The amazing gift brought by people who really make a difference in working toward Peace is that they do conflict well rather than avoiding it. There is a delicate balance struck between domination and surrender in the practice of conflict across its many manifestation. It seems to me there are any number of valid choices in response to conflict - from becoming limp in order to do no harm to the choice to cause pain and even damage while doing as little lasting harm as possible. The choice I have a hard time respecting is to voluntarily lack careful decisions about and practice of your choice of response.
When I was a boy I struck another boy who took the lead in a group that chose to victimize me. I struck him in the face, knocked him to the ground and saw the look on his face as he became the victim instead of me. I ran home from his house crying while they all watched dumbfounded. Thereafter I developed a willingness to allow myself to be harmed in order to model non-violence. This I practiced. Then, it became clear that there was a middle ground that would allow me to intervene when others were being victimized which the surrender method did not provide. For several years I studied what was available to me - the percussive (punching and kicking) martial arts. It became clear that this was not the middle ground I had imagined so I stopped, despite enjoying the rigor and competition. In 1990 I renewed my search for the discipline that would fit my desire for a conflict method that matched my ideology and discovered an art that has some grounds for identifying itself with peace and harmony.
One way, rather than The Way, I approach peace work is the practice of Aikido. Since it involves taking control of another person's balance there arises the specter of domination. Since it seeks a transformation of the conflict experience, rather than practicing total annihilation of The Enemy, practitioners run the risk of being overrun by an attacker. These are the tensions, both in the bodies and in the minds of the persons participating, that make Aikido work when it works as self defense and fail when it fails. The practice of Aikido, however, can be related to but independent of physical combat concerns, in that it shapes in the practitioner, like other martial arts, a pervasive energetic insistence on this particular being different. Combat systems rightly insist that the difference is "you thought you'd be beating me down and now the reverse will be the case". Breaking with this contemporary emphasis and historical background Aikido insists, from the philosophy through technique execution, that the unexpected shift of expectations will be "whatever you thought was going to happen, I insist that everyone, including you, be able to walk away from this when they choose and with their identity and body more or less intact."
Martial Nonviolence (tm) is the process art of conflict that honors the need to struggle while insisting that friction not be framed as a zero-sum game in which someone must become the victim.
Labels: bdwc, culture, martial, nonviolence, peace
| posted by Unknown @ 6/20/2002 01:25:00 PM
Brandon D. WilliamsCraig
Culturesmith 
( 8 6 6 ) 2 3 6 - 0 3 4 6
p u b l i c at b d w c dot n e t
Objective:
To partner with your organization and working groups making the transition into dynamic community by making collaboration an art and a pleasure.
Background:
· President and co-founder of Association Building Community 501(c)3 (ongoing)
· Professional Martial Artist, Aikido (Yondan - 4th degree black belt) - Daisempai and Instructor of adults and children for Kayla Feder Sensei (Rokudan - 6th degre black belt) Dojo Cho of Aikido of Berkeley
· Ph.D. candidate Pacifica Graduate Institute: Mythology and Depth Psychology (Jungian) (six years)
· Trained Community Building Facilitator in the method of the Foundation for Community Encouragement, founded by M. Scott Peck
· Guardian of Peace (co-founder, Council, tutor) – a partnership of conflict facilitators
· Administrative Director, including I.T. and web design, for Moving On Center – international School of Participatory Arts and Somatic Research (four years)
· State of California Certified Mediator, organizational consultant, peace activist
· 22 year Professional Regional Theater career – national touring actor, director, teacher, performer, Choir Director and Liturgical Cantor, professional musician,
- Montessori background
Overview
The word Culture applies to individuals and to groups of any size, not simply to societies as a whole.
Every gathering of people brings different stories and histories together, generates, and develops its own culture that impacts every aspect of its collective life. This diversity generates friction, no matter what. Conflict is most often resented and extreme attempts are regularly made to avoid what can be a profoundly creative opportunity.
In the endless movement toward more effective collaboration, areas of life often written off as out of control or off limits are accessible to a process directly engaging a group in terms of its culture. Not everyone is willing to do the hard work required discovering and co-creating truly satisfying work. The only requirement for beginning is the determination to try.
From the moment we begin our dialogue I offer compassionate facilitation as well as modeling the kind of interactions that can develop an organizations ability to be a community of collaborating artists, sharing responsibility for their conflicts as well as their other products. I bring to bear the areas in which I have been proficient longest – my strengths in martial discipline and group facilitation, professional collaborative decision making, inspirational teaching, even music improvisation and performance, to find the road your group can travel together toward mutual investment and shared leadership.
The groups with whom I work form a core that stays together, produces the goals they set, and does so sustainably, with mind, body, and heart. Implementation of proposals and the ensuing process requires time and buy-in from existing leadership. Even if your organization is already in the process of dying - how you close your connections can make all the difference. If your group choses to live the end result can be the most satisfying creative environment any group member has ever known. Imagine the effect on the world we pass to our children if every workplace could lay claim to that. Everything works - is moving to satisfy some need. It is likely you work every day with people who love where they are and what they do. Imagine, hope, and call for change.
