Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2000 10:03 PM
From: "Mohammed Ahsan" <mohammed.ahsan@worldnet.att.net>Subject: How do We Contain Intolerance and Find Common Grounds through Conflict Resolution - IDear Shetubondhon Friends:
Owing to the size of the posting, I am releasing my article in two stages. This posting will focus on the root causes that institute the senses of intolerance and gives rise to conflicts in Bangladesh. I will focus on the remedies in my next segment. The article draws some excerpts from a work of Mr. Dimostenis Yagcioglu at the Institute of Conflict Analysis and Resolution of George Mason University. The article can be viewed in its entirety at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8945/conf.html .
Why So Much of Intolerance and Conflicts in Bangladesh?
The breeding ground for conflicts and intolerance in Bangladesh stems from, at least, three major mental attitudes that we develop and harbor over time.
a. Negativity;
b. State of Swaying Minds; and
c. Individualism and Grouping of Similar Minds
Negativity of our attitudes and the thought process always lure us to focusing on the negative aspects of each situations and positions taken by others. We often tend to look at a glass half-empty rather than half filled.
Whereas, the "state of swinging minds" often are characterized by our frequent change of positions on various social, political, religious, and other critical issues that govern our daily lives. The third factor of individualism and grouping forces us to get into never ending competition that breeds confrontation and gives rise to ill feelings to the competitors. These three factors, when combined together gives rise to serious conflicts first within us and then eventually it spills out when our internal capacities overflow.
In general, people get involved in conflicts because their interests or their values are challenged, or because their needs are not met as expected. Some people have more internal resistance than the others and have the power to accommodate others' views and utilize internal mechanisms to filter the information out to the advantage of self-development. The central piece of conflict is the negativity of our thought process. The more negative we are the more conflict we generate.
Let us now see why the Bengalis are so prone to intolerance and conflict. Conflict is a natural and very typical phenomenon in every type of human relationships, at every level: From interpersonal (the realm of psychology) to global. It is easy to resolve or help resolve a conflict stemming from a clash of interests. It is more difficult to deal with a conflict that emanates from a clash of values. And it is even more difficult to handle a conflict in which at least one party's basic human needs are not satisfied. That is why such conflicts usually are deep-rooted and intractable. Bangladesh however is a more homogeneous society and have marginal ethnic diversity. So, according to the established theories, it should have least conflicts.
Our intolerance and hatred unlike many other countries, do not stem from ethnic or social diversities rather are effects of our own individual outlook to life and our attitudes to accepting others' points of views on issues that govern our lives. The three states of minds that I talked about in the first paragraph; one of the swinging minds, the other of negativity and the individualism are direct products of our methods of upbringing both through our formal education system and the social and peer environment that our young minds are subjected to.
Sowing the Seeds of Negativity
Let us look at some concrete examples and analyze them with its individual merits. First of all our education system teaches us very little about the positive outlook to life and are often conducive to the reverse. Look at some of the arithmetic problems we solved in our early lives like;a. the tank with a hole at the bottom discharging water and being filled from the top
b. problems relating to mixing of water with milk or the similar ones
c. climbing a slippery bamboo tree
d. A cycle being bound by a rope at the end and the cyclist trying to ride.
e.. Shooting at a moving bird or a moving plane
The continuous bombardment of this negative learning process, over time, creates a mindset that often tends to look at life in a negative frame. This is just the beginning of the process. When we returned back home from school, we were bombarded with the negative synonyms like that of feeding someone with the torture of the fear of "zuzuburi" or the "ghosts". These are done with no malintensions by our parents but the long-term effects of these are tantalizing. The general mindset that are developed over time during our childhood forms and shapes our attitude in the future that governs our individual and group relationships.
This negative thought process, when we grow up, leads us to develop our individual relationships on the basis of similarities of lower caliber rather than the strengths of the diversities of higher caliber. This is due to our understanding that are formed in our early lives to keep away from diversity. Diversity is never shown as strength. As a result the individual and group relationships tends to create cells of individual strengths that are similar, and become antagonistic to the other cells that are also formed on the basis of individual strengths of a different kind. Then starts the process of an ever-escalating competition among these cells for establishing the ultimate influence in all aspects of life. The negativity of our thought process somehow does not allow us to be able to sit together and utilize our strengths for a common cause of the good for the society or the nation.
Sowing the Seeds of Swinging Minds
Our psychology somehow gets affected from our childhood that gives rise to the phenomenon of the swinging minds. The state of the swinging mind does not allow us to stick to our stated positions and our guiding philosophy for long. It is very easy for us to switch positions on the basis of our personal orientations on a particular issue. These orientations are however not guided by our firm philosophies and our whims and emotions rather guide principles of life more. These emotions are so intense and overpowering that our personal judgments becomes hostage and captive in the hands of these whims. Once under the spell of the whims and emotions, reasoning takes the back seat and gives the whims the upper hand.
How did we get into this mental frenzy? Again we have to go back to our upbringing both formal at the schools and colleges and our homes and peer groups. If you look at the pieces of prose and poetry that we read in our childhood. The common themes of those pieces are emotions not reasoning. During the start up years at the school, we read the stories of Julekha Bibi, Poris, then we read the stories of Fotik or we go to the extreme sense of reasoning through "Vobishoter Manush". Look at the switch! We then go to our math classes and learn to reason thorough the geometry, algebra and trigonometry without understanding the real senses in those problems. These reasoning then get embodied into our system without any practical senses in there. The senses of reasoning due to the lack of its practicality give way to the teaching of emotions through literature. There comes the clash of our whims and reasoning and it is the whims that always wins thereby creating the state of the swinging minds with no clear philosophy or guiding principles.
Emotional minds are the worst for developing enduring relationships and are often short lived and develop confrontational attitude.
Sowing the Seeds of Individualism
During our childhood, we do not learn the value and the spirit of team efforts. On the contrary, our formal training leads us to the competition of individual strengths. Our curricular and co-curricular activities in the schools and colleges are dominated by individual strengths. The only avenue for practicing group efforts are sports and games. Even in those events, we tend to utilize our individual strengths and try to win the game rather than developing any collective efforts of individual strengths. One can see the fate of the Indian Cricket Team with the absence of Scahin or the fate of Bangladeshi football team without the presence of some renowned players. If they are available to play we may expect good results; without them we are no where.
Based on our initial upbringing, we start making social comparisons on the basis of individual ability and merit, and any stratification that is not attributed to differences of individual skills or worth is considered unacceptable. Such a change, of course, marks the beginning of intergroup conflict. Strong group identities resulted in an 'us' versus 'them' division that lead to intergroup animosity. Competition between these groups simply intensified the mutual dislike. It is this paradoxical process, particularly its more complex version which takes place at the societal level that Social Identity Theory aims to explain. According to this theory, every individual divides his/her social world into distinct classes or social categories. Then, within this system of social categorization, individuals locate themselves and the others. The sum total of where they are located with respect to each category and classification constitutes their social identity. In other words, one's social identity consists of how one defines oneself in each social category (gender, geographic location, class, profession, etc.).End of Part I