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

know only one good German; a dead German") is not extreme
depolarization ("All Germans are simply wonderful"). The cure for
rigid xenophobia is not rigid xenophilia. Such attitudes are not
the fruits of mature reflection, but of indoctrination.
Much more helpful than dualism and dualism stood on its head
is the ancient Chinese idea of yin/yang; that everything has a
dark side and a bright side, that this is normal, nothing is
perfectly good, nor perfectly bad. The peace worker proposes. And
the round table disposes.
8. Reconciliation After Violence: An Overview
Introduction Reconciliation = Closure + Healing, closure in
the sense of not reopening hostilities, healing in the sense of
being rehabilitated./65/ Reconciliation is a theme with deep
psychological, sociological, theological, philosophical and
profoundly human roots--and nobody really knows how to do it.
Twelve approaches will be mentioned, with proposals indicative of
what could be done for each. But first a map that will become
more meaningful after reading about the approaches.
There is usually a Third Party as source of Grace, Law and
Justice, above perpetrator and victim: God (the Church), the
State (the International Community), Society (the People).
In principle, all the Third Party can do is either to
administer the relation between perpetrator and victim, or change
that relation into a relation to itself; punishing the perpetrator
and/or comforting the victim (including trying to answer his basic
question: why me, underlying the theodic‚e/66/).
The victim can seek restitution for the harm from the
perpetrator or from the Third Party by having the perpetrator
64