War Has Always Been With Us . . . This myth is called into question by Douglas P. Fry in his book Beyond War. Fry, an anthropologist, notes that many hunter-gatherer tribes, before the advent of farming communities, the rise of kings and nation states, did not actively make war.

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Flags of Our Fathers (2006). Directed by Clint Eastwood. Written by William Broyles, Jr. and Paul Haggis. Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers, the first of two films the director made about the Battle for Iwo Jima, focuses its lens on a small group of GI’s who fought there and raised the flag on that barren island. It is also the story of how the famous photo of that flag being planted became part of American myth.

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I have written before of the extraordinary pain and suffering caused by intractable conflicts and the cycle of violence that can go on for generations. Why is it that some conflicts are never truly finished and what would it take to completely heal them? Is such a thing even possible for human beings? Indeed, some of us are so cynical and resigned about conflict, especially long-term, deeply embedded conflicts, that we despair about the possibility of this kind of fighting ever being truly resolved or mended. And yet, individual human beings and even families and small groups have found it possible to create enduring peace after deep conflict, so why is it so unthinkable that larger groups caught up in multi-generational conflicts could find their way out of brutish and cruel conflict? The question I am really asking here is, “Is it possible to transfer the lessons of individuals, from the so-called micro level and apply them to the so-called macro level of affairs?” We tend to divide up our understanding of the how the world works into the arena of the individual and personal (the micro level) and the level of the large group/nation/state or ethnic group (the macro level) and we tend to think that affairs in these realms operate very differently.

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