specific Dialogue

For our purpose, to break the Silence for sustainable peace of our world, we have three advises for the specific Dialogue.

• Listen to the people from different culture and/or generation, carefully and with patience; they might be fragile.

• Feel it Personally with your Heart.

• Learn History for Future.

It takes unbelievable courage and efforts for the (ex)victims and ex-soldiers to speak up. It means also that they cannot often tell the whole story, and you may not dig too deep there for the peace of their mind. So to get the whole picture about the war you need supplementary studies, such as watching documentaries, reading books, and imagining with your heart. And if the victims see the young generation of their former enemies they hesitate to throw the terrible story about their forefather into their faces of young people. That is also human, but that is a benefit of the Silence, too. So younger generation should study and pay respects to the sensible situation of the old generation. 

Why such specific Dialogue? We should start where the problem comes from.

Any conflict happens between two groups, when the interest of each group conflict against each other. Then often both thinks that their best interest is to pursue their own interest prior to the one of the other. It means that one group would achieve their goal even at the cost of the other. Then they sometimes end up fighting each other; a war.

As a result of this war there is a winner and a loser. But the problem does end there. The loser is not happy so they would look for a revenge. And victims of both sides in also not happy and they want apology and compensation. So after all the problems of both group can not not solved but they gets just bigger. The costs to solve all these problem is always more than what anyone achieve after the war. In fact a war never solve a problem.

A. Einstein said, "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." In other words you can solve a conflicts of interest only when you see it from a higher/bigger scale than the conflict occurs.

For example for a conflict of interests within a family you should think not only about the personal interest but also about the interest of family. Then you can look at it in a bigger perspective and solve it. 

For a conflict of interests between families we should look at it from the interest of the street they both live. For a conflict of between local cities we should look at it from the interest of the country they both belong to. 

Then for our issue of the conflict between countries and the war as a result of that, we should also be able to look at it from the interest of a bigger scale, like a region or the world of human beings.

That is not easy. So we need a dialogue with the people from different cultures. And we should be ready to listen to how the other thinks and feel. It is not a competition to decide with is better nor a court trail to decide which is right. It is to find an interest for both cultures.

Another important dimension is TIME. Because time flies, most people forget or new generation doesn't even learn about the war in the past. That is why the Silence is a strong enemy for us. So our Dialogue should connect different generations. The experience of older generation should be passed on to the younger generation and shared with them. So in the Dialogue we talked about the past, but our aim is for the future. And we don't have time to waste; people who experienced the war of more than 60 years ago are already very old and we don't have much time left to hear from them. Without this sharing of the war experience beyond generations we cannot find a Sustainable peace and the Silence wins again.

Here are some tips for our specific Dialogue: 3 DON'T's 

Don't 1: Let's not accuse too much nor express to much grudge, not only about their people nor about you own people. 

Off course it is important to acknowledge what was/is wrong for what some did or do, and it might be reasonable to accuse them for it. But if you just accuse them they would often react as silence. For example the more the old victims accuses the government of the former enemy, the more difficult for the government to react and they keep quiet. It works again for the Silence, but not for the Dialogue and the sustainable peace.

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that." Martin Luther King Jr.

To deal with the dark history we need positive light for everybody. Even for the midst of an atricity Light helps the victims more. "Even in the darkest days of your life, you are able to see the stars in a dark universe. That even when you are imprisoned you can be a free person." This is a quote of my Dutch aunt, who spent three years as a girl in the Japanese internment camp, and who was almost sent to one of the Comfort Station, sex slavery.

Don't 2: Don't expect others to act for you. 

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."  Edmond Burke

We should realize the risk of doing so. Remember how normal people in many people got involved in the wars by doing so. No normal people have never voted to start a war. They just depended on others, namely their leaders, and they did not stop a war. Then they all suffered after. We need to act for ourselves.

Don't 3: But don't force anyone, even yourself.

If you do, it cannot be sustainable. The Silence wins again.

I've decided to carry out the mission against the Silence, hopefully for the rest of my life, and promoting the Dialogue with my Dutch friends is one of the first attempts for this mission.

Thank you for your attention.