Thich Nhat Hanh: Being Peace "Working For Peace"

Forgive me for writing this as I read this chapter, but I am simply finding it so interesting that I must start now. Hanh begins this chapter by exploring the relationships, environments and circumstances that lead to an instance of rape involving a 12 year old girl and a Thai pirate. I though it was really interesting how he says that one cannot take a side, one must understand both parties. I think that is a really interesting way of looking at it: to examine and understand the myriad of environmental factors that lead this man to commit this terrible act. Hanh points out that in the area hundreds of children are born into extreme poverty every day. They really have no future, no way of eking out a living other than piracy. They are victims of their environment. And to an extent everyone is responsible for that environment. By doing nothing to remedy their situation it could be said that we help to create this environment, which in turn creates these pirates, who in turn commit acts of violence. Hanh is not admonishing us, so much as pointing out that there is much more to any situation than what appears on the surface. Before we judge someone we must know and understand the part that we have played in their environment. On this note he also urges us to consider how every day actions such as driving a car, and eating meat affect our environment. I learned somewhere that if Americans were to give up meat just one day a week then there would be enough food to feed the entire world. Since learning this I have made a conscious effort to reduce my already meager meat consumption to 2 days a week, and to abstain entirely from eating beef, the largest producer of the greenhouse gas CO2. I already don't own a car, and ride my bike everywhere I go. I agree that it is very important to consider the ramifications of our actions, even the seemingly insignificant ones. 

Hanh goes on to talk about duality, how both parties in conflict must learn to understand and accept each other. He talks about reconciliation. This has always been an interesting topic to me. As soon as someone mentions reconciliation, time and time again I think of post genocide Rwanda, I think of genocide, and rebuilding communities afterward. Thinking about it is really quite staggering. How do you come back into a community after a genocide. How do you return to a home where your neighbors, in a lack of judgment, attempted to kill you and your family? How do you do that? walking down the street you see the empty houses of your friends who were killed, and the full houses of those that did the killing. It is really such a phenominal thing to think about, and then magnify that for the entire country and you have it. Perhaps Germany had it easy after World War I. The country was in shambles so everyone had to come back together to rebuild, to survive and live on you had to take up tools with your neighbors and rebuild your homes and lives, leave the past behind. In Rwanda, however, the country has not in as poor of shape I would say. there had been no large scale bombings at the very least. Not much for neighbors to have to come together over, no real unifying factor. The challenge was how to re-unify the country, and serve justice, and on top of this, how do you counter the threat of guerrilla groups from Zaire that cross the border and continue to kill Tutsis, and Hutu "traders." For Rwanda the solution seemed to be community courts which allowed communities to seek their own justice, and then tribunals and national courts for those responsible for the genocide at higher levels. You want to put everything behind, but justice must be served, not only because it is law, but also because it provides closure for both parties: the victim knows that punishment has been dolled out, and the perpetrator is able to do a kind of penitence for their crimes.