Jennifer Horgan: Radical acceptance means treating people like humans - even those doing evil

Irish Examiner

2 days ago

I'd like to thank Terry Prone for her respectful disagreement with my column on Botox last week. Someone respectfully disagreeing means a lot. In a world of noise and distraction it is a considerable honour.
I had a less public disagreement with another of my columns a few weeks back - a letter that came through my door. When I read it first, I felt wounded. Then I re-read it. Like the articulate and always insightful Terry Prone, the reader simply had a different take – an intelligent and considered one.
The response was to a column I wrote about Bono mentioning Hamas at the Ivor Novello awards. I suggested that Bono avoided side-taking to achieve peace, even, yes, in the context of genocide.
The letter accused me of 'moral blindness' for seeing genocide as equivalent to war.
The reader had interpreted my column correctly. Peace to me is the absence of violence – it can be called for anywhere, at any time. It is the most important thing, never redundant. It is also far more important than right and wrong.
We need a kind of 'moral blindness' if we are to survive as a species. In the most extreme cases, we must all become temporarily and wilfully 'blind' to right and wrong.
Let me explain.
I have spent my whole life thinking and teaching about right and wrong. I'm an ethics teacher. I studied philosophy and have taught it too. I've spent hours on the 'trolley problem'. I've debated with teenagers over the morality of travelling back in time to kill Hitler.
But I realise now that the right and wrong debate is a surface one. For peace and survival, we must travel a lot deeper - stepping into what is uncomfortable and confronting – the undergrowth of human difference. In this murky slop, lies peace.
The most important thing, if we are to get on with each other, is not morality; it is belief in humanity – an unshakeable belief in humanity, no matter what.
It has been a terrifying week. Humans in Gaza continue to starve and die. In South Sudan, 45 million children live through crises intensified by cholera outbreaks, malnutrition, drought and floods. Bombs are flying between Iran and Israel. America is taking the return to violence as a petty, personal insult.
Trump had wanted to package away the '12-day war' neatly, like a gift, a perfectly wrapped win for America. He had wanted to keep it in his office drawer, taking it out every so often for show and tell, evidence of America being great again.
President Donald Trump had wanted to keep the '12-day war' between Israel and Iran in his office drawer, taking it out every so often for show and tell, evidence of America being great again. File photo: AP/Alex Brandon
Leaders and their domestic broadcasters are feeding their people stories about winners and losers, goodies, and baddies. It is a tale of right and wrong, one that changes with the teller and the telling.
Trump is pushing it to the comical. He was laughing, I presume, when he posted a video with a mash-up of The Beach Boys Barbara Ann on Truth Social. 'Bomb Iran' is the new hook, the song containing the sophisticated lyrics: 'Went to a mosque/Gotta throw some rocks/Tell the Ayatollah gonna put him in a box.'
But look at how the rest of us react. We all talk about countries like Israel in absolute terms. To say anything else is to be accused of 'moral blindness', as I was in that letter. Israel are the bad guys, right? They are no longer human beings.
The reaction is understandable, but it doesn't solve anything. To solve it, we need psychology. It is not moral philosophy but psychology that has the power to change politics. I am thinking particularly of Unconditional Positive Regard (UPR), a concept developed by Carl Rogers, one of the founding fathers of Humanistic Psychology.
It's a tough pill to swallow – to think that even Benjamin Netanyahu deserves radical acceptance. Radical acceptance absolutely isn't about accepting someone's behaviour. We still condemn the action. We condemn genocide. It's about remembering that the other is, ultimately, always a human being. File photo: Ronen Zvulun via AP
Radical Positive Regard doesn't mean agreement – it is a temporary moral blindness only, a suspension of morality if you will. It can even mean violence to stop what is happening in the short term, but it demands we engage, listen, and communicate. The driving force is not right and wrong but a belief in humanity – even when the human in question is behaving like a devil.
Netanyahu is a human. He is a human facing corruption charges. A human whose reputation was destroyed on October 7 when he failed to protect his people, a traumatised people, and he is doing anything he can do to regain their trust. He is a human with motivations and feelings.
The attacks on Iran are increasing his popularity. His people have a bloodlust we must try to understand. Not condone – no. That is not what this is about. We must maintain our positive regard for them as human beings only to engage and bring about change. We will have plenty of time for morality.
The need for this approach exists at a local as well as a global level.
Look at the research shared by this paper on crime this week. Criminals in Cork, as I have written about before, are far more likely to come from our Northside. Our prison is overpopulated with people with stories of abuse, deprivation and addiction. The behaviours may be morally wrong and abhorrent, but they come from somewhere.
Labelling men behind bars 'bad' or worse, 'scumbags', won't change anything; the cycle continues. We must suspend our moral condemnation long enough to listen, thereby putting an end to violence, conflict and anti-social behaviour.
The local is global. Rogers proved it in his lifetime by applying his 'person-centred approach' to politics and national conflicts, working with groups in Northern Ireland and Central America.
In the early 70s, he worked with the 'Steel Shutter' group of Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. They shared their experiences and their hatred for one another but by the end of it, they felt differently.
Rogers didn't have the funds to carry on the work, but the group continued to meet in the home of one of the participants - an ex-British colonel, because his home was the safest. Then they went out in pairs, one Catholic and one Protestant, to show the film of their conversation to community groups, schools, and parishes.
'Radical acceptance'
The Israelis have a story to tell. The Palestinians have a story to tell. The Iranians have a story to tell. They all have feelings and motivations. Whether we think they are right or wrong is of secondary importance if we are interested in ending violence.
Thankfully, there are people carrying the Rogerian baton – thinkers like Mick Cooper, a UK academic who explains the approach in his recent book Psychology at The Heart of Social Change. It's a tough pill to swallow – to think that even Netanyahu deserves radical acceptance.
In terms of responding, that must be balanced against his actions. Radical acceptance absolutely isn't about accepting someone's behaviour. We still condemn the action. We condemn genocide. It's about remembering that the other is, ultimately, always a human being, with human wants and needs like the rest of us, and that few people do things out of 'pure evil'.
To create a more compassionate world, we need to understand what people are striving for and dividing the world into 'good people like us' and 'bad people like them' is exactly what Netanyahu is doing, or Hamas, or Trump. If we just buy into that narrative, we perpetuate a world of polarisation and, ultimately, violence.
'Radical acceptance' is about trying to step off that treadmill for good.
This week, another letter, by Eddie O'Brien, Director of The Thinking Centre, addressed Ursula von der Leyen in this paper. It drew attention to her comment while attending the G7 summit in Canada, that, 'Israel has the right to defend itself, Iran is the principal source of regional instability, and Iran is the source of terror in the Middle East.'
Mr O'Brien writes: 'By so prematurely and so publicly announcing of the taking of the side of Israel against Iran, how can Iran be expected to listen, trust, or have any kind of constructive relationship with any peace initiative the European Union may later propose?'
It is a fine letter.
Read More
Iranian response in Doha was only a carefully choreographed demonstration