The Dragon You Stop Fighting
El dragón al que dejas de combatir
A reflection on how the shift from battling inner conflict to meeting it with empathy mirrors the political and ethnic conflicts that persist because people unconsciously cling to them.
The Dragon You Stop Fighting
A reflection on how the shift from battling inner conflict to meeting it with empathy mirrors the political and ethnic conflicts that persist because people unconsciously cling to them.
So from going from this death battle with the beast, suddenly it becomes a relationship of connection, empathy, love. He just walks by, crosses the bridge, and says goodbye to the dragon. But that's internal, right?
That is beautiful. It's a great movie.
And that's what I'm referring to: the benevolent presence. But it starts with yourself.
When identity fuels conflict
There's all this turbulence all over the world. I'm going to Israel next week for three and a half weeks, and it's heavy there. It always is, every day, even on the quietest day, but now it's the most heavy I've known: political unrest, everything. And I happened upon a phenomenal quote that encapsulates a lot of what we see going on at the political and social level. It was in a letter to the editor in The Economist, not even a whole article. The writer quotes a psychoanalyst who was a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. He devoted much of his life to studying chronic ethnic conflict, and he discovered that the people involved often unconsciously do not want to end that conflict.
Exactly.
Because who will they be? It's not just "who will I be," but "I'm part of this group," and that's even more powerful.
I had a good friend from Israel many years ago. He went through battle, and he told me he was quite hopeless about the conflict ending, because he said either one of the sides needs to simply decide to stop, and they do not want to.
No. And for the Jewish people, one of the most basic underlying patterns of thinking is: we need to survive as a people.
And that's identity. Because it's this people and not that people.
The spiral of specialness
Exactly. And with that naturally goes the feeling that we're special. The more special we are, the more entitled we are, and the more problems we create. It's never-ending. And I haven't spoken this openly about some of these things with most people, because I feel like they're just going to attack me. "You're against us. You're a traitor."
They will. Exactly.
But what I found so interesting is that this person, in my opinion, has said one of the most intelligent things I've heard in a long time about these political issues. And he's a psychoanalyst. In other words: get off the political level and get real.
It would be interesting for me to read that. If you have the article, send it to me.
I'll send you the quote. Thank you so much.
Very lovely, as always. A pleasure.