In my initial posts, I argued that attempts to help can be called instances of “altruism”
just as people are happy to call attempts to harm instances of “aggression”. In
this post, I consider altruism and aggression in the context of a particular
real-world event.
The picture above shows the Grand Hotel in
Brighton the day after it was bombed by the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Among
the dead was the Conservative Member of Parliament Sir Antony Berry.
A week ago, Sir Antony’s daughter Jo
visited the University of Sussex (US).
Jo is known to the public mainly because of
her relationship with Patrick Magee, the man convicted for planting the bomb that killed Jo’s father.
At Jo’s first session with US she told the
story of how the bombing had affected her life. During her second session, Jo
took questions from me in an interview format. Both sessions ended with Jo
answering questions from members of the audience.
Although key aspects of Jo’s story can be
pieced together from various places, it was fascinating to hear her tell it
herself. Thoughts cascaded. Parallels and contrasts abounded. Ironies arose. Impulses
clashed.
Jo thinks that dialogue promotes peace and
harmony and that an absence of dialogue with enemies makes bad situations
worse.
Jo thinks that dialogue promotes peace and
harmony because dialogue increases empathy (understanding of others’ experiences
and of their reactions to them); empathy facilitates recognition of others’
humanity; recognition of others’ humanity facilitates altruistic concern
(caring about the others’ positive welfare); and altruistic concern promotes
intolerance of things that systematically harm those cared about.
Jo thinks that an absence of dialogue with
enemies has detrimental effects on both sides. Those refusing to speak or
listen come to demonise the other and lose sight of the other's humanity. They then
become obsessed with and haunted by the others’ apparent barbarity and evil.
They react with further defensive entrenchment and assault, fuelling mutual enmity
and conflict. Each of these consequences of refusing to talk and listen are accompanied
and exacerbated by increasingly losing sight of one’s own humanity.
Those who feel their grievances are not
heard feel increasingly victimised, morally outraged, and constrained by the limited
means at their disposal to put things right. They demonise the enemy, become
obsessed with and haunted by the others’ apparent barbarity and evil, react
with further defensive entrenchment and assault, lose sight of others’ and
their own humanity, and increasingly contribute to a spiral of
aggression and violence.
Jo’s beliefs have led to, or at least are
accompanied by, commitments to pacifism and to dialogue with those who harm
others. In reaching out to her father’s killer, Jo sought peace.
My thoughts on Jo’s beliefs and stance will
become clear to anyone who continues to read this blog. For now, I would like
to record just one personal observation about Jo’s visit - I really enjoyed
chatting with her over coffee. There was a relaxation of roles: mine as
concerned host and academic seeker of truths, hers as humble bringer of
insights earned through pain. I felt that that was when each of us was most in
touch with our own and each other’s humanity, when we were chatting.
The rest of this post is in sections. In
the section immediately below I summarise some of the key points of Jo’s story,
as derived from a limited selection of sources given towards the end of this
post. (To maximise readability, I do not give specific citations for each
quote. Students – don’t adopt this practice in essays!)
In the second section below I include a few
students’ recollections of Jo’s visit. (Thanks for sharing these, folks.)
The third section below is at present a rough
transcript from near the beginning of my interview with Jo. Hopefully, this will
provide a flavour of the interview as a whole, an audio recording of which I will also include when I can work out how!
Some
key points from the story of Jo Berry and Patrick Magee
On October 12, 1984, an IRA bomb killed 5
people, including Jo’s father. Two days later, Jo “made a personal decision …
to bring something positive out of this emotionally shattering trauma and to
try and understand those who had killed him.” She “chose to give up blame and
revenge, instead taking responsibility for [her] pain and feelings,
transforming them into passion for peace.”
Two or three months later, Jo met a man
whose brother had been killed by a British soldier. The conversation persuaded
Jo that she could “build a bridge across the divide”.
During several subsequent visits to
Northern Ireland, Jo met people involved in and affected by ‘The Troubles’. It
was the first time she felt that her “pain was being heard”. She also “began to
understand the reasons why someone may choose to join a paramilitary
organization”.
Jo found this process “too emotionally
challenging as [she] had yet to deal with [her] trauma”. On top of this, she
received negative reactions – including death threats – for saying on air in
1986 that she might one day be willing to meet those responsible for her
father’s death.
Jo withdrew to home-educate her daughters.
In 1999, Jo was shocked to see Patrick
Magee released from prison after he had been given 8 life sentences in 1986 for
planting the bomb that killed her father.
In 2000, Jo and Magee met for the first
time. Jo wanted “to put a face to the enemy and see him as a real human being”.
She was initially told that Magee “didn’t want to meet her: he wasn’t
interested in being understood by the middle-class daughter of a Tory toff.”
When they met, Jo says that Magee denied having said this.
Magee “felt obliged as a Republican to
explain” his actions. This is what he spent the first hour and a half of the
first meeting doing. He told Jo that he’d “got involved in the armed struggle
at the age of 19, after witnessing how [members of] a small nationalist
community were being mistreated by the British. Those people had to respond.”
After this, Jo says, Pat (as she now knows
him) took off “his political hat”. “There was a moment of silence. He took off
his glasses and rubbed his eyes. ‘I don’t know who I am anymore’, he said. ‘I
don’t know what to say. I’ve never met anyone like you, with so much dignity.
What can I do to help? I want to hear your anger. I want to hear your pain.’”
Magee later said that “he was disarmed by the empathy [Jo] gave him, that he
would have found it easier” had she been angry and blaming. Then “the political
hat would have remained firmly attached”.
Jo’s eagerness to listen and understand was
“cathartic” for Magee. In that moment, the political justification for his
actions “didn’t matter… As an individual [he] carried the heavy weight of
knowing that [he] had caused profound hurt to this woman … A political
obligation henceforth became a personal obligation”.
Jo says it was part of her healing “to hear
[Magee’s] story and reach an understanding of why he chose violence”. Magee
says meeting Jo helped him “remove blinkers, see the bigger picture and
understand that there are human beings on all sides”. He came to believe that
he had failed to appreciate the humanity of his enemies just as they had failed
to appreciate him and his kind. He also came to believe that his aggression had
caused him to lose part of his own humanity (or at least lose touch with it)
and damage the humanity of many of the people affected by his actions.
Since that first meeting, Jo and Magee have
together and apart promoted peaceful means of conflict resolution and avoidance.
Foremost of these means is willingness to engage in dialogue. For Jo, such
dialogue prevents demonising of “the other” and allows people to retain or
reconnect with their own humanity and that of others. For her, “violence is
never justified.” For Magee, dialogue is necessary to prevent oppressed people
feeling that they have to turn to armed struggle. “I am not a pacifist”, he
says. “I could never say to [those] who felt themselves oppressed, ‘Take it,
just lie down and take it’”.
Jo thinks that what Magee did was “evil”
but that Magee himself isn’t. She thinks one has to separate the sin from the
sinner, “to avoid blame and find a new way of thinking that will break that
cycle of violence.”
Jo thinks that she has probably used the
word “forgiveness” too freely. She now believes that it can lock people into
a “me right and you wrong” attitude that “won’t change anything”. But she feels
that she “can experience empathy and in that moment there is no judgment.
Sometimes when [she’s] met with Pat [she’s] had such a clear understanding of
his life that there’s nothing to forgive”. “Had we all lived each other’s lives”,
she says, “we could all have done what the other did.” For her, “the question
is always about whether [she] can let go of [her] need to blame and open [her]
heart enough to hear Pat’s story and understand his motivations. The truth is", she says, "sometimes I can and sometimes I can’t. It’s a journey and it’s a
choice”.
Magee says he is “not seeking forgiveness”.
He stands by his actions, although he feels he will always carry the burden
that [he] harmed other human beings”. Forgiveness won’t bring back the dead, he
says. “The hope lies in the fact we continue to meet in order to further this
mutual process towards understanding.”
Sources
Berry, J., & Magee, P. (2010). Jo Berry & Pat Magee
(Northern Ireland). The Forgiveness Project, March 29. [Link]
Grice, E. (2009). The Brighton bomb: Jo Berry – at peace with
the man who murdered my father. Telegraph, October 7. [Link]
Hall, C. (2009). Brighton bombing 25 years on: Making friends
with my father's killer. Guardian, October 10. [Link]
Rea, L. (2011). Victim’s daughter meets IRA bomber: An
interview with Jo Berry. Restorative Justice Online, May 12. [Link]
Three
students’ recollections of Jo’s visit
Student
1
I was quite
moved by Jo flagging up that, even though she acknowledged that her story was a
‘big one’, she believed many, many people had events in their lives that could
be addressed in the way she had addressed her loss. It made me think of a big
event from my own life... I have really wondered after Jo’s talk how [meeting
an abuser] might have affected my recovery.
Student
2
What struck me
about Jo, from the offset, was her calm and placid demeanour. She looked and
sounded like she had just finished some deep relaxing meditation, but she was
fully awake. The structure of the talk was fantastic for both past and present
day... I left feeling like I had been in the presence of someone who, on the
surface, seems to have reached a place where her ability to ‘understand’ left
me feeling humbled. It was a real pleasure to listen to her story, no matter
what internal judgements one makes.
Student
3
One of the main things that I
took from the talk was the blurred distinction between whether I was
experiencing empathy or sympathy or neither. At several points I felt like I
was empathising with Jo... and could understand the emotional turmoil she must
have experienced. I felt strongly internally conflicted however as she got into
the later stages of her talk and her forgiveness of Pat Magee. This highly
traumatic and complex experience is unlike anything I (and probably most
audience members) have had to face in life, and so I was not fully able to
relate/empathise. But I also struggled to understand/sympathise with Jo. To be
honest I was kind of frustrated, angry even... I resented her ability to
forgive and even befriend a man who to her knowledge has never said he
regretted killing her father... However, what most annoyed me was that I
wholeheartedly agree with her core message, that forgiveness and reconciliation
between conflicting parties is quite obviously a superior pathway... I know
that in her situation I would not have been able to make that leap and would
not have reacted well to anyone who suggested I try... It was a truly
fascinating talk that has left me unsuccessfully attempting to solidify my own
opinion re: forgiveness and justice.
Tom
interviews Jo: An excerpt
Jo: I spent the first five years of my life
mainly with nannies and hardly seeing my parents... And then my mum separated
from my dad when I was six and our lives completely changed... My mum... became
friends with people like Roald Dahl. So he was a big part of my childhood. And
artists. And, she had like a bohemian house... We were discussing all sorts of
interesting ideas. And my father was actually very strict. I remember we used
to have to have special clothes when we saw him... So, quite a lot of contrasts
that I had to manage.
My father married soon after and had two
more children. So we had two homes: very different values, very different
disciplines. My over-riding thing as a child was that I could never make my
parents happy. When I was with my dad, my mum was upset; when I was with my
mum, my dad was upset. So I grew up just always feeling like I wanted to be in
two places at the same time, which I think is quite often true of children with
divorced parents.
In those days there was no one to talk to
about things like that. You just didn’t [laughs]. So I got on with it.
I always seemed to be the one who got in
trouble in my family. I don’t know why. Still don’t know why [laughs]...
But over the years my father softened... My
mother carried on being quite, adventurous. She’d take us on unusual holidays.
Different experiences. So I grew up with a whole lot of people around in my
life. I used to go to Buckingham Palace. That was part of my life. Go to 10
Downing Street, because of [laughs] my father. At the same time, I’d meet
people from different parts of the world. So quite a variety of experiences.
I remember being really, really unhappy at
boarding school. It was a very strict,
girls-only boarding school... How much like a prison. These teachers were just
like sadists [laughs] and just delighted in punishment. It was the most
ridiculous thing. Feelings were not allowed.
I have to say, feelings were not allowed in
any part of my childhood.
My mum used to say, just before she became
a person-centred counsellor, she’d say, “You can either be tired or joyful” and
that was it! So, you know, not a great kind of place to learn about feelings.
And I was a very feeling child. So, I was
often called a cry-baby. I used to cry a lot. And I carried on crying right
through my boarding school. Eventually they asked me to leave. [Laughs.]
Because I was, too difficult.
And that was fantastic. So at 14, I left this prison and came back to London.
And, my mum was very involved with her own life. She didn’t really notice me
too much. And I discovered, in a whole street, was a squat. And I went there
after school, and eventually during school. And there were like all these
people there who’d just come back from India, Afghanistan, everywhere like
that. And they had bells and incense and played Ravi Shankar music and smoked
dope. And I was just like, “Wow!” So that opened my eyes to life quite a lot.
And I started reading Jung and Herman Hesse. I just loved the young people I
was meeting. I just loved. There was a freedom they had that I really wanted.
They weren’t constrained by who they were, where they came from. No one asked
them who their father did. You know? They were just living their lives.
... It gave me a thirst, I wanted to go to
India, overland to India... So school seemed completely irrelevant. How I got
‘A’ levels I don’t know. I didn’t work very hard. [Laughs.] ...
Tom: [I ask about her father’s and her own
commitment to peace.]
Jo: I did eventually start meditating. I
did get to India and I lived there for a couple of years. And during that time,
just in my early 20s, I wrote letters to mum and dad apologising for being so
difficult and, appreciating them, and
appreciating how difficult I had been. So I’m making peace with them. I came
back in June ’84 and my dad was going through a really hard time. He had
financial problems and he was also arrested by the police... I think that was
very shameful, to be arrested by the police. I remember I wrote him a note
after it happened and I said, “I can see this is really difficult for you and
you need to know that your friends stand by you and will understand you and
will love you for it. And those who criticise you were never your friends...
And I love you whatever you do.” He never wrote back. He still found it hard to
communicate his emotions. But I found out, after he was killed, that he had the
letter under his pillow.
...
Further reading
Zaki, J. (2013). Empathy as a choice. The Moral Universe: Dialogues on the psychology of right and wrong
(July 29). http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/moral-universe/2013/07/29/empathy-as-a-choice/
How
to cite this blog post using APA Style
T. Farsides. (2013, October 30). No such thing as altruism?
Retrieved from http://tomfarsides.blogspot.com/2013/10/empathy-for-the-devil-jo-berry-visits-US.html
Image
credits
Bombed Grand link
Jo Berry link
Jo Berry and Patrick Magee link
Waiting for her upcoming Teleserye Replay "Little Princess ".
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