Encounters with the "Other": A History and Possibilities

by Barry Oshry

Barry Oshry has a lifetime’s experience of working with social and organizational systems. Here he explains how we can understand – and avoid – the “catastrophes” that continue to occur when one culture meets another – when demagogues sell us messages of superiority or purity in the face of cultural difference. Algeria ~ Armenia ~ Bosnia ~ Cambodia ~ Congo ~ Darfur ~ East Timor ~ The Holdomor ~ The Holocaust ~ Myanmar ~ Palestine ~ Rwanda... He explains how the two conventional solutions to encountering the “other” – Purity and Tolerance – both exact a terrible cost on the oppressed while diminishing the humanity of the oppressors. And he offers us a third possibility, one that requires a fundamental transformation in how we see and experience one another. This transformation requires us to understand that the interaction patterns we fall into shape the way we see and experience one another. Change the pattern of interaction and our experiences of one another will change... The possibility of “Power and Love”, working together and tempering one another, will emerge.

38 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 4, 2019