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Prompt: "When one is silenced, conflict is heightened"
Vaclav Havel, former president of Czechoslovakia once asked the question “Is the human word truly powerful enough to change the world and influence history?” And history shows that, by supressing the right to speech, the heightening of conflict will follow; and along with it, change. Injustice is an unfortunate element of conflict; it leaves behind a trail of psychological trauma that can never be forgotten. To truly put to conflict to rest, the perpetrator of the injustice must express penance, for by remaining silent, he is heightening conflict and withholding closure- choosing to remain silent can result in the elevation of conflict. Prejudgement incites fear and fear leads to miscommunication. While being silenced and remaining silent can contribute to conflict, the refusal to communicate can also elevate the severity of conflict. People are capable of critical thinking, and to express this is through speech. If this is not utilized properly then the cost is the inflammation of conflict.
By oppressing the right to speech- by exercising tyranny- the oppressor is provoking a sense within people that yearns for expression. It makes them rebellious and angry. Anger and malcontent is then applied to process of reasoning, where their perceptions of the world changes dramatically. Injustice intensifies and thoughts of dissent that were forced to be locked up and stored away by mandate of an unjust law explode into action. An immediate call for change. The elevation of conflict. Imagine, if you will, where the right to read literature and openly discuss its themes and ideas, where the freedom to express political, social and religious values were all but fundamental rights. Its preservation presumed to be common sense. But all of the sudden is taken away. For people that’s enjoyed the freedom to speak their mind will not tolerate disenfranchisement and perhaps is the reason why the people of Czechoslovakia reacted to the Soviet regime the way they did in 1989, a movement coined as “The Velvet Revolution”. It was documented that the number of demonstrators multiplied from one hundred thousand to five hundred thousand in a matter of days; truly a crescendo of conflict. The movement eventually led to the alteration of the constitution, where the executive powers were stripped from the Communist party and a democracy was born. It seems Vaclav Havel was right, “the human word is powerful enough to change the world and influence history.” Thus, by supressing something as powerful has the human word; the heightening of conflict is inevitable.
The reaction to being silenced heightens conflict; choosing to remain silent, however, also heightens conflict. When someone has wronged someone compensation is not enough, there must be genuine penance expressed to the victim of the wrongdoing. If this is withheld, then it perpetuates the initial conflict; because of the perpetrator’s deliberate ignorance, the victim is angry because deliberate ignorance provides no closure, but is a constant reminder of the evils inflicted on to them. Compensation, for example money, cannot heal psychological wounds. The victim, who was initially terrorized by the wrongdoer, is spiteful, incredulous at how unyielding ignorance can be. Therefore, they cannot move on, and they brood in their hatred for the perpetrator. When juxtapositioning the anti- Japanese sentiment of the Chinese and the pardoning attitude of the Polish to Germany, the significance of expressing remorse becomes evident. The rape of Nanking is still denied by Japanese officials to this day and an official apology from the government was never recorded. The response of the Chinese people, principally the families directly affected by the atrocities, is hate for the Japanese. In a restaurant in Guangzhou, there is a sign that reads “Japanese and dogs, are forbidden entry”. A fitting summary of Sino-Japanese relations. Because Japan still equivocates the happenings of Nanking, and essentially remains silent on the matter, the hatred harboured by the Chinese for her continues to this day, and along with it, the insidious conflict between the two countries. Former German Chancellor Willy Brandt genuflected at the Monument to the Ghetto-Heroes at Warsaw as an expression of penance. It was his way of “commemorating millions of murdered people” and was indeed perceived as genuine, as the Polish-Jewish community calls it “a process of healing”. Today, there is no hate between the peoples of Germany and Poland. Poland forgave but never forgets the atrocities inflicted on to the forefathers of its people, and Germany honours this principle by educating its youth to the truth to teach them the dangers of regression and the importance of learning from history. A stark contrast to the history books of the Japanese, where Nanking is referenced by mere footnotes, withholding wisdom from the proceeding generation, manufacturing a line of people who will continue to be ignorant and provoke the fires of conflict. To deescalate conflict, one must not withhold rightful apology by remaining silent.
Before I talked about how by choosing to remain silent and being silenced by despotic authorities elevates conflict. The severity of conflict, however, can also escalate when one chooses not to communicate. We have a tendency to generalize, whether we know it or not. We allocate people and things to certain profiles in our cognition according to that person’s visible action. Perhaps the most common, yet unfortunate example being the Muslim community being associated with extremism. We ignore the individuality of people- We refuse to believe that a person can act outside of his designated profile. This is prejudgement, and when we have concluded that something is dangerous, we refuse to communicate with the perceived threat, but rather distance ourselves from it. This elevates conflict because when the “threat” approaches us with peaceful intent, we shoo it away. Fear makes us belligerent, and this causes frustration on both sides, consequently leading to conflict. Megan Stack’s brief exposure to the dangers of a conflicted Afghanistan and the unwelcome sexual advancements of a crude warlord meant that stigmatising the whole country with traits of violence and perversion was justified, because the country, perhaps in her mind at the time, was a land of violent and impulsive men. A passage in her book “Every Man In This Village is a Liar” underscores Stack’s fear bred prejudice leading to conflict, where the voice of an Afghan man from the other side of her hotel door is perceived as a threat and “(They) are stripped of all understanding”. Her prejudgement was later proven to be false because the man turned out to be “a sweet-faced cleaning man”. However the push and pull between Stack and the Afghan man is a fitting metaphor to the gradual heightening of today’s conflicts, where prejudgement leads to misunderstanding and perpetuates an avoidable conflict, where the fear of the unknown breaks the links of communication that is the key to settling conflicts.
The human voice is directly linked to the extremity of conflict, it either has the power to perpetuate it and end it. It can also be the solution to conflict, for communication is the rational path to a conflict resolution. All and all the how and why conflict prolongs or perpetuates due to articulation remains a subject of intrigue.
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