For some years now, I’ve been pondering the sentence I’ve heard, often, from my colleague and friend Kit Miller, director of the Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, and former director of BayNVC: “Empathy doesn’t flow uphill very easily.” Oppressed people already know it doesn’t flow downhill easily. As my late sister …
I am not so keen on the idea that power corrupts, and have already discussed this to some extent in an earlier post. My difficulty with this framing is multiple. For one thing, this saying maintains the pervasive belief that power is bad in and of itself, a belief that …
This is a continuation of yesterday’s post.
Can Facts Settle a Controversy?
When emotionally charged controversies are at play, even when agreement on the facts is possible, it’s unlikely to lead to any settling of the real issues, because beyond the facts comes the meaning we assign to them.
For …
In response to my blog piece In Appreciation of Complexity, I received 6 comments on this blog and 5 on the Tikkun blog where I am cross-posted. I read them all with great curiosity and interest. I am grateful to everyone who wrote back. I have no capacity to explain …
As I was writing yesterday about the Goldstone report and the Tikkun award given to him, I became more aware of how much both these men are holding positions of great complexity. As far as I understand, Goldstone agreed to accept the invitation to lead this commission because he was …
Today I broke the law. I visited Bethlehem, which is off limits for Israeli citizens. I went to visit Zoughbi Zoughbi, director of Wi’am (cordial relationships) – Palestinian Conflict Resolution Center (http://www.alaslah.org/).
Last night I was looking for directions and could not find them. Who would have known that Google …
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