeing of a limited few above others who are deemed ‘undeserving’ of compassion, respect, and inclusion in some individuals’ conception of the so-called ‘good life’. The negation of the principle of equality provides the justificatory basis on which harm is justified, whether economic, physical, and/or psychological. Even if one tolerates the presence of those she does not regard as equals, her general attitude will be violent.
Any performance of toleration, mediated though it may be by the practice and observance of socio-biologically mandated trust, is always already punctuated by the inability to assimilate trust into one’s self-understanding and, by virtue of this, the principle of equality. The principles of equality and trust are mutually constitutive. The latter gives rise to the former and requires the observance of equality in order to successfully sanction pro-social behaviours. Those who reject equality as a secondary governing principle are nonetheless forced to uphold it through the machinations of trust, for they too must navigate the world convinced that for the most part, no harm will befall them aside from the imagined precarity they may entertain. Despite this, these individuals are likely to uphold a transactional understanding of trust based on their rejection of the equality principle which creates tension deep within themselves.
Accordingly, tolerance and the observance of the trust principle prove insufficient to guide the afflicted individuals out of the quagmire of their perceived sense of insecurity. That the principle of trust can be observed without the equality principle demonstrates that the former is prior and mediates between the violence of some and the integrity of social life. Without trust, there can be no peace and without the universalisation of trust outside of its tribalistic observance, there can be no enduring peace. If trust is relegated to the halls and corridors of only those one discriminates in favour of, then her attitude towards those who do not belong to the same community or communities will be exclusionary and violent. Here, violence is not merely a matter of ‘misunderstanding’ but of the negation of the humanity of others and the requirement to respect all whom one encounters. Therein lies the difference between conflict and violence. The former dances to the rhythm of misunderstanding that is not underpinned by the rejection of either the trust or equality principles, while violence seeks to dispossess others of their sense of identity, safety, security, and stability.
Even where parties to a conflict subscribe to transactional and subjectivistic notions of trust, they nevertheless act from a place of belief in the equality of all people. Indeed, this orientation and its defence drives and fosters conflict, which arises when some feel that they have been treated unjustly and in ways that should not be countenanced by their equals. The perception of the negation of the principle of equality triggers their desire to defend themselves against the injustice of the unfair treatment they have received at the hands of others. Conflict is borne out of respect for the principle of equality and while the subjective capacity of parties to conflict to trust may be disrupted, they are nevertheless satisfied to practice trust in socio-biologically sanctioned modalities. In fact, parties to a conflict proper believe in the resolvability of their misunderstandings and disagreements with relevant parties or, at the very least, the possibility of this. These individuals want to be heard and understood and are, more often than not, willing to compromise. Here, even while hierarchical social relationships may exist, parties to a conflict harbour a more fundamental belief in the natural equality of all persons. However, where such relations foreground the need to discipline others into the extant hierarchy for the sake of hierarchy, then the conflict is not merely a conflict, but a violent conflict, whether epistemically, psychically, economically, or physically. Conflict is, therefore, rooted in misunderstandings that beautifully demand resolution through deliberation and voluntary compromise, whether by one, some, most, or all parties to the conflict. It is the echo of another world and hints at its arrival.
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Conflict proper is principally geared towards the restoration of individuals’ capacity to assimilate the logics of the socio-biologically mandated principle of trust and the attendant equality principle. While it is necessarily disruptive in that it upsets the order of things, conflict is principally restorative rather than destructive, nor is it concerned with the permanent institution of uneven relations based on power, both the attainment, maintenance, and exercise of power. Therein lies the beauty. Daily life is peppered with conflict, and it is not only concerned with the Other, although it is always already concerned with the question of belonging and home. The efforts we make to be known and understood by the Other are partly geared towards assimilating the Other into our ways of being, doing, and knowing. We convince ourselves that our own position and posture in relation to any issue are the truth which must be accepted by the Other so as to protect and buttress the Self. We are in the business of convincing the Other of the verisimilitude of our words, actions, and thoughts. In this lies the desire to discipline the Other into our own conceptions of truth. A degree of self-righteousness animates all parties to any conflict, although there is often a more domineering party whose will prevails above that of other parties to any violent conflict. However, where there is an inability on the part of the Self to listen, practice compassion, and speak and engage from a place of care and interest in reaching a mutually agreeable compromise, there is only violence. Assimilation and discipline of the Other are neither conducive to a peaceable agreement or true compromise. Here, there is only the capitulation of an ‘adversary’.
Conflict with the Other almost always stems from internal conflict within the individual and the sense that one has yet to achieve certain goods that are conducive to a sense of safety, stability, and security in relation to one’s individual identity and relationships to others and the broader environment. When one feels unsettled in different domains of life, one often seeks to assert control over the perceived sources of one’s unsettlement. One feels psychically and emotionally displaced, which may be punctuated by actual physical displacement, and compounds one’s inability to feel at home in one’s body and embodied experience. Feelings of displacement in one’s own sense of identity leads to efforts at self-definition in relation to the external world which always inform and shape one’s subjective experience of one’s individual identity. A conversation commences, tip-toeing around the ways in which the individual may or may not be changed by encounters with the Other and the extant world. This dance is dialectical for it is not only the world that impacts and shapes the individual, but the individual who impacts the world in turn through their efforts at transforming it so that it may be reflective of ill and weak-conceived notions of who the individual is. Born into communities and moving through and around other seemingly discrete communities, the individual negotiates their place in a world where others are similarly grappling with what it means to belong, to whom, where, what, when, why, and how, although the latter four questions are always secondary. When confronted with psychic and emotional insecurity as informed by an ambivalent world, the individual notes that they belong to no one and seeks to find someone or others to whom they belong on the basis of shared desires, experiences, fears and what have you.
The world is full of individuals attempting to find and secure their “people” or “tribe”. This tribalistic drive is the source of much dissatisfaction and turmoil within the individual. These efforts and partial sympathies can result in tensions as individuals are confronted with others who do not meet unspoken criteria regarding the characteristics of the sought after “tribes”. The whole world is comprised of people seeking their “whom/who” which gives rise to insularity as those with seemingly congruous needs and wants and perspectives congregate and consummate their communal relationships. Here, those who do not conform to the expectations of a given “whom/who” or community is shunned and therein lies the continuation of this violence. The initial conflict of the individual seeking to feel secure, safe, and stable in themselves, conditioned as this is by the exterior world, finds its actualisation in the search for the Other who can serve as the individual’s ‘saving grace’. This violent conflict is further compounded when the communities that emerge from individuals’ efforts engage in gatekeeping practices and boundary-making that demarcates which “whom/who” belongs in those communities. Seemingly benign, these actions subvert the principle of trust and treat this governing socio-biological mandate as a transactional and primarily subjective experience whereby “outsiders” must “prove” themselves to gain acceptance. Instead, the principle of trust requires that its assimilation by individuals subvert tribalistic notions of self and community. The subjectivisation of trust and refusal of equality creates the conditions of possibility for violence. It erodes and takes but never, ever gives.
Still, internal and external conflict can be beautiful and create the conditions of possibility for mutual understanding to flourish, but only if the principle of trust as a socio-biological mandate that holds irrespective of individuals and communities’ subjective experience of their capacity to accept the Other is upheld. All else is violence. Notably, we are always already Other, and this is true regardless of our efforts to build and establish communities with impermeable boundaries. However, trust as the socio-biological organising and governing principle of the world and all relationships thereof, makes these boundaries porous and subverts any effort to erect rigid borders between us and others that undermine the equality of persons. Trusting in trusting others and bridging relational gaps may yet usher in modes of relating to the Other that are rooted in compassion, care, and understanding of the ways in which we are each grappling with the question of ‘belonging’ and ‘home’. This is the perennial question that has precipitated may wars and other violent conflicts and its subtler consequences are still as corrosive as wars themselves. Still, the morning dew sows the seeds of possibility as weary bodies rest their eyes on the verge of despair, hopeful, always hopeful for another chapter.