A man from Africa was watching a European farmer working in his field.”When do you plant cabbage?” he asked. “I see. And when do you harvest it?” The man from Africa was disappointed. “They really should grow quicker at home than in Europe”, he said. “After all, we have more sun.”
I was still a child. But even if I had been older, I would not have been able to say how the carp might have explained his peculiar journey. Some friends of mine had played a trick on him. They secretly fished him out of his pond by night with a net. They carried him in a bucket for kilometers through forest and field. The swimming pool in my parents’ garden was supposed to be his new home. I must admit: we were pretty astonished when we saw him swimming his rounds in the pool water.
It was in September. The water was no longer chlorinated. There was no longer much competition between fish and man, and so Ludwig, as we named him, was allowed to stay for the time being. Winter came, and with it a thick layer of ice. But with the coming of spring it was time to change the water. Ludwig had survived the winter well. The family council decided to bring him home. Once again, Ludwig was loaded into a bucket. An empty paint bucket was the biggest suitable container we found. We brought him through the forest and fields back to his friends and family. Ludwig turned his circles in the bucket. Pretty small circles, because Ludwig had grown over the winter, and an old paint bucket is no mansion for such a carp. Aside from that, he sloshed out more than half the water along the way. But finally we were there. A swing of the bucket and Ludwig landed again in his pond with his old acquaintances. What he did then surprised us: Ludwig swam his rounds there, indeed so, as if he found himself not in his pond, but in a small bucket. He swam six or seven circles, with a circumference of not even half a metre. Then the circles became a spiral, first narrow, then wider and wider. Finally Ludwig realised where he was. In one long, straight line, he shot out of his bucket carousel.
That’ where Joanna is working. Here job is to try to create reconciliation between gang members and to contribute to the resocialisation of some of those prisoners who leave jail and go back in society. Most inmates belong to gangs who have numbers as names… there’s gang 26 who’s specialized on theft and gang 28 who work a lot with sex between the prisoners. Most inmates are waiting for a trial or are already trialled for murder, rape and other capital crimes. Some have killed many other people, both outside and inside the jail. There is a lot of attempts to stabb the staff – about have of the staff members have already suffered stabbing attacks. The film is documenting how Joanna works in order to create an atmosphere of trust and contribute to a change in the lives of the inmates.
Those of you who just want to get a 9.5 minute impression should best watch this part (part 2 of 5). Those who want to see all 5 parts (about 50 min, I guess) may want to start with part 1 which gives an impressive introduction in this gang world.
Depending on where you come from, some of you may need a Youtube-Unblocker in order to see the film.
Three weeks ago I was on the Festival of Nonviolent Communication in Bialobrzegy near Warsaw, Poland.
There I got to know Ike Lasater, a renowned teacher of Nonviolent Communication. Ike has been doing a lot of Reconciliation and Mediation work. Once he even worked with Romeo and Juliette and their families… look at this video and enjoy to see him work!
How can the world become more peaceful, more worth living, more loveable?
In the next days and weeks I would like to publish a few stories and films on how society as well as the individual can be healed from the impacts of violence. My concern is reconciliation of the inner self as well as of people who are in conflict. And I admit that the healing of the so called “perpetrator” seems as important to me as that of the so called “victim”. I am concerned about respectful communication, about mediation and therapy, but also about a wider, social dimension: How can we achieve to develop a society focused on deescalation instead of answering violence by violence?
I would like to start with a short documentation of the Stanford prisoner experiment. In this experiment of 1971 arbitrarily chosen test persons were divided into roleplay attendants and prisoners of a roleplay jail. The experiment which was scheduled for some weeks had to be ended after 6 days because the attendants were increasing in cruelty so quickly and more and more prisoners were traumatised.
This film gives a remarkable documentation of the experiment as a look back from our time.
Mr. Wright lives in Hopville at the river Gies. This is situated near Evenbrook at the Reed, close to the village of Lowfield. Every day, Mr. Wright works in his little garden. He hoes the ground and weeds out the dandelions. He plucks the dry leaves off the sunflowers and waters all the plants in his garden. Two neighbours pass by. They whisper: “Oh, look at him! Does this man have nothing better to do than to water his flowers all day?” The hobby gardener hears their words and says to himself: “I don’t deserve to be considered lazy. I have plenty of work!” The next morning, Mr. Wright gets up quite early. He throws himself into his work and puts in some overtime. He is very industrious. His boss is proud of him. The beautiful plants in his garden dry up however, and after a few weeks, his garden is full of weeds. One evening, he hears his neighbours passing by: “Oh, look at him! How this man lets his garden go to waste! It is an embarrassment for the whole village!”
The next morning Mr. Wright gets up even earlier than before. He takes his job very seriously, working hard without a break, all day. Coming home from work late at night he works in his little garden. While doing so, he hears his neighbours say as they pass by: “Oh, look at him! Hasn’t this man got four children? He spends no time with them nor does he support his poor wife in her daily work. He should be ashamed of himself.”
From then on Mr. Wright gets up even earlier. The break of dawn sees him working in his little garden, just before he goes to his company, where he works like a madman. In the afternoon, he helps his wife, and then he supports his children in any way he can think of. Dead tired he falls into bed. This continues for a while until one morning he does not get up any more. The doctor fills in the death certificate. “Myocardial infarction” he notes. Two days later the funeral takes place. His faithful neighbours also accompany him on his last journey. “Oh, look at him! He could have taken it a bit more easy and lived a calm and pleasant life. Why did he work so hard?”
As a child I often helped my parents in the garden. I remember how my father instructed me to harvest blackberries. “Take a blackberry in your hand and pull at it a little. Not tightly, only quite lightly. If it is ripe, it will fall easily into your hand by itself. If it doesn’t come off by itself, leave it. That one still tastes sour.”
I knew a man who told me this story. Someone came to him when he, like you, no longer knew what to do. “There’s nothing more I can do”, he said. “I’m stuck in a dead end”. Then something occurred to him – he who told me this – and he explained:
“This reminds me of the small passages from one street to the next, called ‘ginnels’. You can only get through them on foot. They are not much wider than a man. In the area I live, I know a dead end like you describe. When you go in, it goes no further, as is the case with dead ends. But with this dead end it is different, and I believe there are more like it: When you go right to the end, you find the ginnel somewhere on the side, quite inconspicuous between the houses.”
One day the old sea dog received a visit from the land dog. They both had known each other since puppy school. Then the sea dog had left and travelled the world far and wide, and had survived many adventures and finally returned home, rich in treasures and experiences. The land dog had remained in his native cave. He had found a land dog wife, and had land dog children. In the meantime, he had grandpuppies and great grandpuppies, and they had all become genuine good land dogs.
“Sometimes I wish I could live all over again”, said the land dog to the sea dog. “I feel exactly the same way”, the other answered. “I would do a lot of things differently”, said the land dog. “Yes, me too”, answered the sea dog. “I would go to sea”, dreamed the land dog. “I would get married”, sighed the sea dog. “I would have adventures”, explained the land dog. “I would have some pups”, stated the sea dog. “I would be a rich dog. I would experience terrible and wonderful things I could tell stories about”, enthused the land dog. “I would have grand-puppies and great grand-puppies who would love and take care of me when I became old and sick”, declared the sea dog. “And I would now sit with you in this sea dog lair”, continued the land dog, “… and I with you …”, it occurred to the sea dog. The land dog nodded: “And then you would say to me now: ‘Sometimes I wish I could live all over again”, and I would answer: “Yes, I feel exactly the same way.”
He was an experienced physician. “At times it happens”, he reported, “that I cannot give a medication to a patient because it is too expensive or too hard to obtain. How, may I ask, can I provide a remedy made out of lion’s milk? In some of these cases I tell the patients to write the name of the remedy on a sheet of paper, and to have a close look at it. The startling thing is: for those who follow this advice, the effect of the paper is about the same as the effect of the remedy, had it been taken.” A woman who heard this story laughed about it. She had been working for years as a nurse in the intensive care ward of a hospital, and had helped to save more than one patient’s life by giving himthem the right medication at the right time. What would have happened if she had handed himthem a sheet of paper instead, showing the name of histheir medication? Some days after this conversation, she woke up with a severe headache. She knew it was nothing serious, only this well-known pain, which a doctor had once described as being there simply for the sake of being. She knew that she did not have any pills at home. She imagined putting a glass of water next to her bed. She envisioned how she would throw a pill in the water, and how it would dissolve. She pictured herself drinking the water in little sips how the water would be absorbed by her body, and how the medication would become effective.
She fell asleep for a few minutes then woke up again and went to work. Everything was as usual. When she looked back on her day late at night, she noticed that her headache had vanished in the minutes after she had taken the imagined remedy, and that she had completely forgotten about it for the rest of the day.