Episode 12: Dr. Ben Hoffman – Looking Violence in the Face
In this episode, Dr. Ben Hoffman discusses:
- Spiritual elements of conflict work
- Our search for what Ben calls “sacred meaning”
- Power dynamics in conflict, e.g. his time working with President Carter to end the war in Sudan
- The four dimensions of power transformation (leadership, structure, skills, and values), and the power axis
More about Dr. Ben Hoffman
Dr. Ben Hoffman is a specialist in negotiation, mediation, and peacebuilding. He obtained a B.A. and M.A. (Psychology) from Wilfred Laurier University, an M.A. in International Relations from Tufts University, and a Ph.D. from York University, UK. He also specialized in International Peacemaking at the Harvard Law School Program on Negotiation. Ben’s interest in mediation began in correctional services in Northern Ontario when he helped manage a hostage taking incident and his practice in conflict resolution and violence prevention grew over the last 30 years to include healing and restorative justice work in a variety of national and international settings. (This bio is from Ben’s Concorde Inc. website.)
Resources
- Concorde Inc.
- Canadian International Institute of Applied Negotiation
- Some of Ben’s books:
Two articles about Ben:
- Julia Menard’s article
- The Walrus’ article
Dr. Ben Hoffman – Quotes From The Episode
(Anything uncertain is either replaced by ellipses or put in square brackets, and some quotes are shortened using ellipses )- [6:10] “…at the core of it, if you’re really working on conflict, and you’re looking for the heart of how one might either engage in it or assist those who are in conflict, is really to get to a bedrock of values. And that, I think, is where things are going in the world now.”
- [6:59] “The search for meaning and avoiding what I think is emerging as the tyranny of extremes is really the deepest kind of penetration of the problem that I’ve personally been involved in. So one has to say, on the basis of what do I act? And if you begin to answer that question, you get into almost a theological area…”
- [7:56] “I think everybody has a fundamental need for what I’m calling sacred meaning, and there are people who exploit that need, and often, it drives either ideological or religious-based conflict to the extreme. Fuelled by fear, and then you get real problems.”
- [8:26] “I think the central challenge is for us who are plugged into this podcast to dig deeper and figure out how we can work not at the superficial level – there’s some good stuff at the superficial level and challenges that you could articulate about conflict engagement and what to do – but to really engage in conflict, I think takes someone into a, dare I say it, a spiritual kind of journey.”
- [9:03] Julia: “I love where you’ve landed, and I’m curious about the idea of a spiritual journey. Can you help our listeners understand how that might translate, either for yourself in your own work, or for somebody else…how does a spiritual journey and engaging conflict work for you and possibly for others?”
- [9:35] “When you wake up in the morning and you get up and go to work […], you’re always challenged to act, to go out there and face the day and do it, and the question is like, on the basis of what do you act? And you begin to say, Well, am I my brother’s keeper? So do I have to be concerned about other people, and take their conflicts seriously? Is that my job? Is it incumbent upon me to care about things that maybe I could just pass over or avoid, or say, well that’s in another part of the world […] Where do I engage with life, and what motivates me to engage?”
- [12:07] “If you don’t create the space and the safety for conversation, you fail to really assist the parties.”
- [13:06] “I think that the mediator or peacemaker or someone who’s really hoping to be of assistance to anybody who’s in conflict or reaches out to them for some kind of help, is by definition almost a reflective practitioner. They’re someone who has begun to ask that question and answered on the basis of what do I act, and some people quickly choose things that they were spoon-fed, and they’ll take an ideology like Christianity or Buddhism or Islamic belief, and they’ll latch onto that and it will provide them with a set of values that they don’t usually articulate, but motivate the way they do things and engage with the world, and the more reflective you become about what’s motivating, driving you, I think takes you to a deeper question about, well, what is the sacred meaning? How do I fulfill my need for sacred meaning? […]”
- “My own search for meaning got me to the point where all I could come up with was, well I might like there to be a god, well I wish there was an answer I could turn to everytime. It’s the mystery that I live with. The Great Mystery. The more I can live with the unresolved answer, and live with it comfortably, I find that I’m more tolerant of others and I begin to have a capacity to love. And so the journey sort of rolls and feeds itself from reflection to testing in the world and then to application and more reflection. And so I’ve come up with a set of values now that I think are not theologically prescriptive, and they’re simple things. Valuing the mystery of creating. Valuing vulnerability. Valuing the fact that everyone has a need for sacred meaning, and so on. When you do that, I think you start creating a kind of vibe […] it allows you to hear a little differently what’s going on, and be somewhat differently when you’re working with people and helping them to find some answers.”
- (On getting people to the table) [17:03] “That’s really a tough one, especially where the conflict is very asymmetrical. It seems, you know if you look at the power imbalance, and you kind of know, let’s be frank here, there’s an abuse of use of power going on. One person is oppressed and the other is oppressive. Nine out of ten times, if you appeal to the abuser to come to the table, they typically won’t. Unless there’s some compelling factor, whether it’s through the courts or an intervention of some sort, or a family member that says you’ve got to do something about this.”
- [18:20] “There are needs for society and the legal system and communities where their elders and/or people of influence to weigh in and encourage the dominant allegedly abusive person to come to the table.”
- [18:43] “In the case of the person who is alleging a grievance or has been violated in some manner, often it’s obviously a set of fears about recrimination – is it really going to be safe for me? And so there’s a lot of work in terms of assuring them that their safety will be taken care of, that measures have been taken to do everything you can to make sure they aren’t recriminated against, and so on.”
- [19:15] “At the international level, it took me as a mediator, when President Carter said to me, ‘You’re in charge of the institution’s efforts to end the current war in Sudan,’ which was in its third phase and had been going I think 26 years or something, and millions of people had been killed or displaced, and I had to pinch myself. ‘Is he really saying I’m supposed to lead the efforts to end this?’ I found as a mediator, I had to shift from the repertoire that we normally have to begin to look at creating a policy environment and a context that would persuade Khartoum to come to the table. […] That is a long way off the beaten track of what a mediator typically does, and it moves the mediator into unknown terrain about ‘How far do I go manipulating or trying to create circumstances that would motivate people to come to the table?’ And maybe you’ll choose to motivate people to come to the table in a way that renders you no longer the mediator, but you will have done a service to the parties and justice and peace.”
- [21:48] “I used to say to myself, we’re soft-hearted but we’re soft-headed as mediators. We’re not looking at the tough realities of what’s motivating the parties, the allocation of power in the environment, the factors and context that is supporting the conflict. And I’ve chosen to be neutral, almost a midwife, you know hoping to bring something good through my facilitative efforts, and am I to listen while I know that the woman next door is being beaten by her husband who comes home, and I can hear it? Do I say, ‘Well no it’s not my moment yet in the cycle of the violence. Somebody else is going to have to deal with that, and then maybe I’ll become a mediator.’ So you’re getting into very interesting terrain, but I think it’s the kind of real serious thinking and building capacities and responses that we have to get our heads around.”
- [23:04] Julia: “Listening to you, my response is – and I’m probably not supposed to say this on podcasts, but – I just want to cry, because I think that one of the things that’s striking me as I listen to you […] you’re one of the few mediators that I know of in our country who has really looked at violence in the face, and I think, I haven’t, really. I’m a white-collar mediator. And I think what you’re speaking of is the heart. It’s the heart of conflict, really. Which are the power dynamics and the violence, and it might be physical violence, but it might not be, and I think what you’re speaking about is really important.”
- [23:54] Gord: “One point I think you’ve made Ben that I’d like to pull out and underline is that a valid choice someone could make would be to intervene in some way in the power dynamic that would result in a loss of perceived neutrality, right? You might no longer be perceived as neutral, so you wouldn’t be able to play that role anymore, so you kind of sacrifice that possibility in order to rebalance power or shift the power.”
- [30:02] “…my experience of dealing with conflict as I got into deeper and deeper pools of human suffering was that conflict struck me as being a symptom of something deeper, which was in my opinion the various forms of abusing power. Using power over other people rather than engaging with them.”
- (In response to the hosts’ question “What does conflict look like in a peaceful world?”) [32:14] “A world of peace would be characterized, I think, by people pursuing that question about answering their question about sacred meaning, and somehow coming up with an answer that genuinely does not lead them to believe that their answer is right for everyone, and they can live with a diversity of answers, including no answer, and therefore they are not motivated to prescribe, or have a knee-jerk reaction, to others as though they are alien in some way. They see the sacred in everything, and when you see the sacred in everything, you almost cannot violate it. You can’t harm it, because it’s integral to who you are, and you’re connected to the environment and you know that if you beat it down badly enough, you’re going to beat yourself down, because it will no longer sustain you. If you’re connected to people and you beat them down, eventually you’ll be living in some kind of an isolated state of bitterness and/or arrogance that is really obscene. And so if conflict occurred there, we have a difference of opinion, we can agree to disagree about the difference. There’s a kind of a removal of the ego so that one truly does not feel the need to impose their view on the other. I believe it’s possible, as well.”
- [37:45] “I’ve actually terminated mediations because I thought the parties, or at least one of them, is not sincere here. […] And then to find that maybe a year later, they’re back at the table, and I did my best while I was there, and that whole kind of ebb and flow of the conflict takes time, and you can’t always feel that you’ve failed.”
- [45:13] Gord: “You’ve spoken about four dimensions of power transformation – leadership, structure, skills, and values – would it be possible for you to make a few comments about each of those for our listeners? Because it’s a practical approach to dealing with power, right?” Ben: “Yeah. Trying to shift power…years ago, when I woke up completely blown away by what I was dealing with at the time, and it was something I call the power axis. How does one move from living in a quadrant […], from a world of power-over being used against one […] to a world of power-with, where outcomes are voluntary and the sense of justice is one of restoration and healing and all that kind of stuff. How do you shift that? And it seemed to me at the time, the shifting could take place by working with the leaders in the setting, by working on the policies and structures, and there was also the issue of values, and a set of skills.”
- [52:29] “Most of the peace work I’ve done, the parties come kicking and screaming to the table, and you do need, unfortunately in the real world of power-over, some of the instruments of inducement, to demonstrate to them that there’s a consequence for continuing to kill. This can’t go on. Sometimes you have to make really, really tough choices, and you have to get into very heavy situations, but that’s why we’re here, right?”
- [54:51] “We have to realize that there’s a set of skills beyond the facilitative, even the analytical ones of conflict that we do have, and that we have to be more politically adroit. […] We have to have a set of skills that are more in line with hard-headed analysis of the behaviour and environment of tough actors and be willing to move out of our, you know, ‘I have a set of skills here and if I do them, everything is just going to work out fine.’ I mean it’s a whole other conversation, I think, but for those who are listening and want to do this kind of work, they shouldn’t shy away from some of the, like while I said we have to transcend from the ego, you have to have the ego strength as a third party. These people will eat you alive if you go in with a whole kind of vibe of, you know, ‘I’m here as a very soft facilitator at your disposal.’ They don’t operate on that level. You have to have hard-headed political analysis and understand about power and where the power is and where the violence factors are and who the violent actors are, and you may have to, within reason, and within the, not as an abusive use of power, you may have to help engineer factors that will motivate them to take peace seriously. It’s tough work but good mediators do it.”
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