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COPYRIGHT 2007 Professors World Peace Academy
This article argues that a new concept of Realpolitik has to be developed. Old Realpolitik was defined by fear, collective fear of attack from outgroups, informed by the so-called security dilemma. In contrast, the new concept of Realpolitik should take into account the new normative system that currently gains mainstream acceptance in a globalizing world, namely human rights. Human rights replace fear with feelings of humiliation, felt by individuals in response to failing respect for equal dignity. If unattended, feelings of humiliation can hamper an otherwise benign transition towards a more comprehensive implementation of human rights. Peace advocates are called upon to take up primary responsibility to clarify and guide this transition in a constructive and transdisciplinary fashion.
INTRODUCTION
Morton Deutsch encouraged me to write this article. He is among the most renowned social psychologists and experts on conflict resolution. (1) Deutsch explains how exiting it was to work with Kurt Lewin (1890-1947), often called the father of modern social psychology, because Lewin instilled "a sense of pioneering elitism" in the new Research Center for Group Dynamics that he had established at MIT of which Deutsch was part.
Lewin introduced to social psychology the "Lewinian way of thinking" by stipulating, among others, that theory has to be useful for social practice. Lewin emphasized "the importance of theory; the value of experimentation for clarifying and testing ideas; the interrelatedness between the person and the environment; the interdependence of cognitive structures and motivation; the importance of understanding the individual in his or her social (group, cultural) context" (Deutsch, 1999, p. 10).
Also Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, argues as follows:
I have always believed that good scholarship can be relevant and consequential for public policy. It is possible to affect public policy without being an advocate; to be passionate about peace without losing analytical rigor; to be moved by what is just while conceding that no one has a monopoly on justice (quoted from http://www.bsos.umd.edu/sadat/people/shibley_telhami.htm).
This article follows in Lewin's, Deutsch's, and Telhami's footsteps in attempting to make theory relevant for social practice. The argument here is that a new concept of Realpolitik has to be developed. Old Realpolitik was defined by fear, by collective fear of attack from outgroups, informed by the so-called security dilemma. In contrast, the new concept of Realpolitik should take into account the new normative system that currently gains mainstream acceptance in a globalizing world, namely human rights. Human rights replace fear with humiliation as defining negative emotion, namely feelings of humiliation felt by individuals in response to failing respect for equal dignity.
The term Realpolitik was coined by August Ludwig von Rochau (1810-1873), a German writer in the nineteenth century, (2) following Klemens Furst von Metternich (1773-1859) in his quest to find a balance of power for the European empires.
Currently, the transition toward the new normative universe of human rights is endangered by clashes of humiliation, among others, clashes between the old and the upcoming new normative universe. If this transition is handled well, it entails hope; if not, it can seriously undermine any chances for building a sustainable future for humankind. This article is written with the intention to help making the transition more constructive.
Two introductory examples shall introduce what is signified here by "clashes of humiliation." I worked as a clinical psychologist in the Middle East and learned to deeply comprehend the notion of honor, while continuously struggling with its incompatibility with values of human rights. Consider the following case: A girl has been raped and this represents a profound humiliation of family honor. The author learned that there are two solutions: either the rapist marries the girl, or she has to be killed. She no longer represents an honorable "gift" that can be given to another family in marriage. As goes the explanation, she now represents a "rotten limb" on the body of the family. However, a human rights defender is appalled. Marrying a raped girl off to her rapist, let alone killing the girl, is equivalent to compounding humiliation, not remedying it. The family, in turn, regards the views of human rights advocates as condescending, as humiliating for their cultural beliefs. As a result, several clashes of honor, dignity and humiliation intertwine. Some of my Middle Eastern friends are dismayed because they feel that I contribute to blackening their reputation by equating the Islamic and Arab world with outdated practices. Clearly, my intention is not to tarnish anybody's reputation, but to invite all of humankind to reflect on our cultural practices--with honor practices to be found in most cultures of this world, West, East, North, and South--and how we need to amend them if we wish to build a sustainable future.
A second example is from a very different part of the world. In 2005, Japanese educators and leaders modified Japanese school textbooks "to make our children proud of Japan." These changes triggered enraged mass demonstrations in China and Korea, where many citizens felt that Japan was trying to gloss over its past. "It is the humiliation of history. Japan's neighbors are now furious because Japan has again tried to gloss over its history of humiliating its neighbors, but Japan in turn finds it humiliating that it alone is required to continually account for and atone for its historical past" (Floyd Rudmin in a personal message, April 11, 2005).
What these examples are meant to show is the relevance of moral emotions as definitorial force for the "political weather" within which Realpolitik is conceived, and within which political decisions are taken. Given the strength and significance of such emotions, it is surprising that psychology has not had a stronger influence on political science and policymaking in the past. However, apparently, the problem lies within the field of psychology itself. Even though the fathers of psychology were interested in emotion research, their immediate successors were much less so. Only a few visionary scholars (3) continued to invest their energies in efforts to understand human emotion, while behaviourism and cognitivism seemed more promising to the rest of their colleagues.
However, gradually, a more comprehensive picture has begun to emerge. In order to be effective as thoughts, thoughts need feelings--this is the new insight. In the beginning, emotion researchers tried to categorize fundamental "basic" emotions. (4) However, today, this view is no longer endorsed. A multi-layered approach is preferred, which conceptualizes elaborated emotions as comprehensive packages of meanings, behaviors, social practices, and norms that crystallize around primordial emotions. "Today we know that thought, behavior, and feeling are closely connected. Hence, interest in learning about emotions, though resuscitated only very recently, is now exploding and already rapidly changing" (Lindner, 2006b, p. 270).
Alongside the field of emotions, the phenomenon of humiliation, in particular, is currently gaining unprecedented significance. It is gaining significance not just as a topic to be studied by emotion researchers, but in a transdisciplinary fashion, for all social sciences. This tendency is pushed by the fact that the phenomenon of humiliation acquires visibility within society at large. In former times, rulers were not held responsible for caring for the well-being of their subjects. Rulers fought their wars over honor and land, and the suffering of their subjects went unmentioned. When people perished, through human-made or natural disaster, and when they were traumatized, this meant little. This was the old Realpolitik. At present, this state-of-affairs is in the process of changing. The backdrop for this historic change is that human rights introduce a new moral framework, a moral prerogative that stipulates that every human being deserves to be treated as equal in dignity. Human rights understanding turns practices that were normal for thousands of years, namely that "higher" beings had authority over "lesser" beings, whose fate was insignificant, into illicit and humiliating violations of human rights and human dignity. The deepest trauma within the new framework of human rights develops from being treated in humiliating ways, in ways that remove dignity. As a result, intertwined with the rise of human rights ideals, humiliation as a topic for study and policy planning forcefully enters the stage.
This paper lays out the changing role of humiliation during the past ten thousand years, and its significance in current times of moral transition. The article has five parts. First, the current state-of-the-art with respect to research on humiliation is presented. Second, third, and fourth, old and new Realpolitik are being analyzed, and the transition between them illustrated with two cases. Fifth, the paper concludes by calling for a wider horizon within ourselves and out in the world, a call for the need to learn to "walk the talk," both within each individual and in relation to others, so as to enable the human community to build a sustainable future for their species.
Peace advocates carry a primary responsibility to help bring about these transformations. Peace advocacy connects micro and macro levels, from micro level investigations of fields such as neuroscience at one pole, to the macro levels of political science, philosophy, history, or theology at the other pole. Peace advocacy has a pivotal role as bridge builder and fertilizer for research in the entire range of the social sciences, from micro to macro investigation, and a responsibility to inform policy planning.
CURRENT STATE-OF-THE-ART WITH RESPECT TO RESEARCH ON HUMILIATION
Very few researchers have studied the phenomenon of humiliation explicitly so far. Mostly, humiliation figures implicitly, for example, in literature on violence and war. The view that humiliation may be a particularly forceful phenomenon is supported, however, by the research of some authors. (5)
The notion of oppression is related to humiliation (Deutsch, 2006), as is the concept of domination (Pettit, 1996). There is, furthermore, a significant literature in philosophy on the politics of recognition and ressentiment. (6) Using the examples of Ethiopia and Eritrea, Liah Greenfeld suggests that resentment plays a central role in nation building. (7) The philosopher Avishai Margalit's (1996) calls for a Decent Society, in which institutions no longer humiliate citizens.
The relationship between guilt, shame and aggression has been addressed, (8) as has the relationship between anger and aggression. (9) Hazing and bullying entail humiliation at their core. (10) Cultural differences have been highlighted. (11)
According to Goffman, face is the positive social value a person wishes to attain for herself in a social interaction. Humiliation can be described as a loss of face. (12) Among the few scholars so far addressing the link between humiliation and aggression are Mischel & De Smet, 2000, who explain that rejection-sensitive men may get "hooked" on situations of debasement where they can feel humiliated. Furthermore, malignant narcissism has been linked to humiliation. Feelings of humiliation and shame may lead to narcissistic rage and acts of aggression meant to lessen pain and increase self-worth; international leaders, when publicly humiliated, in some cases, may instigate mass destruction and war. (13) And at last, there is also a link between help and humiliation; help may be resented by low-status groups (Nadler, 2002).
I have focused on transdisciplinary work on humiliation that includes a range of fields, from political science, sociology, anthropology, history, theology, to social psychology and clinical psychology. (14) Humiliation is a complex cluster of acts, feelings, and institutions, entailing at their core the holding down of a person, a practice which may be regarded as legitimate or illegitimate depending on its normative frame, and which is moreover played out differently by different cultures and people. (15) To my view, the conflicts in Rwanda and Somalia, as much as global terrorism, can be described more accurately as clashes of humiliation than as clashes between civilizations (Huntington, 1996).
OLD REALPOLITIK: SELF-INTEREST IS DEFINED BY BORDERS AND HONOR
William Ury, anthropologist, and director of the Harvard University Project on Preventing War, conceptualizes human history by drawing together anthropology, game theory and conflict studies (Ury, 1999). He differentiates three...
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