A Sunday Walk on Both Sides of "the Issue"
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(photo Fountain's Abbey by Jim Moran)
Andrew Sullivan's Quote of the Day
The present day shows with appalling clarity how little able people are to let the other man's argument count, although this capacity is a fundamental and indispensable condition for any human community. Everyone who proposes to come to terms with himself must reckon with this basic problem. For, to the degree that he does not admit the validity of the other person, he denies the ‘other’ within himself the right to exist – and vice verse. The capacity for inner dialogue is a touchstone for outer objectivity.
C.G. Jung, The Transcendent Function.
Dogs Barking, Border Wars and Copyright Infringement
I was talking politics and the law of copyright in my backyard (really!) with my friend the songwriter and novelist Kathleen Wakefield yesterday.
At the end of a long discussion about ownership rights and the Internet, I said, "if you're able to see the other side of an issue, it's difficult to be a zealot. Life would be so much easier if I could see only one side."
Then I saw Jung's quote. It was sufficiently synchronistic to ponder the core of most disputes -- whether the conflict arises over international borders or the neighbors' barking dogs -- our inability (or unwillingness) to walk a mile in another man's shoes.
Business people who think their disputes are "only about money" haven't seen what I've seen.
They haven't seen a tough businessman well up in tears at the moment he realizes that the law will not "make him whole" for the loss of an entire shipment of goods by the warehouse retained to house them before re-shipment.
They haven't seen two warring patent holders sitting down for the first time after years of litigation talking with great animation and sudden fellow feeling about their own bitter historic experiences of others' infringing their patents. They haven't seen those men pat one another on the back at the end of the day; heard the plaintiff call the defendant "bro"; and, promise to sit down the following week to hammer out the details of their agreement in principle.
They haven't seen prejudice evaporate at conference tables all over Southern California when gay plaintiff meets with straight defendant, agent with former client, black employee with white employer, and, disabled plaintiff with small businessman.
They haven't seen entire families torn apart by the suddenly increased value of a small piece of Los Angeles real estate fall weeping into one another's arms after -- once again -- years of litigation and even more years of estrangement.
These are not the exception. They are the rule. And they cut across all of the neat categories we like to build to distinguish one set of conflicts from another. They apply to litigation where the amounts in controversy are in the hundreds of millions of dollars. They apply to those brave and valiant souls who seek reconciliation with the (imprisoned) men and women who have murdered, raped or disfigured them or their loved ones.
What is it about the processes of international diplomacy, restorative justice, victim-offender and civil mediation that can accomplish these "impossible" results?
In my experience, it is primarily narrative. When people have what my international diplomacy professor called "spiritual conversations," they inevitably stumble upon the epistemological truth that we are one; that your interests and mine are essentially the same; that by drilling a hole in your side of the boat, my side sinks as well; that your story is my story -- one of family ties supporting us through times of loss or broken by lies and betrayal; one of love and grief; ill health; good times; triumph, death, passion, error, accountability, forgiveness, and reconciliation.
It may seem sentimental, but I let myself go there on Sundays, the day "my" people -- Presbyterians -- set aside to attend to the spirit. A day reserved for "sentiment" before going back into the material world to make the always challenging effort to apply spiritual lessons to the trials of the worldly world.
So, today, a glorious sunny Sunday in Los Angeles, I wish all my readers a fulfilling, relaxing and meaningful "day of rest" before tackling the great and messy project of moving one's own agenda through the cross-agendas of others. A week of asking ourselves what the other guy's story might be. A week of permitting ourselves to set aside our pre-conceptions in favor of encountering the unique but familiar experience of another human being who is, after all, pretty much just like us.
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