Episode 41
The Reverend Dr. Gary Mason: Part 1 - Shifts towards Peace
In this episode, Trisha, an organizational psychologist, explores key themes in conflict transformation. Joined by Rev. Dr. Gary Mason, who has over 30 years experience in peace-building in Belfast, they delve into appreciating diverse cultures and the impact of different narratives on societies - crowd psychology. The discussion highlights linguistic violence and historical contexts affecting people's thinking and decision making. Gary shares insights from religious and political leaders to reflect on the Northern Ireland peace process. They discuss how leadership can be crucial in fostering peace. Gary's personal anecdotes and reflections on historical contexts enrich the conversation, offering valuable lessons in resolving conflicts and understanding diverse perspectives.
Learn more about Gary's work https://www.rethinkingconflict.com/
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Transcript
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[00:01:11] Trisha: Hi there, everyone. I'm Trisha Carter, an organizational psychologist and an explorer of cultural intelligence. I'm on a bit of a quest to discover what enables us to see things from different perspectives. especially different cultural perspectives, and why sometimes it's easier than others to experience those moments of awareness, the shifts in thinking.
[:[00:01:54] Trisha: And all four of these capabilities help us operate effectively in situations of diversity. And in this podcast, we focus more on the metacognitive aspect, thinking about our thinking, the CQ strategy. My guest today is the Reverend Dr. Gary Mason. He's a Methodist clergy person who has worked for almost 30 years in the inner city area of Belfast. During that time, his work was focused on peace building, conflict transformation and reconciliation. He worked at the sharper, fractured edges of Belfast society, often only a hundred meters or so from the peace lines, the barriers separating Catholics and Protestants.
[:[00:02:56] Trisha: So if anyone can speak to us about helping people shift, I think Gary can. Welcome, Gary.
[:[00:03:13] Trisha: Oh, it definitely is. And I looked at a lot of different websites and all of them speak in the same way about you, so there's a lot that you can bring to us, and a lot to discuss. And I'd love to tap into the wisdom and the experience that you have and hear some of your stories. But first we want to ask our standard opening questions.
[:[00:03:38] Gary: Trisha, I very much grew up in that Northern Irish culture, primarily if we're talking about what side of the fence you're on or. As they say in the Irish context, at what foot do you kick with? Which is really a way of defining, are you Irish, Catholic, British, Protestant? And I suppose I very much grew up within that British, Protestant, Unionist, Loyalist culture.
[:[00:04:27] Gary: But looking at it through a religious lens, I'm fascinated at times by the Jewish tradition and the absolute devotion and methodical study of their ancient texts. And I mean, something obviously as a church person I had to do for many, many years preparing sermons, et cetera, et cetera. But just the absolute devotion in relation to that has fascinated me and sometimes make me realize that there are other cultures that I haven't grown up that are more disciplined and more methodical.
[:[00:05:27] Gary: So, I mean, I've come to appreciate that and admire that in so, so many ways.
[:[00:05:57] Trisha: Thanks for sharing that. I'm wondering also if you can tell us about a time when you experienced the shift, when you suddenly became aware of a new perspective.
[:[00:06:29] Gary: I mean, most others in academics would say it takes 50 years, 50 years to bed down a successful peace process. And looking at those other traditions, other perspectives, I sort of rewind the DVD back to the late eighties, when I was a younger clergy person. As part of a group of clergy who were reaching out to those who were pursuing political violence, terrorism, freedom fighters, everyone has different definitions for these.
[:[00:07:06] Gary: I'm just beginning to engage with people who were shaped by a different narrative and a different culture than I was. And I suppose then asking the question that we all have asked 101 times in our lives, Trisha, if I was born in those circumstances, what choices would I have made?
[:[00:07:44] Gary: And for them now actually to say, as men in their 60s, 70s, to say, if I hadn't been born 100 yards away, I probably would have been involved in the other side's paramilitary or terrorist grouping.
[:[00:08:10] Gary: This was neighbor killing neighbor.
[:[00:08:30] Gary: But Brett Stevens says, In order to disagree well, we need to understand well.
[:[00:09:02] Gary: Yeah.
[:[00:09:25] Gary: I was trying to say is that once you move in the violence, it's very, very difficult to bring it to an end. I mean, I remember as a little boy in 1969 when the troops, British troops come on the streets of Belfast. Common wisdom of the day was, oh, this will be over by Christmas. Yeah, right. I mean, it officially ended in 1998 with the Good Friday Agreement.
[:[00:10:07] Gary: You're an organizational psychologist. So that could be verbal violence, or it could be physical violence, it could be violence within a relationship, both verbal or physical. It's very difficult at times to bring it to an end. There's no quick click off button. And that's one lesson I've learned growing up in my context, that deal with the issues before they get too bad.
[:[00:10:43] Gary: There's a lot. I mean, the brilliant Jewish rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, who died a few years ago, sadly of cancer in his early 70s, has a great phrase there. Trisha, he calls it linguistic violence. And I've often said, as you look at linguistic violence, In the Middle East at the moment that we're watching on our TV screens, in the US at the moment, and as a young boy growing into my teenage years, I saw linguistic violence on a daily basis, sadly, both from religious and political leaders that led many men, and it was primarily men of my generation, to take up the gun to be involved in armed conflict.
[:[00:11:37] Gary: 15, 16, 17 year olds to take up the gun and kill people 100 yards away that they knew at times and at times didn't know.
[:[00:12:02] Gary: As you would say, all of the above. So I'll do it in both theological and psychological terms there. Religious leaders, on my side, for example, referring to people as, not Christian as heretics, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm more than happy to say the history of the Christian church is not pretty. One thing that annoys me about the church, and I'm quite happy to say this, is the church is quite dishonest at times and doesn't take ownership of its history.
[:[00:12:56] Gary: Of course,
[:[00:12:58] Gary: church only disowned that doctrine in March, 2023.
[:[00:13:04] Gary: there is a classic, you know, the church as an organization, you should be, you'd be drilling into that Trish as an organizational psychologist, the church. I think the reaction when things go wrong is protect the institution.
[:[00:13:22] Gary: Not wanting , move that clergy person to another parish or, uh, or maybe they need to go to another country, but don't put your hands up and say guilty as charged. This is an organization that is telling humanity confession, honesty, et cetera. Yeah. Come on. So I'm happy to say as a religious leader, The church has been at times an incredibly dishonest, destructive organization
[:[00:13:51] Gary: both sides of the fence, Protestant and catholic, religious leaders, also political leaders, using phrases about the other, demonizing the other.
[:[00:14:25] Gary: It was language in the public square that demonized Jews as being vermin, rats, think Goebbels, think Hitler, think Göring, the language that was used. And so many of my
[:[00:14:58] Gary: There's a great quotation there by Paul Valery, who is a French philosopher, where he says, this quotation always moves me immensely. He says, war is a place where young people who don't know each other and don't hate each other, kill each other, made on decisions by old people who know each other and hate each other, but don't kill each other.
[:[00:15:25] Gary: decisions in language made by politicians. I mean, one theologian that was studying war, I think in the 20th century, there's a thing called the just war theory in Christianity. Is there just. The war, and he suggested that probably from his perspective, the second world war was the only just war of the 20th century.
[:[00:15:55] Gary: God, diplomacy or sanctions, economic sanctions, as we call them today, would have been a better way. Cause I think of. You know, I think of probably your grandparents, my grandparents, my grandfather that was wounded.
[:[00:16:14] Gary: But language, again, language and rhetoric drives people to make bad decisions.
[:[00:16:28] Gary: Yeah, no, I would say I was probably to a degree like most people caught up in it and never thankfully joined a paramilitary organization. But I do tell the story that, you know, I remember one night standing at the bottom of an iron wrought staircase on a street in Belfast and watching men of my generation, 15, 16, 17 year olds, you know, Going up into a darkened room with men, probably in their 20s and 30s to join certain non state actors or terrorist organizations.
[:[00:17:13] Gary: In relation. I didn't do it. And I, I remember telling that story in the US and, uh, someone asking, well, why did you not do that?
[:[00:17:46] Gary: So how the acts these people did was fundamentally wrong
[:[00:18:13] Gary: Something like 30, 000 political prisoners here, who now have all been released, many are now dead. But statistically, only 2 percent of those people have re offended. That is the lowest statistic.
[:[00:18:29] Gary: actually 50 percent , so while what they did was wrong. The motivation for this, was not what you call it. The British sense or ODCs, as we call them, ordinary decent criminals.
[:[00:18:46] Trisha: and I mean you were saved if you like because you had a date but there must have been other people for whom their friends or their family members were taking them there. And so they were just following in the footsteps of others. And so you can sort of see, and I think your question, which was if I was born, 100 meters down the road, what would I choose? You know, I would be different. And so recognizing that there's circumstances, there's belief, and it's not necessarily, a massively shocking step to take in those environments.
[:[00:19:37] Gary: I say, Trisha, I described it like the San Andreas fault in California. There's many fault lines and what choices are people making today in Lebanon, Gaza, Israel, West Bank, wherever, because of what is happening there. And that's why leadership is absolutely crucial in relation to this. And I know that's very much a discipline you're interested in.
[:[00:20:42] Gary: He sat in his, in a car in the backseat, like looking at the prison officer that had watched over him for 27 years. And subconsciously, Trisha, he said, Mandela said to himself, I have one of two choices, one bullet, one white settler, or I create a coalition, and he chose the latter. Now he could have chosen the former, and you'd end up with an absolute bloodbath of people of our skin color in South Africa, and obviously people of different skin colors who are seen as collaborators with the reigning white regime, but he had the courage and thank god the wisdom, I will create
[:[00:21:32] Trisha: I think we all, I mean, we love the idea of a Mandela, and, and a leader who inspires and changes people, but sometimes societies don't have that. Did, I mean, what happened to bring about the Good Friday Agreement? Was there a leader? I, from my history perspective, I'm not aware of it, but maybe there was.
[:[00:22:17] Gary: They were able to contain them, so they could have contained them, and what we really had, some of these are awful phrases when you look back on it, we had an acceptable level of violence, so in 1972 when I was a little boy, we had a terrorist incident every 40 minutes, and nearly 500 killed in a tiny space like Northern Ireland of 1. 5 million people,
[:[00:23:08] Gary: There has to be a different yes. David Irvine, whose funeral I did, like I'm doing a, a gig tomorrow night with the BBC former security correspondent, which I'm speaking about David's life. So David was a skilled bomb maker who became a peacemaker, John, non violent leader of the social democratic and labor party.
[:[00:23:57] Gary: And after that was over, Clinton got into that massive car that the Americans called the Beast drove down a road that probably none of your listeners will know called the Springfield Road in Belfast. The vehicle swung left onto the Falls Road, very well known Republican neighborhood. The car stopped, and coincidentally, Jerry Adams was just leaving the bakery with his little brown bag of morning scones as Bill Clinton
[:[00:24:22] Trisha: Clinton
[:[00:24:27] Gary: People were saying, in the name of God, what the hell is the most powerful person in the world doing, shaking the hand of a spokesperson for a terrorist organization? Clinton was clever. He wouldn't have got to where he was if he wasn't, as you and I know only too well.
[:[00:24:50] Gary: This was not
[:[00:25:03] Gary: But they then developed the ballot box on one hand. So Clinton's goal was to get them to ditch the ArmAlight. Adams, other people like Martin McGuinness, other key Republican leaders, were able to go back to the hard men of the IRA who wanted to pursue armed struggle because there was enough weaponry on the island to do that for another 50 years and say, guys, this is what you get.
[:[00:25:43] Gary: think of the highest building there in Australia, Trisha. I think of the highest one maybe in New York because there are not a lot of high buildings in Belfast. Somebody said it was like going into the highest building in the world and switching off the lights one switch at a time. There's no like instantaneous solution to say, we meet, show of hands guys, the war's over. No, no, there were meetings with four people, five people, 300 people to really bring all that constituency together. Because as you and I know, and you know, particularly better than I do as an organizational psychologist, you've got to bring your people with you and you find out the means to do that.
[:[00:26:40] Gary: And so it was choreographed in a hundred and one different ways.
[:[00:27:07] Trisha: And in the meantime, if you're interested in following along a little more, we now have a presence on Substack. So if you're on Substack, please let us know that you're there. we are there under Trisha Carter, T R I S H A C A R T E R and The Shift Learning Community.
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