Intro

Imagine war without any willingness to fight; imagine conflicts solved through understanding. At first sight this may sound like a utopia. It contradicts the current prevailing narrative of to “weaken one’s enemy until one side in a fight is beaten”. “Peace” can usually first hereafter be negotiated. However, unless the defeated party is fully included in the new political order, tensions will very likely rise again and the conflict will flare-up over time. The result is an endless circle of truce and war.

With new technologies amplifying human and material warfare damage further, and with a nuclear Armageddon looming, looking for alternatives to conflict resolution and for establishing a more durable peace is essential. However, cultures differ and misunderstandings occur. The question therefore becomes one of improving communication and of non-violent interaction with each other.

The use of convergence 

People try to protect, defend or optimize their position and create a human, manmade, type of order to do so. This human arrangement embeds conflicts of interest between individuals, groups or society models. People frequently basically distrust or fear the other and start to look outward for what others are doing. Such a “being-suspicious approach” combined with cultural misunderstandings in turn often leads to violence and additionally strengthens fear; resulting in a divergent growing apart. 

The opposite approach is one of trust. A trust-related assumption is that we all share the same space and principally are “one”. If people are in harmony and trust the other, there is thus no need to create a restricting artificial human order on top of the already existing universal ecological or spiritual one. Instead, people can now focus inward and optimize their contribution to society. This inward orientation process leads in turn to convergence between people. 

Concentrating on outward differences versus a focus on inward orientation amplifies one’s fear or trust. Looking at conflict resolution and peace building this implies a requirement to fully center attention on those elements that are contributing to convergence and avoid the divergent ones. To realize this in practice means to maximize the replacement of divergent elements by their convergent counterparts; flipping polarity. It means to exchange individuality for integrity, resilience for reciprocity, rivalry for empathy, patriotism for solidarity, superiority for excellence and finally discipline for consensus. Although doing so may seem difficult in the beginning, better understanding and a substantial reduction of fear will be the promising reward for accomplishing such substitution.

Convergence as a path to conflict resolution and peace: Pax.ngo’s mission

Disbelieving and rejecting the narrative of war or violence, instead promoting the potential of building trust, Pax.ngo is an initiative to stimulate cultural convergence. Its main mission is to strengthen understanding and support humanitarian projects in conflict situations. Pax.ngo does so by contributing to capacity building or by mediating in the offering of direct aid in situations where there is/has been unbridgeable disagreement between conflicting parties, or by donors and beneficiaries. It hereby always uses a fully neutral, non-political, approach.

Pax.ngo’s only restriction to provide assistance is that the supplied aid is contributing to convergence and is not misused for a divergent goal of an individual stakeholder. Pax.ngo’s initiative is based on the principle that convergence-based assistance can be applied regardless of any past or ongoing dispute because of its intrinsic nature of increasing understanding between people. This universal approach tries to breach non-communication and reinstate dialog, targeting to reduce tension.

Your support needed!

Of course one needs broad support to realize this target. I therefore look to widen the basis of participating organizations subscribing to the Pax.ngo mission statement and to work together. If you are interested, please contact jcn@pax.ngo.

More detailed background information is provided to those interested at www.background.pax.ngo.