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

has a system analysis epistemology based on interacting causal
chains/cycles is less known./71/ Concretely this means the
following: although any human being at any point can choose not
to act violently, the decision is influenced by his karma, his
moral status at that moment, the accumulation of "whatever you,
whatever you do, sooner or later comes back to you",/72/ and by
the victim's karma, and by their joint, collective karma; the sum
total of the merits and demerits of earlier action.
Since these intertwining chains stretch into the before-lives
of the past, the side-lives of the context and the after-lives of
the future the demerit of a violent act cannot be placed at the
feet of a single actor only. There is always shared
responsibility for a bad karma. Hence, the way to improve the
karma is through an outer dialogue, which in practice means a
round-table where the seating pattern is symmetric, allocating
nobody to such roles as defendant, prosecutor, counsel, judge; and
with rotating chairperson. But prior to this: meditation as inner
dialogues, with participants trying to come to grips with the
forces inside themselves.
Thus, in buddhist thinking here is no actor who alone carries
100% of the responsibility; it is all shared in space and time.
Where Christianity can be accused of being too black-white,
Buddhism can be accused of being too grey. But the idea of
cooperating to plug the holes in the boat we share rather than
searching for the one who drilled the first hole, including having
a court case on board as the boat is sinking, is appealing, both
for conflict resolution and for reconciliation.
In conflict theory the concept that comes closest to this is
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