Rielo Institute for Integral Development

Reconciliation as a critical component of peacebuilding project usually does not get prioritized; to imagine reconciliation in tandem with philanthropy will sound preposterous to many. Let us re-imagine: “money” is the mover and shaker of everything, big and small, of significant and insignificant. Everything is a commodity which necessitates monetary transaction of high-significant or low-significant value. Use of money is a symbolic manifestation of the meaningfulness, commitment and engagement we attribute to any activity we engage in, whether material, emotional or intellectual. Peacebuilding is a lifetime ever-evolving project with many components to ti, some very visible, others are not visible, some demonstrable, others very subtle, but crucial linchpins.

After the Second World War we witnessed the aggregation of local markets into universal markets. This trend was driven by at least two postulates: that the market for all would be the secret formula for success and that a liberal guiding nation had been given the mission from heaven to lay down the rules and set the game.

Aggregation was seen as a good thing, as progress exported to peoples who, while maintaining a certain identity of their own, finally accepted the idea that their world was not the ‘right’ one, but that what was right was aggregation behind a demigod-nation that would lead everyone to the highest peaks. So, union of markets and hegemony of a nation.

Since World War II multi-lateral international relations emanated from political science dominated the peacebuilding efforts. Eighty years later it is proven to be an unmanageable patchwork in search for a solution.

The grand idea of globalization and the aspirational global peace is facing an increasingly fragmented world at war with each other, either an economic war or an actual one with sophisticated and mutually destructive weapons. The forces for conflict resolution, reconciliation and peacebuilding are feeling a gut punch and the wind taken away from them in the prevailing and evolving geo-political realities. The forces of warmongering have the global megaphone.

As is well known, the distinction in politics between “right” and “left” has long since lost its raison d’être. Today, the division between progressives and conservatives is more valid. Progressive or conservative ideas that take root in the two camps of the old “right” and “left”.

We must consign these obsolete concepts to the annals of history. But once we have rid ourselves of the words “right” and “left” we must understand the differences, analyze this antagonistic global tension between conservatives and progressives, because this exhausting struggle is tearing the world apart.