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

within families, between persons, breaking up marriages.
The result is double structural violence of the horizontal
variety: people who actually like each other find themselves
ending up in different camps, and in those camps they find strange
bed-fellows with whom they have little else in common.
Once polarized structures have been crystallized, they are
not easily dismantled, among other reasons because they solve a
problem when direct violence enters the scene. Like other forms
of communication, direct violence also has sender and receiver,
from Self to Other. Better make sure Self is not hit by friendly
fire. Moreover, the impact area expands from micro hand-weapons
via meso artillery and bombs to macro ABC-weapons. Better make
sure there has been adequate territorial sorting in advance by
escalating not-too-quickly from micro via meso to macro.
Culturally, the implication is immature conflict philosophy
with only two parties and one issue. Such is reality, be ready:
Cold War between East and West, clash of civilizations between the
West and the Rest. Structure and culture hand in hand, inner
mental, and outer social, polarization confirming each other.
There is a tradition in conflict studies/22/ to see these as
identity creating mechanisms. No doubt they provide answers to
such classical questions as "who am I" (a part of that larger
Self) and "where am I heading" (for victory in the struggle with
Other".) No doubt not only emotions but also volitions are
mobilized by such cognitions (and vice versa). But this is also a
twisted, thwarted identity, potentially at the expense of the
livelihood, even life of others; nothing to celebrate, nothing to
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