The Blueprint For Ending Harm
An Inspiring Research and Networking Initiative
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The Blueprint For Ending Harm
An Inspiring Research and Networking Initiative
Hannah Claire Smith
[00:00]
What would it take to end systemic violence and oppression? What would it take to truly create a better and more beautiful world for everyone? Seven years ago, I started a portrait and interview project called "Why We Fight," which explored the personal motivations for taking up arms. I interviewed former combatants all over the world—in Lebanon, Iraq, Colombia, Northern Ireland, and elsewhere. Their stories, combined with my experiences in conflict and post-conflict areas, exposed a pattern and sparked a theory about the root causes of harm. In the years since, I've actively tried to disprove this theory but have been unsuccessful. My research instead revealed that this theory could be applied beyond war zones, providing insights into violence or oppression anywhere and laying the foundation for the answers to those two questions. I'm not going to tell you how to fix all the world's problems. Most solutions must come from within the communities they're intended to serve. But I am going to share where I believe we can start. This blueprint incorporates far more than my own observations and experiences and combines the work, theories, and beliefs of many: civil rights, Indigenous and anti-colonial activists, academic colleagues and scholars, theologians, and beautiful people around the world I've had the privilege of getting to know who are truly transforming their communities for the better.
[01:07]
These ideas, by the way, guide all the content that I write in every single video that I post. All right, let's dive in. This is the blueprint for ending harm. If we truly want to create long-term sustainable change, we have to start by understanding who our true enemy is. It's not a single nationality, ideology, or a malicious group that controls everything. Our true enemy is what I call the Four Forces. They're at the root of all human-created problems. These are the Four Forces: fear, victimisation, isolation, and ignorance. I'll explore their full definitions in a bit. The Four Forces convince us to hurt others, hurt ourselves, or stand by while others are hurt. Where the forces exist, the greedy can take control, populations are manipulatable, and violence and harm are almost inevitable. The forces are the glue that keeps unjust systems and institutions intact. All effective long-term solutions to these human-created problems have one thing in common. They engage and neutralise these forces. When we eliminate the forces, we awaken individuals to their personal power. We remove the temptation to choose self-preservation over our deeply held values. We prevent harm before it happens. We stop cycles of violence. We foster lasting positive change and create a better world for everyone.
[02:15]
So how do we face them? For every force, there is an opposite which neutralises it en masse. And there is also a resilience factor which supports our ability to resist it. The opposite allows us to address forces externally in society, and the resilience factor allows us to address them internally from within ourselves. Those who are resilient are able to make tough and admirable decisions in extraordinary circumstances. There are soldiers who defy orders, activists who spark revolutions, and those who feel free even when behind bars. So let's dive into our first force: fear.
[03:26]
Fear causes us to neglect our core values and beliefs for what we deem necessary for our own comfort or self-preservation. I see this force's influence just about everywhere today, mainly in the way that so many remain silent in the face of injustice to protect their jobs, social standings, and reputations. Fear often convinces us of the lie that we have no other choice but to become active or passive participants in harm. Fear's opposite is safety, but I want to stress that this doesn't come at the expense of anyone else's safety or autonomy, which might then cause another force, victimisation, to come into play. I'll explain more about that later. The resilience factor against fear is courage. Courage is the belief in the possibility of something better combined with the willingness to face discomfort or pain for it. Fear's primary motive is control, and that can either be overt or covert. When fear is utilised by someone looking to accumulate power, they'll often use it to either foster obedience through intimidation or reliance through manipulation. Intimidation is the overt use of fear to control, and manipulation is the covert use of fear to control. This reliance through manipulation can be subtle and is achieved by convincing those who are already gripped by fear to sacrifice commitment to their values or their autonomy for the promise of protection. Many world leaders have harnessed fear in this way to accumulate power and wealth after large violent attacks.
[04:31]
So let's get back to courage. A lot of people think of courage as the opposite of fear, but that's not quite true because I can stand here full of fear and still act according to my values if I have courage. I'm able to maintain my commitment to my convictions and those I love despite fear's influence. And as Nelson Mandela famously said, "Courage is not the absence of fear but the triumph over it." To inspire action against something that's terrifying, you need the combination of safety and courage to be greater than the scary thing. You can boost safety, you can boost courage, or you can boost both. You don't need to be in a position of power to boost safety, by the way. Obviously, it's easier when you have the resources to fully contain the threat. But with fear and with all the forces, you can neutralise them regardless of your level of influence. Courage takes time to cultivate. The courage to face something truly terrifying is built with many small decisions made over time. And it involves increasing both the belief in the possibility of something better and one's tolerance to discomfort. This is why a society with a low tolerance for discomfort is usually one where courage is scarce. Those who spark movements often need the most courage, and one act of courage can have quite a ripple effect, inspiring more action.
[05:36]
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a seamstress and NAACP member, refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a crowded bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Her act of defiance led to her arrest and sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, one of the most notable boycotts in the civil rights movement. Ninety percent of African-Americans in Montgomery participated in this boycott. This initial act took a lot of courage. But as Rosa Parks once said, "I knew someone had to take the first step and I made up my mind not to move." To take that first step, you have to face many unknowns, which is what contributes to fear. Rosa Parks didn't know how the police would react, how the white people on the bus would react, or how many people, if any, would stand behind her. Once the first has conjured the necessary courage and acted, it can certainly inspire more courage, but it also increases the sense of safety even if the acts are still dangerous because people know what to expect and they know that they are not acting alone. That's why that initial act of bravery helped spark a mass movement.
[06:33]
Another way to create safety and inspire greater action is by making fun of the scary thing. When you're laughing at something, it's harder to be afraid of it. And if your adversary is a fool, it's difficult to see them also as a monster. One of my favourite examples of this is from a book called "The Blueprint for Revolution." In this book, Serbian author Srdja Popovic describes humour as a tool for activists to pop the bubble of fear. This story is set in 2011 in Syria. The Arab Spring had just begun. Tunisia toppled their despot Ben Ali, and we started seeing protests popping up all over the region. Bashar al-Assad, Syria's dictator, grew worried and started clamping down on anything that looked remotely revolutionary. He forbade the writing of anything against the government or for democracy anywhere. And not only that, it was also the job of law enforcement to remove such things wherever they appeared. So the military, the secret police, regular police—everybody was invested in this. The police were also very intimidating and extremely violent. Activists were disappearing left and right, and a lot of people are still missing to this day. So this would understandably dissuade a lot of people from joining a movement. And when that happens, the leaders of that movement have to get creative to address this fear. One day, a group of activists inscribed anti-government and pro-democracy slogans on ping-pong balls and poured them down the narrow, steep streets of Damascus. Pretty soon, dozens of police officers were scouring the streets, bending over and searching for the enemy anti-Assad ping-pong balls.
[07:39]
There were several rounds of this, and it caused quite a spectacle. If you were convinced that you needed to stay silent in the Syrian resistance because you feared the state's brutal security forces, watching a cop awkwardly hunt fugitive ping-pong balls might just begin to assuage those fears, though obviously not completely. The antidote to fear here, which was bolstering the control of the Assad regime, was humour. So this is a great example of increasing a sense of safety even just slightly in the face of a formidable foe and how that can encourage action and turn the odds in a movement's favour.
[08:42]
The next force is victimisation, which is harm without resolution. Victimisation happens when we or someone close to us is robbed of something that belongs to us or they're robbed of something that belongs to them and it isn't resolved. That wound stays open, we forget our inherent power and dignity, and this sends us into a power struggle with ourselves and with the world. This can lead to either feelings of powerlessness or the belief that in order to take our power back, we must take power from someone else. It can often create a feeling of entitlement to hurt others, which is where we get cycles of violence. As Palestinian American philosopher Edward Said famously said, "You cannot continue to victimise someone else just because you yourself were a victim. There has to be a limit." Resilience to victimisation, which unfortunately cannot be summarised in one word like the resilience to fear, is derived from an unwavering belief in one's inherent power, which can never actually be taken away, and the ability to move forward in the healing process regardless of the perpetrator's response or standing. Those who are resilient to victimisation maintain dignity even in the most humiliating circumstances, and they refuse to buy into the narratives of those who hurt them. The opposite of victimisation is justice, and more specifically satisfactory justice, which is the process that restores the humanity of both the victim and the perpetrator, reestablishes balance, and heals the broken space between them. Regardless of our power, resources, influence, or existing structures or systems, we can work to promote justice within our communities. We can do this by listening and validating the pain of those who've been hurt, empowering them and treating them with dignity, advocating for accountability and systemic change, and promoting the rehabilitation and transformation of those who've caused harm.
[09:47]
Let's explore an example of justice being used to neutralise victimisation on a large scale. There were significant resources behind this initiative, but even with that, this task would have seemed insurmountable to most. April 7 to July 19, 1994, was one of the darkest periods of modern history. More than 800,000 Rwandans, mostly Tutsis, were killed in only 100 days. When the genocide ended, Rwandan leaders were tasked with the enormous responsibility to not only walk this brutalised population through healing but also to prevent the potential of retaliatory violence. Addressing victimisation was vital, and effective transitional justice was likely the only path to lasting peace. Gacaca has traditionally been used for resolving community disputes, and its adaptation post-genocide aimed to bring justice closer to the communities affected. This transitional justice programme, which involved 12,000 different courts that tried over 1.2 million cases, centred the voices of the victims in the justice process, gave those who engaged in violence a chance to explain themselves, enabled researchers to more clearly understand the motives of the perpetrators, and helped community members realise the need for the restoration of the humanity of everyone involved. The Gacaca Courts were powerful because they helped the country deal with a massive caseload. They involved the community in the process and incorporated tools for rehabilitation. They not only brought reconciliation and healing but also fostered greater unity within Rwandan society and helped the country move forward. Being free from victimisation, by the way, doesn't mean that the wound stops hurting. It doesn't mean that we're not traumatised, and it also doesn't mean that we no longer seek change. It means that we've closed the wound and it is able to start healing.
[10:59]
Isolation is the lack of connection with the community or the greater whole that inhibits the flourishing of the individual. This particular force is very common in our hyper-individualistic cultures and in societies that lack the necessary physical spaces or free time to bond with others. Under the influence of this force, individuals will usually either choose to separate themselves from the community, giving up on meaningful relationships, or they'll seek out conditional belonging wherever they can find it, which can sometimes lead to membership in dangerous groups. They'll do what's necessary to be accepted and fit in. But unfortunately for them, authenticity and vulnerability are required for true and meaningful connection. The opposite of isolation is belonging, an understanding and feeling that you are part of something bigger than yourself. It can be a community, a group, or even a divine purpose. Resilience to isolation requires the tools necessary, including self-awareness, vulnerability, humility, and others, to seek out genuine connection even when it's challenging. Built atop the conviction that belonging isn't earned, it is our birthright. Solitude, by the way, does not create isolation. In fact, it can help support our ability to resist it. Here's what Vivek Murthy, former US Surgeon General, said in his book "Together": "Solitude allows us to get comfortable being with ourselves, which makes it easier to be ourselves in interactions with others. That authenticity helps build strong connections." All of these resilience factors, by the way, allow us to maintain our integrity, which is the consistency between our beliefs and our actions even in difficult circumstances. You'll see that a lot of these forces interplay. The existence of one force increases our vulnerability to the others, and that is especially true of isolation. This force makes us vulnerable to all other forces, more likely to neglect our responsibility to the collective, more likely to take part in violence and oppression, and also more likely to cave to groupthink and fail to step up and speak out against harm.
[12:10]
I didn't want all of my examples to be from nonprofits, governments, or movements because, well, anyone, no matter who they are or what they're doing, can actively engage the forces and promote their opposites. So my next example is about a business created to intentionally, personally, but subtly foster connection. Le Pain Quotidien, which means "The Daily Bread," is a bakery and restaurant chain that originated in Belgium in 1990. One of the distinctive features of these restaurants was their use of large tables which were designed to seat multiple guests together. The idea behind this was to foster a sense of connection and community among diners. By seating strangers together at large tables, LPQ encouraged interaction and conversation. This dining experience created the feeling of sharing a meal with family or friends, even if you were dining alone with people you didn't know. These restaurants quickly became spaces where connections were made, discussions flowed, and strangers became friends. Now obviously, a restaurant isn't going to be solely responsible for building lifelong friendships, but this was a simple yet potent way to help disrupt routines and create a starting point for meaningful connection.
[13:16]
Okay, so now on to our next force: ignorance, which is the misinformation or lack of information created through neglect or manipulation. You can be ignorant about a lot of things. You can be ignorant about your inherent value, which would be shame, the inherent value or capabilities of another person, which could be prejudice, what is currently happening, what has been happening, your inherent power, and your responsibility, the forces, and the possibility of something better. This last point is vital because I think the most important thing to learn and teach is hope. The opposite of ignorance is education, which is a strategic approach that confronts all the types of ignorance at their deepest level and explores and uncovers the truth of what's been going on today and what has occurred in our histories. Because as "1984" author George Orwell once said, "They who control the past control the future." Resilience to ignorance is the ability to process information and discern what to act on and what to question, even when the full truth isn't accessible. It comes from a combination of many things, but here's a few: an understanding of the forces, of your own personal power and responsibility, a belief in the preciousness of every human life, and the three pillars of an active mind: curiosity, criticism, and creativity. Curiosity launches us into the exploration of what is. Criticism urges us to take things apart and understand what does and doesn't work. It also encourages us to question things. Creativity helps us craft and imagine something entirely new, which protects us against the ignorance that "this is the only way to do things."
[14:26]
One of the most common and harmful types of ignorance is prejudice. The education process for this type specifically requires us to show rather than just tell. Educating someone out of prejudice will include empowering those who've been disempowered, connecting with those one is prejudiced against, and negating misinformation—for example, race science. Here are the two most important things to understand when seeking to combat prejudice: It's easy to believe lies about someone you don't know, which is why connection is vital. It's easy to believe someone can't do something they've never been given the chance to do, which is why empowerment is also vital. In the US, the 1930s to the 1950s saw an increased backlash against the gay world. In response, many queer people did everything they could to hide their sexuality. They went underground. But this created a chasm between the gay community and the rest of the population, and homophobia continued to grow. One of the organisers of the first gay Pride march in New York City in 1970 recognised the danger of this chasm and said that "We'll never have the freedom and civil rights we deserve as human beings unless we stop hiding in closets and in the shelter of anonymity." In 1978, representatives in California were set to vote on an initiative that would have banned gay teachers from working in state public schools. Harvey Milk, the openly gay San Francisco politician, urged people to "come out, come out wherever you are." He figured if queer people were more open about their sexuality, California residents would realise that they had neighbours, friends, coworkers, and even family members who were gay, and they'd understand that they had nothing to fear and they'd oppose this fear-mongering proposition. Unlike most initiatives that confront prejudice, this wasn't about just getting to know gay people. It was actually about realising that the people you already knew and loved were gay. The campaign worked, and the Coming Out movement in general has transformed public opinion on LGBTQ+ rights. Though many queer people were harmed in this process, and we still have a long way to go, the more we hide ourselves and the more we avoid people who are different from us, the more vulnerable we are to being boxed in or to boxing other people in.
[16:38]
I want to quickly note that I'm aware that Harvey Milk and the Gacaca Courts are controversial and have caused harm. That said, I'm not looking for perfect examples for the neutralisation of the forces because the truth is there are very few, and I don't want us to miss out on meaningful lessons from history. So now you know what happens when we help in a way that neutralises the forces. But what happens when we want to help but we ignore them? Well, we can often make ourselves the saviour, and any change we help to promote will only be temporary. Some of you may be familiar with the Drama Triangle by Stephen Karpman, which is a great illustration of what happens when we seek to help someone who's been victimised while not addressing the victimisation itself. So at the bottom left, we have the persecutor, which is the person who has caused the harm. Then we have the victim at the top. And on the right, we have the rescuer. The rescuer is us if we're not careful. When someone's been hurt and our initial instinct is to jump in and save them, we play into their existing disempowerment and we can actually perpetuate those feelings. They don't receive the opportunity to rediscover their power, and their fate depends entirely on you. They're also more vulnerable to be victimised again in this mindset. In this way, rescuers play a role in perpetuating cycles of harm, and victims and perpetrators remain stuck in their respective roles.
[17:41]
There's the equivalent of the drama triangle for the other three forces as well. For the ignorant person, if we seek to correct them by simply persuading them to our side but not giving them the full details and education necessary to make a decision for themselves, we leave them just as disempowered as before and open a role for another manipulator, someone who may have better persuasion or rhetoric skills than us, to come in and convince them otherwise. And for the isolated person, if we swoop in as the good friend and as the cure to their isolation without addressing the underlying systemic or personal concerns that led them to that state, we open them up to relying entirely on us for their sense of acceptance. And this leaves them vulnerable and disempowered because a true sense of belonging cannot be contingent on only one person. For the scared person, if we come in as the protector but don't encourage resilience to fear or address the underlying factors that contribute to their lack of safety, we create a sense of security that is yet again entirely reliant on us. We hold the keys to someone's safety, and this erodes their dignity and their belief in their own power. When we help in a way that ignores the forces, we foster dependence and we can often strengthen the forces. Our work will at best only be effective in the short term and at worst cause further harm. When we seek change while ignoring the forces, we also may oust one bad leader only to make way for another to harness the existing systems for their own gain. We see this over and over again in revolutions. A leader promises to change everything, takes power, and then harnesses the existing forces and structures to accumulate influence and wealth.
[18:39]
So now that we understand the forces, how they work, and what happens when we ignore them, how do we go about eliminating them on a large scale? In the research I've done on successful movements and initiatives, I found that the process requires seven phases and this can be somewhat cyclical. It doesn't need to be linear.
The Seven Phases
1./ Internal Addressing of Forces:
Change makers cultivate resilience factors, building a sense of freedom regardless of circumstances. This enables them to embody the change they hope to see in the world. They recognise the forces and how they work within themselves, allowing them to step up and speak out more effectively.
2./ Problem Analysis:
They spend time carefully analysing the problem, diagnosing the root causes, and identifying the forces involved. This requires a lot of listening.
3./ Crafting Solutions:
They craft solutions that incorporate strategies to neutralise the forces.
4./ Implementation:
They start to implement those solutions.
5./ Engagement of Regular People:
This is when the regular people come into play. By regular people, I mean those not overly interested in dramatic change. Luckily with this group, we don't actually need their active engagement to create positive change. We mostly just need as many as possible to disengage from systems of harm.
6./ Affecting Manipulators:
This phase affects those who benefit from harm. I call these people the manipulators. They're the executives and owners of companies that profit from ongoing atrocities, and they're the leaders who use violence to accumulate wealth. These manipulators lose their tools and become irrelevant as regular people disengage.
7./ Creating Protective Systems:
This phase involves working together to craft systems and institutions that protect the community against the forces and actively promote their opposites: safety, justice, belonging, and education. This process happens in cycles as we continue to discover the forces that persist and perpetuate harm within our communities and within ourselves.
[23:54]
I covered a lot in this video, so thank you so much for staying with me until the end. If you have one key takeaway, remember this: a world where the forces are scarce and their opposites are abundant is a better and more beautiful world for everyone. No matter who you are, where you are, or your level of influence, you can play a part in making that world possible. And that's the overview of the blueprint for ending harm. This video is just the beginning. If you're interested in learning more about the forces and how to neutralise them, visit theendofharm.com for more education, resources, and discussions.
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Names of People Mentioned in the Transcript:
Books Mentioned in the Transcript:
- "The Blueprint for Revolution" - Srdja Popovic
- "Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World" - Vivek Murthy
- "1984" - George Orwell
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Flash Cards (Q & A) based on the transcript
Videos and transcripts for download:
http://bit.ly/tbfeh-db - [Dropbox download]
Full Presentation of The Blueprint For Ending Harm
YouTube [24min 25sec]
Introduction of the project
Instagram
The Blueprint For Ending Harm - Project page
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Healing the wounds - Strategies to heal