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

at a joint understanding, reconciling in the process.
The task of the peace worker is to organize those dialogues
and to see to it that the findings flow into some general pool.
One way of doing this is to put at the disposal of the citizens in
any part of a war-torn society, a village, a ward, a company, an
organization, a big book with blank pages to be inscribed by them.
The book will become a part of the collective memory, no doubt
subjectively formulated but that will also be its strengths.
Rather than the truth lawyers and historians think they can
establish the book will carry thousands of truths. Contained in
the book would be descriptions of violence and traumas, not only
what happened but also how it touched them, wounded them. Added
to that would come their thoughts on what could have been done,
their thoughts on reconstruction and reconciliation, on the
resolution of the underlying conflict, and their hopes for the
future.
In other words, the citizens would themselves establish their
truths. Something like this was done by the Opsahl Commission for
Northern Ireland some years ago/75/, and no doubt played a role in
externalizing the conflict, seeing it as something objective
outside the participants, to be handled. Soka Gakkai in Japan has
also done an impressive job collecting the war memories of very
many women in 26 volumes/76/, thereby establishing a collective
memorial to be consulted by future generations. The madness of
violence is amply documented.
But the major task of the peace worker is to give the search
for Truth the two twists indicated while remaining truthful to
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