In the News (from MIT News): “To help promote peace in the Middle East, many organizations have established ‘peace camps’ or similar conflict-resolution programs that bring Israelis and Palestinians together to foster greater understanding of the opposing group.

“One common feature of such programs is the opportunity for members of each group to share stories about their lives with members of the other group. Now, a new study from MIT neuroscientists shows that the benefits from this exchange are much greater when members of the less empowered group share their stories with the traditionally dominant group than when the reverse occurs

“The finding, published online in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, supports the idea that for the disempowered group, the biggest barrier to reconciliation is the belief that their concerns are being ignored, says Rebecca Saxe, senior author of the study. …

“Each participant was assigned to write about the difficulties of life in their society, or to read and summarize such an essay written by a member of the opposing group. All interactions took place through video and text-based chat. Each participant was paired with someone who, unbeknownst to the subject, was actually a research assistant.

“In a questionnaire given before and after the interaction, attitudes toward the opposing group improved most among members of the disempowered group who told their own stories, and among members of the dominant group who read others’ stories.

“When members of the less powerful group simply wrote their stories without having anyone from the opposing group read them, this did not boost their attitudes towards the other group — reinforcing the importance of being heard.

”For the dominant group, the researchers believe that hearing the opposing group’s stories is beneficial because members of the group in power often fear being blamed for the conflict. Therefore, listening gives ‘an opportunity for them to act virtuously and morally and to show that they’re actually good people,’ Saxe says.

My Comment: Only dialogue in the form of a roundtable (sadna) will help bring people together and then connect them, up to the point of complete inclusion of everyone in the world, and thus achieve full integration, and in it the feeling of entering the next dimension, our next state, intended by evolution.
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Related Material:
At The Round Table
Neutralizing The Threat
A Nation’s Fate Is Determined At The Roundtable

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