AFTER VIOLENCE: 3R, RECONSTRUCTION, RECONCILIATION ...

ecoming a permanent state of society. A society can also become
nonviolence-torn.
In short, the conditions are similar to the conditions for
using violence: the suffering is intolerable, all nonviolent means
have already been tried, the violence is minimal and it is not
glorified afterwards, for instance as hero worship./92/
10. Reconstruction/Reconciliation/Resolution: The interface
To repeat: the enormous complexity of problems, dangers and
opportunities that emerge from violence in general, and war in
particular, has been reduced to three components: reconstruction
(after the violence), reconciliation (of the parties) and then
more than ever: resolution (of the underlying conflict). Each one
is a universe in its own right with its own complexity.
How do the three relate to each other? The interface must be
rich if for no other reason simply because dramatis personae are
the same, at least as far as perpetrator and victims are concerned
(a distinction more or less superseded in Buddhism through the
karma concept). The two meet each other as perpetrator and victim
in the violence relation (which is already emphasized in the title
of this manual) possibly with a shared interest in reconstruction.
As human beings, naked, vulnerable, individually or collectively
organized, they may be in search of reconciliation. And they have
incompatible goals (values/interests) in a conflict formation that
may have survived it all without coming anywhere nearer its
resolution.
For them the three sets of roles and stages blend into one.
It is impossible to say where one ends and the other starts. The
analytical distinctions made here are made from above by one more
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