Consider this/ Einfach zum Nachdenken

Six months after their elections, Belgians still do not have a government. While such a state of affairs would not surprise anybody in Italy, in Belgium this is a cause for serious concern. The reasons are at once simple and complex: as always, the national government is a combination of Walloon and Flemish representatives, since slightly different parties run in the various parts of the country, and these representatives have not been able to agree. The immediate cause of division is how to draw up the election boundaries: will a suburb of Brussels, technically part of the Flemish part of the country but now mainly settled by French speakers, be counted as part of Brussels or not.

It would be easy for an Austrian to belittle such childish bickering and to view it as proof of the political immaturity of this nation. But even my very limited understanding of Belgian history makes me realize that the particular dispute is just one manifestation of an ongoing conflict and disagreement which has made the co-existence of Flemish and French speakers uneasy over the last fifty years or so. Flemish resent all the financial transfers which currently go from the affluent north to the depressed south, without much visible improvement. French-speakers point to the fact that hundred years ago the shoe was on the other foot, when the industry-rich south supported the Flemish farmers. It is also true that in the past the French language had much greater pre-eminence in Europe, whereas now many Walloons struggle to survive speaking neither Flemish nor English.

Media reports that Belgium is about to divide are of course greatly exaggerated and reveal a lack of understanding of the local situation: but the question still remains “How can they get it together?” Depending on what side you speak to, you get a coherent explanation for why they are right and the other side wrong. They give you historic evidence for their point of view, and the logic is indeed flawless. So who is right and who is wrong? What can be seen in Belgium holds also true in Northern Ireland, Palestine and many other nations as well: each side has good reasons for its position and can muster historical facts to bolster its claims. Of course these facts go back to different periods of history and it is impossible to determine who started the quarrel. What remains is that each side of the quarrel makes appeal to a logic which holds true in itself, and there is no way to reconcile the two.

Or is there? We know that one of the hardest task for parents is to end a quarrel between their children. Two solutions are possible: one consists in imposing peace by force, which works ok when the children are young and the parent has a lot of natural authority. The other one is to get them to reconcile, by recognizing that they both contributed to the fight and that they needed to to forgive and to receive forgiveness. When I was little I always hated this solution because it seemed like a cop-out: why could my father never get to the bottom of the problem and pronounce a verdict as to who was to blame? Age and experience have convinced me that all complicated fights have at least two guilty parties: the very act of insisting that I am innocent often makes me guilty. Fourty years later I also recognize that it was very much to my advantage that my father never pronounced the judgement I so much hoped for: punishment for my part in all the quarrels would have been much more painful than the act of asking forgiveness of my sister.

Might that not also hold true on the national and international sphere? Is justice really the only paradigm to solve age-old disputes, much more protracted than those between a five-year old and his nine-year old sister? Might mercy and forgiveness not be a more powerful way of dealing with the differences between nations, tribes or language groups? But to dispense mercy, undeserved kindness, presupposes the acknowledgement that I also need mercy. Many of us assume that all we have and experience is deserved. But is that so? Our health, our friends, our children, our education, the world we live in- are they all the fruit of our efforts? Did not many of these good things come to you as gifts, “gratis- free”, as grace? Once we realize how much in our life is gift, it becomes much easier to extend mercy.

So let us remember Shakespeare’s line from the Merchant of Venice, next time we are tempted to ask for justice in a particular quarrel: "How shalt thou hope for mercy, rendering none?"

# posted by tino @ Tuesday, November 06, 2007