Professor Mary in her talk mentioned something that struck a cord and resonated with me deeply , when she spoke about how the the problems continue to plague disadvantaged populations across the global north and south and it is not because of the fact that we have come a long way in terms of developing technology or being able to tap into more resources, or because we have almost successfully gotten rid of leprosy that the poor are better of than where they were say twenty years ago, rather it was because of the tenacity of the poor that we can attribute or make the claim that the world is better today than where it was.
This reminded me of the book Nickle and a Dime which claims that the fact is most of the lower paying jobs requiring unskilled labor continue to exploit people at the lower rung of the social hierarchy.
Getting rid of all and any form of nuclear weapons is something that I feel strongly about and the fact that the Indo-Pakistan border is one of the most volatile places in the world and moreover India and Pakistan are some of the most hostile and hence two of the countries most prone to using nuclear weapons makes me think of how much work needs to be put in toward ending the long drawn struggle between the two countries. In order to try and mobilize ourselves toward finding positive peace the transitional justice model of social re-construction aimed at challenging existing structures that have not been questioned. But the question remains still: how?
Another conversation that started in talking about social justice that spurred my interest was the role that forgiveness plays in trauma healing and social justice. The role that self-forgiveness plays in aiming at deconstructing social structures? How does one give the space and time to someone to heal and try to make a person whole again once hurt? This made me think of positionality actually arises from situation of conflicts in which issues of communities tormented that have not been addressed continue to stand in the way of conflict resolution.
The question that remains is how privilege becomes a path constructed and eked out where the parties on either side over the years get further pushed away from each other, is it enough to have institutionalized prejudice become embedded in laws and customs, or does this just serve to desensitize and dehumanize human experiences in times of acute oppression? The idea of transitional justice and how long is long enough in order to bring forth the need for value resolving in promoting positive peace through social reconstruction important.
