 Hello there, it's Thursday at noon. I know it is Do you remember our arrangement Thursdays at noon on CFUV Are you ready to get started? What do you have in mind? What I want to do now is called first-person plural You make it sound excessively attractive That's what I have in mind Originally we planned an episode this week about dispute resolution and the different ways in which people can settle conflicts With perpetual threats of war and increased tension among people in general This seemed like a timely topic to address Unplanned events however often converge with the best-laid plans to create something that would have made sense all along Long-time children's television icon Fred Rogers of Mr. Rogers neighborhood Died this week at the age of 74 As we contemplated conflict this week we realized that for many people our age and younger Mr. Rogers was our first teacher in dispute resolution Whose influence we remember fondly as we grow older Even if we sometimes forget the specific lessons Katherine Morris a Canadian lawyer with experience in dispute resolution since 1983 is the director of peacemakers trust and Associate of the Center for Asia-Pacific Initiatives and a former executive director of the Institute for dispute resolution at the University of Victoria She maintains an extensive website for peacemakers trust www.peacemakers.ca We spoke with Katherine this week about how methods of formal dispute resolution have expanded as cultural diversity and post-modern concerns challenged traditional beliefs about interests and rights Today we discuss people getting along with each other as neighbors in times of peace and times of conflict How people get along with each other has been a basic question posed by humans for as long as history can record in his classic poem Mending wall Robert Frost contemplates the question of boundaries and cooperation Something there is that doesn't love a wall That sends the frozen ground swell under it and spills the upper boulders in the sun and makes gaps even two can pass a breast The work of hunters is another thing I have come out to them and made repair where they have left not one stone on a stone But they would have the rabbit out of hiding to please the helping dogs The gaps I mean no one has seen them made or heard them made But at spring mending time we find them there I let my neighbor know beyond the hill and on a day We meet to walk the line and set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go To each the boulders that have fallen to each and summer lows and some so nearly balls We have to use the spell to make them balance stay where you are until our backs are turned We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh Just another kind of outdoor game one on the side it comes to little more there where it is We do not need the wall. He is all pine and I am apple orchard my apple trees Will never get across and eat the cones on these pines. I tell him He only says good fences make good neighbors spring is the mischief in me And I wonder if I could put a notion in his head. Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it where there are cows, but here there are no cows Before I built a wall I'd asked to know what I was walling in or walling out and to whom I was like to give a fence Something there is that doesn't love a wall that wants it down I Could say Elf's to him, but it's not Elf's exactly And I'd rather he said it for himself I see him there bringing a stone grass firmly by the top in each hand like an old stone savage John He moves in darkness as it seems to me not of woods only in the shade of trees He will not go behind his father saying and he likes having thought of it so well He says again good fences make good neighbors We hope you will give some thought to getting along with others as you listen to an episode we call Before I build a wall. I don't apologize for having been a child of television. I Grew up in a boring boring place that will remain North Carolina Don't be fooled by what you see if you go there now. It was a different place in the 1970s. I read voraciously I played educational games and less than educational games with enthusiasm. I Had more friends than any industrious person would have bothered to accumulate. I Went to movies and later. I attended the cinema as well as the symphony and even the opera There was an opera company that had sprung up locally and improved as time went by and I still watched television a Lot of television. I was in Winnipeg when I got the new News that Fred Rogers was retiring This was in August of 2001. I Saw an article in an American news magazine His television show mr. Rogers neighborhood had been on the air since 1967. It said Rogers had been on television even longer than that My later research uncovered that this native of Pennsylvania had worked in children's television in the 1950s And that mr. Rogers neighborhood itself had had a precursor air on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation from 1963 Perhaps predictably once the Americans noticed the promising show being broadcast north of the border They had to have it and Rogers began his association with the American Network PBS shortly thereafter It remained in production for 34 years. I Had to suppress a rueful laugh upon reflection All that time I was worried sick about school girls school women school and career And there was mr. Rogers Just plugging away Managing to sustain his little cathode ray island of stability This corresponded with the way I had perceived him as a child by the way I Knew intuitively that I had been right about him and the revelation that his show had been in production for 34 years Proved it. I went back Back to the world of children's television and saw the show again last year watching her rerun in a spare moment It didn't look the way I remembered It was if the entire thing were aimed at preschoolers Still one of the appeals of great art is that one can revisit it see it with new eyes and Draw comparisons between what one was beforehand and what one has become since Fred Rogers is why there is television Television in a democracy must make an issue of access and Fred Rogers is the best opening argument. I can make Children of all ages need to be told that they are loved They need to be told that they are capable of handling some adversity now and will be capable of handling more adversity as they mature They need to be told that they are special The adults in a child's life should be competent ones They should avoid any devastating errors and avoid lying to and otherwise misleading the child I would add to this set of basic and necessary needs should not be withdrawn at any time Children of all ages should have grounds to feel confident These needs will continue to be met as they age No one matures or grows out of the need for these things Fred Rogers is therefore why I do first-person plural This show debuted on May 9th, 2002 on a community-based campus radio station in Canada For those of you who don't spend your spare time browsing the CRTC website. Let me simplify the situation for you Community-based campus radio exists because the CRTC has created a spot on the dial For those individuals who would use it to produce audio content This creation is one that had to take place at the level of federal government because quite simply Commercial radio showed very little interest in facilitating this possible use of radio There are two people producing the show and neither of us is getting paid a dime for his efforts We have done most of the production at home using our own equipment Although the station's production facilities have been useful to us at times and should continue to be It is true that with my MBA I could be doing far more lucrative things south of the border the most reliable published estimate I've read of how lucrative put the figure at $80,000 in US funds annually Why am I currently willing to work as hard as I do without compensation? My answer to this question is not as readily documented as the salary figure is All I have is a series of thoughts springing from an educated guess The educated guess is that shows of this type are as necessary to adults as mr.. Rogers neighborhood was and is to children Adults need to be nurtured Informed and treated as if their development and adults do develop if they are permitted were important The implications of emitting such a principle would be catastrophic in my assessment My parents understandably concerned about television's effects on me Would often ask as I watch to the small screen Don't you have anything better to do at the moment? I cannot think of anything better. I could be doing at the moment then pursuing the reclamation of existing media. I Think the television to say nothing of radio has been conceded too rapidly To a specific rhetorical school a school that sees no purpose in developing children at all Except to be compulsive consumers without the cultural resources to be anything else I've gone through a number of not watching television phases And I keep coming back to it because so much is right with the medium even as the content leans toward being only a way Of killing time between commercials The way radio has unmistakably become outside of a few little islands of sanity Television is a technology of great import and it is one that I strongly recommend not be conceded to the special interest of Oligopoly at any cost Frankly, I was trained to a higher standard in my business courses and elsewhere Feudalism is beneath me Fred Rogers had a lot to say about how to be a good neighbor a Good neighbor cared about what was happening in other people's lives a Good neighbor gently let others know that they were cared for and could generally count on the neighbor to be there for them a Good neighbor felt a wide range of emotions to express and did not run away from people who were sad and angry or people who are Joyous and friendly a Good neighbor had conflicts and crises, but these were resolved in a calm and loving manner With the neighborhood in mind as well as the individuals most of all The capacity to be a good neighbor was something worth developing Something immediately relevant to one's life and not antithetical to the need to quote grow up close quote Fred Rogers was sometimes satirized as being too bland even for the pre-verbal set But if there was one thing that never failed in his on camera demeanor It was the implicit recognition of the possibility that human existence could be worthwhile in and of itself That the life course in the capacity for apparently spontaneous growth of all sorts could be preserved and facilitated And Fred Rogers was a man on a mission quite literally his ordainment in 1963 as a Presbyterian minister Carried a charge to pursue television as a means to his ministerial ends Television had a tendency to disintegrate into a schlock factory even in those early days But he clearly wasn't going to concede access to this obviously powerful medium Without giving it his best shot first He himself said quote. I got into television because I hated it. So close quote Sounds like right livelihood to me Wonder if we could start with having you describe the field of conflict resolution kind of where it's been and where it's heading Well, certainly the field of conflict resolution has come a long way since I started in the field in the early 1980s in the early 1980s, I remember going to a conference and on mediation and I got it getting into the elevator and one Elderly woman said oh, isn't that nice nice a conference on meditation and it was it was quite literally the case that people did not understand the difference between Meditation and mediation. I think that in the last 20 years That we've seen a tremendous change in that regard. There's been a lot more awareness of the idea of conflict resolution But in the early 80s, I would say that that was the big that wasn't the beginning of the field I would say that we've always had conflict resolution in terms of international negotiation and diplomacy We've always had dispute resolution in terms of formal courts and in many other jurisdictions We've had informal forms of dispute resolution in the early 80s here There was a an explosion of interest in informal methods of conflict resolution Including community dispute resolution where people would try to bring neighbors together including victim offender mediation Which tried to take disputes that had turned into Crimes and begin to try and find ways to resolve those disputes in ways that took into account the concerns of the victim and the the needs of the and the offender as well the other major area was the area of civil dispute resolution which has become known as alternative dispute resolution and in Many parts of the world that means arbitration, which means two people go to a person who's appointed who makes a decision arbitration is not not in the formal courts a separate arbitrator is appointed but in Canada the field of alternative dispute resolution has primarily turned to Mediation where a third party is requested by the parties or appointed by an authority To help the parties resolve their own disputes where they retain the decision-making authority and Resolve their own dispute in their own way So in other words the third party comes in and kind of guides the discussion But they're not an authority that settles the dispute not in mediation in mediation So it's not like a judge who listens to both sides and then says you win you don't win or that kind of thing No arbitration would be more like that and that would be a form of alternative dispute resolution Mediation though keeps the decision in the hands of the parties and there are many other forms of alternative dispute resolution too Which include a public public dialogue public consultations With something that's called restorative justice, which is a variety of processes that try to come to grips with criminal conduct restorative justice Tries to get away from the idea that a crime is something between the Queen and the offender dealt with in very formal processes and Something that really involves deeply personal matters affecting a victim and involving an offender it's personal So they're looking at more than just the rational process of whether or not a law has been broken And getting into the social and emotional processes That are involved in the actions that happen Yeah, the social emotional and and justice processes that that are involved So that's restorative justice And you mentioned to me earlier before we started talking for the show You mentioned to me that there were different sort of narratives different approaches That have developed and that sometimes these approaches work better in some settings and other settings. Can you elaborate on that a little bit? Yeah, what's happened in the last 10 years or so Is that we've had there's a there's been An institutionalization of dispute resolution mechanisms domestically within the courts and also a tremendous entry for example, we have In ontario mandatory mediation program in british columbia. We have some regulatory incentives to use Mediation and we have The government has assisted in the development of a roster of mediators through the bc mediator roster society Yes, this mediation occur only in the civil situation or does it occur in the criminal situation as well, well what i'm talking about in in terms of the Incentives to mediate in the mandatory mediation that is in the civil area in most places But there are Movements to to increase what's called restorative justice through alternative sentencing through a victim offender mediation programs and so forth circle sentencing as another example of restorative justice And some of these are beginning to be institutionalized in the courts as well Some of these models particularly the civil adr I mentioned we've had a lot of people trained in particular models of dispute resolution Which is largely based on work done by harvard And encapsulated in a wonderful book called getting to yes, which was first published in the early 80s and reprinted in early in 1991 familiar with and It it tends to be based on a The the idea is that instead of Hard bargaining over your positions and and your and bottom lines You begin to explore the interests of all the parties And see what kinds of interests might might be in common What might overlap and what interests might be complementary? For example, somebody wants some you want chickens. I want money. We we have complementary interests So we trade chickens for money and by exploring those interests We can find Common ground or complementary interests in which we can have a what the the famous win-win solution It's based on a rational approach where the idea is that while emotions are important The emotions are we try to plum the emotions in order to kind of get past them and move to a rational solution And it also assumes that parties will be You know while power is never completely equal in any kind of negotiation or or personal or public dynamic This model assumes that people will have enough parity in order to negotiate fairly Mm-hmm The model of mediation that's taught is interest-based negotiation and mediation And most mediators in the province of british columbia, for example, and in canada would be trained in this approach So that's one narrative is the win-win Getting to yes approach and just to sort of encapsulate what you're saying The assumption when you talk about it being rational the assumption is is that everybody knows what they're interested in getting That they feel free to articulate their interests At the table and that once all of the interests are out there there is a way to meet all if not or most if not all Of the interests that are set out on the table that there ought to be a way to negotiate these interests back and forth And I assume that there are some problems with this If any of those assumptions break down that if people don't know exactly what they want Or if they feel intimidated by the process in some way or if they are Coming to the table with exact opposite desires Then there's going to be some problems with this approach. Is that correct? Right or or if one party wants to negotiate and the other doesn't And yes, ideally those are the conditions in which you can find a win-win solution A mediator can certainly help parties articulate their interests when they don't really know them They can help them understand their interests more clearly. They can help them build More options for them to to rely on in their negotiation process So in a sense, I think if you say that any if any one of those variables breaks down Well, you can't have a good negotiation. I'm not sure that's true. I think a mediator can help with all of those things But certainly at a certain point if you have one party completely unwilling to negotiate fairly You're not going to be able to negotiate and no amount of mediation is going to help and the same with Interests that are so divergent that there there's no reason to negotiate There were other approaches that have emerged and that are not quite as rationally based or That take into account other things like culture emotions that kind of thing A little more fully than the win-win situation does So if you could tell us a little bit more about some of these other approaches because I think the win-win Is the one that most of us think of when we think of mediation When we think of this kind of negotiation the the win-win approach came under a lot of pressure During the late 80s and 90s Because it didn't seem to take into account Differing ways of seeing the world different cultural differences It didn't take into account non-rational aspects of Of the way people are It assumed you could get past emotions It assumed a kind of secular rationality. It assumed that faith and spiritual tradition would be Would be kind of left at the door A number of people began to explore other approaches to conflict resolution And recently there I would say the main directions that we're seeing now are What we're calling narrative approaches which tend to See a conflict less as a win the potential for a win-win solution Instead they would see the conflict as two Entrenched narratives That are opposing one another And if we think about it from a negotiation perspective In the meeting between the two people with differing narratives They begin little by little to develop a narrative Between them A new narrative between them So instead of I want chickens you want money We begin a new narrative which which centers around the exchange of chicken chickens and money And in a mediation setting the job of the mediator is not so much to delve in and do an archaeological dig For the interests of both parties, but rather to be a kind of broker And actually a participant In the creation of a new narrative So both parties come in with opposed narratives deeply entrenched. I'm the good guy. You're the bad guy Everybody's got a white hat when they come into him in a mediation And everybody has a black hat too Each person comes in with the idea that the other guy Or gal is wearing the black hat and that I am wearing the white hat The mediator comes into this dynamic And the mediator's job is to try to What's called destabilize These narratives by Finding out for example if there was a previous relationship, which there often has been in a dispute Trying to find out was there ever a time when things were better? Well, yes when we first started this when I first started this job. Yes, things were much better Well, what was good about it? Well, we used to meet regularly You know over coffee and talk about our work together and So forth And you begin to destabilize The the the story of the black-hatted Enemy And Challenge it. Mm-hmm And you do that with both parties and little by little you try to help them create a new narrative that goes forward into the future So it's quite different. It works on a transformation of stories rather than an archaeological dig for interests, which can then be Reconciled So it's a more of a dialogical approach This is another thread and new thread in the field of conflict resolution looking more at Conflict resolution as a dialogical process a variety of different kinds of dialogical approaches You're listening to first person plural on cfu v 101.9 fm Victoria Another theme we're seeing is the theme of reconciliation mm-hmm the example that we might use is the example of attempts to have treaty negotiations between Canadian and British Columbia government governments and first nations in this province We had a treaty process where we have a treaty process, which is now largely acknowledged to have broken down They it's been going on for close 10 years just over 10 years And they they articulated a desire to use an interest-based approach moving away from positional negotiation And they trained a Many people were trained in this approach many of the negotiators many of the negotiators were trained Basically, they have not come up with one single treaty in 10 years And there's a lot of reasons for that Which I don't think we have time to get into today But some people are saying well, it's because we haven't used the interest-based approach well enough or thoroughly enough Or people have you have had not not had Intentions to use it well enough Others are saying well, there's something wrong with the interest-based approach in itself It doesn't acknowledge it. It's not neutral It is western the the rational the western rational individualistic egalitarian approach Is really based on utilitarian theory ethical theory it's based on on enlightenment ideas about Rationality and and liberalism which have become come to be seen as neutral in our society And first nations scholars and thinkers and practitioners are saying no, it's not neutral at all We we are not we don't come from that perspective And we need to find Methodologies of conflict resolution that reflect our ways of thinking as well Which are based on our tradition our spirituality our ways of seeing the world So they've been working more on the idea of reconciliation Which has less to do with trying to reconcile Opinions and come up with a win-win and instead trying to restore relationships Political relationships so that there's more justice Now this restoration sort of has an assumption Some might think that there was once something good that we're going back to I have the feeling though that there's a little bit more to it than that that it isn't just going back to Something that once was but maybe something that once could have been Yes, certainly there's never been I'm not an expert in the history of first nations relationships with with canada So so I can only speak theoretically about the idea of reconciliation Implying a previously good relationship I think you're I think you're right the word reconciliation implies that There has been something good that has now been lost I think though in practice There would not It's not seen as backward-looking. Let's let's look back to have what we used to have I think it's forward-looking towards ideals of justice peace truth mercy in one part in in john paul letter x Way of articulating the term reconciliation So not necessarily suggesting that we once had these ideals but instead together moving toward Something that looks more like those ideals Now I know you've done You've taken some of these Ideas some some of these theories and so forth and you've gone to other countries and done projects in other cultures And I think that the first nations example sort of brings us up as well That there are cultural contexts To the ways in which people approach conflicts social relations and so forth. So how does that work? How do you translate that when you go to places like thailand? Um kimbodia those places How do you Take what you learn in in a very western Way and then go into someplace that doesn't have this history this culture and without sort of super imposing it upon them How do you go about like bringing this to them? And I guess maybe a valid question is why you why why do this? And all is this something that um, well, I'll just leave it at that. Why do this, you know, and I think that there's kind of On the surface an imperialistic overtone or could be an imperialistic overtone to it. Well, yeah, and I I think you're right and I think that um um Certainly, I've thought about that a lot of times in the work. I've done over the last nine years or so In southeast asia and south asia I I used to worry about being an imperialist and going in and taking western methods into radically different cultures Um, I don't worry about that so much anymore For a couple of reasons. First of all, uh, every time I've gone I've been invited So if I'm invited, I'm assuming that people think that I have something to offer Now We could go on at some length on who's doing the inviting and under what conditions because often these are tied to Western based aid programs and sometimes the price of getting the aid is to have the foreign consultant Go in so I have to acknowledge that there is Some of that dynamic there and that they they might rather just have the money and do it themselves So they're kind of stuck with a western consultant When when they when the aid project is developed secondly I think that my fears about being an imperialist personally Were based on a little bit of arrogance and that arrogance was that Those folks really needed to be protected from me because they were somehow naive and couldn't Figure out themselves what they wanted to take and what they didn't and in fact That was an arrogant assumption on my part Because you know, we invite foreigners all the time to come in and speak to us. We don't say they're imperialistic They're just foreigners. We've invited to come and speak And we take and leave What we want And people in other places are like that too They're fully, you know, they're colleagues who That we work with and they invite us there because Well, if they have some Foreigner there who's a foreign expert they can get a bunch of people together And they can think about some things that they haven't otherwise Had a chance to sit down and think about and they've got some funding in there that helps them do that And they can invite some of their own speakers to come and speak as well I'd say a third dynamic is very important because I think we can't we we cannot underestimate the Lopsidedness in monetary power Between first world countries and third world countries So this sense of imperialism Goes beyond the personal Especially in the field of conflict resolution Because we you know, we do tend to export the harvard model that I described and I've done this myself I think the other thing that I've come to and that I Try to do In my work Which is very difficult to do when you have very limited funding Is to try and if i'm working in across cultures I try to get to know people and try to find out what it is that they would like to accomplish What their resources are What the obstacles are that they see in their own culture And begin and be more of a facilitator than somebody who goes in with all the answers Do you spend some time learning about their cultures before you go in when you're when you're hired as a consultant? And how do you do that? I mean do you? Is it a process of research or is it a process of interaction with certain people? I mean, how do you go about learning about a culture when you're going in there to? Sort of relate to people within that culture well It's pretty challenging because most The the small projects that i've been involved in are actually one one was a good size one But the the missions the assessment missions that i've been on are usually not that well funded and and I would say this would probably a Be quite typical and you might end up with people who are completely unfamiliar with it with a region or a culture or the The history of an area going in for two weeks interviewing a bunch of people and coming out and creating some kind of Implementation plan one that I was on recently going into Bangladesh and in june or legal reform project They only allowed two days prep time two for me to go in oh clearly. That's not enough So I I did do a lot of internet research as much as I could To find out who the players were in in the legal context what the issues were I I didn't have any illusions that I would be able to learn much about the culture So I would just I just did the best I could to focus on the particular issue area That I was involved in and tried to have a mindset of inquiry when I went in And that's about the best I know how to do There are limitations now in Cambodia. I've worked longer I've been eight times to Cambodia on short term visits of one kind or another So you get to know people you get to read more you get to understand the political dynamics You can ask questions. You can say why why is this happening? Why? What's the meaning of this particular strange event that's occurring? And why are people so upset about a particular event? And and you begin to just learn more and as you learn more you become more equipped to to serve Um, I guess the last thing I wanted you to do is tell me a little bit about peacemakers trust and a little bit about your website and the project that you're Are the projects that you're working on through that peacemakers trust is A not a Canadian nonprofit organization. We're on the verge of getting our charitable status We're focused on research and education in the area of conflict resolution and peace building Some of the projects we're involved in are first of all a series of seminars or workshops Called new directions in the field of conflict resolution and these are seminars aimed at mediators trying to introduce to them some of the newer Threads coming out of research for example narrative approaches Dialogical approaches challenging some of the ideas that have been brought forward in training over the last 20 years And so some of those workshops are are coming up in the next few months We're I'm also working on beginning to work on the air on the issue of public dialogue And we have a a I guess a thread of of action in peacemakers trust called Talking in public and our first initiative in talking in public Is the film and discussion series that that's ongoing now here at the University of Victoria Where we're screening the series called a force more powerful Which just has six examples Of the use of nonviolent direct action For social change the use of conflict for social change not conflict resolution but conflict Now that started uh in february, but you're going every tuesday At 12 30 up through march 25th. Yes so We also have a major bibliography on the website It's a resource website for students For scholars for practitioners And people can find it at Www.peacemakers.ca Well excellent You're listening to first person plural on cfu v victoria's public radio 101.9 fm 104.3 cable And on the internet cfu v dot uv dot ca Giving sociology an edge I think probably the most interesting thing that katherine talked about Is this idea of restorative justice and looking at conflict resolution as a way to To settle not only civil disputes, but also to settle criminal disputes That's becoming more popular around the world I've heard or read about juvenile cases Where the person who has committed the act that was once defined as criminal Is brought into a room and gets to talk about why He did what he did or she did what she did But then the party has to listen to all the other people who are affected And they not only talk about their losses in terms of Property or in terms of Feeling personally violated, but they talk about it in very personal terms in the sense that You know, whether or not they're having bad dreams at night Whether or not there are places they're afraid to go to now New fears that have popped up, you know, they actually kind of discuss the emotionality of the event and not just the Usual criminality of the event the black type as it were Right, they go beyond the black type and actually bring out What I would call the humanity of it. It sounds like a very proactive form of justice I think it's a very community oriented form of justice as well. It's assuming that crime can be thought of as a conflict And that there are more parties involved than just the criminal and the victim So it has an extremely social view Crime is about human relationships. It is a very social thing. I mean what gets defined as a crime and what gets defined is something else other than a crime is has got a lot of Of a social baggage that goes with it But even if we put aside defining crime Or defining criminal and and put aside the political aspects of that at base. It still always is a conflict It always is somebody doing something that conflicted with what somebody else wanted them to do So what are some of the benefits of this? There's something more Insightful going on then Making people turn out right and calling it something other than coercion or conditioning or social control There's an interactive element. It seems to me. Yeah, I was consciousness of well social factors to use your earlier term I would suggest that there is an attempt to heal As well as an attempt to rehabilitate and not just heal the victim or heal the perpetrator But also to heal the community And therefore some issues come out that don't have anything to do with the crime itself For instance, perhaps there's some injustices that are going on That started this person down the road of wanting to commit the crime Then that issue has to be addressed in this process as well The community learns that there's bullying going on or the community learns That there's some sort of inequity going on and they can deal with that as a community I mean, that's the ideal view of it. Sure. It's informed by the notion that justice isn't a purely punitive thing It's a more far-reaching view of justice. It says there's a rift in the community Let's see what we can do to heal it if anything. Let's find out how it happened Let's see if we can patch things up. Maybe they'll run a little better next time Yes, and maybe we'll identify some things that we can address directly as a community Whereas if it's just constructed as criminal and singularly individual crime, you know You have the individual who is the criminal and you have the individual who is the victim And you think of it in just those kinds of terms then you miss Some possible not so much causes but just some possible issues I mean one of the things that I was impressed with When I was in Winnipeg was there I cannot I wish I could remember the details, but Somebody had been accused and convicted of a crime And he had served something like eight years Before it was discovered that he had not indeed committed the crime I mean he had maintained his innocence all of this time But some evidence came up and went through the court systems And indeed it was found that somebody else had committed the crime. He had not and he was set free What happened next was a bunch of people came together all of the stakeholders in this The victim or the well, this is a murder. So the family of the victim The person who had been falsely accused the police The prosecutor anybody in the vicinity of Where these people lived and where the crime took place that felt like they were affected I mean anybody who felt like they had any kind of stake In this outcome came together and they came together Specifically to ask the question. How could this happen? How could a false arrest and conviction happen? And it wasn't so much to figure out who to blame though some of that was going around And it wasn't so much to figure out how to compensate the guy for the eight years, though that was part of the process But it was also To try to figure out if there was some sort of breakdown in the system to Correct So that it could not happen again or so that it would be less likely to happen again Given the same kinds of circumstances And I thought that that was just a really cool process and a process I mean, I don't know how effective it was. You know, I was judging as an outsider and I didn't go sit in it and Have no idea what the outcome was of it But just the fact that it was tried was was heartening to me That's the kind of thing that I think of when she uses the term restorative justice I think it's also interesting from the point of view that it that we're talking about fred rogers and about the neighborhood And I think that this fits quite well into this idea won't should be my neighbor The idea that if we treat each other as if we're all in this together as if My life and your life are intertwined somewhat Then we come up with different models than we do if we start with a point of view that says we're all competitors Or even if we start with a point of view that says that we're all rational beings with self interests that we're trying to assert I think it goes back to a thing. We've hit again and again While doing this show and that is the construction of a public self in discourse Canadians do what americans don't the implications are just what you would think they would be What do you think of when you think of what a public self is? I think it's an abstraction, but I think it's an abstraction that can be used in discourse to illustrate to convince To argue for or against I think that a public self Is an assertion that It is an abstraction. You're right. It is an abstraction But I think it's a it's a very specific way of looking at your life And I think that it's a more natural way of looking at your life than the competitive model the rugged individualism model Because all of life is intertwined with each other I mean we're discovering this on ecological levels when we look at interspecies Problems when we find that if we save one species we hurt 10 others or when we Do something to a certain environment? It has ripple effects into other environments Things are interconnected And because they are interconnected just because we pretend that they're not doesn't make them not Yes, just so just because one doesn't see the connections in a particular case doesn't mean they aren't there So the term public self might be abstract, but I think the concept is grounded very solidly Excuse the pun, but it is. I mean if you take a look at the ways in which The earth interconnects with each other This this makes much more sense. It fits much better into nature Than other kinds of models that have been asserted So do you think fred rogers taught this? I think fred rogers's message was a lot simpler than that But I think that his message was compatible with that In a way that the cult of individualism is not So what was fred's simple message? His message was you are loved You are reasonably safe You can deal with adversity as it happens And you'll be able to deal with more adversity as time goes by There is time for you to figure it out There are the resources available for you to develop You don't need to worry about the rug being pulled out from under you anytime soon You will have enough to get started And I think that's a message that Not only children, but adults Need to hear And be cognizant of and it's a message that needs to be made true And these are not just ideological Conceptions on my part. There are very Definite implications To taking these things as axiomatic And to taking the negations of these things as axiomatic I think it's interesting because when people talk about Mr. Rogers neighborhood, they act as if it's a neighborhood in which no conflict exists That that's why it has the beige reputation But I think what you're saying is That it is a neighborhood in which Conflicts are resolved That if we lived in mr. Rogers neighborhood, it isn't that we would never disagree It is that when we disagreed there would be resources to deal with that disagreement And I think there's a more subtle message as well namely that conflict doesn't have to be the end of the world That it isn't necessary if you and I disagree to pull out firearms and begin Pumping projectiles into each other's bodies that indeed we don't even have to resolve these things today We can let it sit for a day come back to it. It's a five-day week Monday to Friday If the neighborhood of make-believe is in an uproar on tuesday, who knows by thursday it might be sorted out Come back and find out and you can say that that's a tv solution to a tv problem But I think not I think that it is an iterative solution to an iterative problem The problem of human existence in time time keeps going forward It has an iterative quality to it ipso facto. We need to be aware of it in our dispute resolution mechanisms there's the kind of letting things be for a while and seeing what gets sorted out and that's interesting because That's very antithetical to that kind of proactive competitive I'm going to win Maybe we can figure out a win-win situation But to just sit with a problem or to sit with something and see how things work out Requires quite a bit of patience You have been listening to first person plural because how people get along with each other still matters First person plural Is a show created for community radio by carl wilkerson and dr. patty thomas to examine social and organizational issues music for first person plural is performed composed and produced by carl wilkerson except where noted for more information about first person plural dr. patty thomas or carl wilkerson visit our website www.culturalconstructioncompany.com or email us at fpp at culturalconstructioncompany.com