[00:00:00] Trisha: I would like to acknowledge the Dharawal people, the Aboriginal people of Australia, whose country I live and work on. I would like to pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and thank them for sharing their cultural knowledge and awareness with us.

[00:00:39] Trisha: Hey everyone. Just before I introduce the guest, I want to let you know that we have split this episode into two. We found it was such a rich episode and we wanted to give you the time you needed to listen to it. And because it was a bit longer than usual, so we were able to spread it across two episodes and I'm sure that you will find it very valuable and that you will appreciate that we've done that. So please enjoy this first part of episode 41.

[00:01:11] Trisha: Hi there, everyone. I'm Trisha Carter, an organizational psychologist and an explorer of cultural intelligence. I'm on a bit of a quest to discover what enables us to see things from different perspectives. especially different cultural perspectives, and why sometimes it's easier than others to experience those moments of awareness, the shifts in thinking.

[00:01:33] Trisha: Some of you have been listening to some of our earlier episodes and so you will know that cultural intelligence, CQ, the capability to be effective in situations of diversity, is made up of four areas. There's the motivational, the drive, cognitive, the knowledge, metacognitive, the strategy, and behavioral, the actions.

[00:01:54] Trisha: And all four of these capabilities help us operate effectively in situations of diversity. And in this podcast, we focus more on the metacognitive aspect, thinking about our thinking, the CQ strategy. My guest today is the Reverend Dr. Gary Mason. He's a Methodist clergy person who has worked for almost 30 years in the inner city area of Belfast. During that time, his work was focused on peace building, conflict transformation and reconciliation. He worked at the sharper, fractured edges of Belfast society, often only a hundred meters or so from the peace lines, the barriers separating Catholics and Protestants.

[00:02:36] Trisha: He was involved in the peace process pre and post the Good Friday agreement and continues to work in the community. Gary has studied theology, psychology and business, and has lecturing positions at a long list of very respected universities around the world. He runs an NGO called Rethinking Conflict.

[00:02:56] Trisha: So if anyone can speak to us about helping people shift, I think Gary can. Welcome, Gary.

[00:03:03] Gary: Thank you, Trisha. Good to be with you. And I smile when I hear those bios of myself, that list, go, is that really me?

[00:03:13] Trisha: Oh, it definitely is. And I looked at a lot of different websites and all of them speak in the same way about you, so there's a lot that you can bring to us, and a lot to discuss. And I'd love to tap into the wisdom and the experience that you have and hear some of your stories. But first we want to ask our standard opening questions.

[00:03:31] Trisha: So what is the culture other than the culture you grew up in that you have learned to love and appreciate?

[00:03:38] Gary: Trisha, I very much grew up in that Northern Irish culture, primarily if we're talking about what side of the fence you're on or. As they say in the Irish context, at what foot do you kick with? Which is really a way of defining, are you Irish, Catholic, British, Protestant? And I suppose I very much grew up within that British, Protestant, Unionist, Loyalist culture.

[00:04:02] Gary: It's necessary to define myself in all those terms now, in many ways, but. That is really what shaped me as a person growing up. Work wise, I spend a lot of time in the U S and also in the Middle East, primarily working with Israelis and Palestinians. And I could look at those cultures, those latter cultures, Israelis and Palestinians that I've mentioned through a number of lenses, I guess.

[00:04:27] Gary: But looking at it through a religious lens, I'm fascinated at times by the Jewish tradition and the absolute devotion and methodical study of their ancient texts. And I mean, something obviously as a church person I had to do for many, many years preparing sermons, et cetera, et cetera. But just the absolute devotion in relation to that has fascinated me and sometimes make me realize that there are other cultures that I haven't grown up that are more disciplined and more methodical.

[00:05:02] Gary: As regards to those ancient texts. Compared to the Christian culture, I know many of your readers or listeners there may not necessarily be practicing faith, but there are traditions within all religions where people take time during the day to reflect and read, and I suppose looking at a number of colleagues there within that Jewish tradition, it's just fascinated me, their absolute devotion and dedication to that.

[00:05:27] Gary: So, I mean, I've come to appreciate that and admire that in so, so many ways.

[00:05:32] Trisha: I think it's always great getting to know people's, you know, the core of their belief system and what really drives them and motivates them. And then that helps us to sort of build that appreciation and value often. And if we just see people on a , superficial level. We often don't get to see that depth and, and so then we don't develop that real admiration and appreciation.

[00:05:57] Trisha: Thanks for sharing that. I'm wondering also if you can tell us about a time when you experienced the shift, when you suddenly became aware of a new perspective.

[00:06:06] Gary: I currently own the rethinking conflict Trisha, sure, an island wide dialogue group called Compass Points. I didn't come up with the name, a close friend of mine did. And the idea, post conflict in this space, Cause even though the good Friday agreement was signed 26 years ago, this year, 2024, we're still working on our peace process.

[00:06:29] Gary: I mean, most others in academics would say it takes 50 years, 50 years to bed down a successful peace process. And looking at those other traditions, other perspectives, I sort of rewind the DVD back to the late eighties, when I was a younger clergy person. As part of a group of clergy who were reaching out to those who were pursuing political violence, terrorism, freedom fighters, everyone has different definitions for these.

[00:07:00] Gary: Academic definition is non state actors, which really means non state armed actors.

[00:07:06] Gary: I'm just beginning to engage with people who were shaped by a different narrative and a different culture than I was. And I suppose then asking the question that we all have asked 101 times in our lives, Trisha, if I was born in those circumstances, what choices would I have made?

[00:07:24] Gary: It's also interesting seeing their shift, Trisha, because I often use in some of my work in the US that isn't in the best shape at the moment, as we know, around religious and political polarizations. But they bring people from that tradition and my own tradition who did choose political violence and for them to talk about their shift.

[00:07:44] Gary: And for them now actually to say, as men in their 60s, 70s, to say, if I hadn't been born 100 yards away, I probably would have been involved in the other side's paramilitary or terrorist grouping.

[00:07:58] Gary: So even a short distance, because here, to use another Irish saying, we live cheek by jaw in many ways. It's not war in the conventional sense, like American GIs going to Vietnam.

[00:08:10] Gary: This was neighbor killing neighbor.

[00:08:12] Gary: And so it's really, really up close and personal, but just hearing that perspective. And in that compass points groups, I often quote Brett Stevens, who is a New York times journalist, probably one of the most conservative in the New York times, which would not be class or it's any brand of being conservative.

[00:08:30] Gary: But Brett Stevens says, In order to disagree well, we need to understand well.

[00:08:36] Gary: So in many ways, a lot of my life has been understanding other people's positions, bringing people together who do disagree, politically, Theologically and a hundred and one other different ways, but at least understand the other person's position and I'ved worked for example, with the Carter Center in Atlanta, President Carter, who just, literally turned to 100 there in the last month or so.

[00:09:02] Gary: Yeah.

[00:09:02] Gary: I mean, it was amazing, amazing life he's had, but we had a delegation here in May just passed in Belfast of Republicans and Democrats, both religious leaders and political leaders, really looking at lessons, Trisha, from the Northern Irish conflict and peace process. Which may have applicability within the US context and the primary lesson.

[00:09:25] Gary: I was trying to say is that once you move in the violence, it's very, very difficult to bring it to an end. I mean, I remember as a little boy in 1969 when the troops, British troops come on the streets of Belfast. Common wisdom of the day was, oh, this will be over by Christmas. Yeah, right. I mean, it officially ended in 1998 with the Good Friday Agreement.

[00:09:48] Gary: Operation by the British didn't end until 2005, 2006. As I often say to people, this was the longest military operation in British history. And the Brits, as you and I know, have fought a hell of a lot of wars. So once violence begins, that's a lesson people need to realize. And look, that could be in an organization.

[00:10:07] Gary: You're an organizational psychologist. So that could be verbal violence, or it could be physical violence, it could be violence within a relationship, both verbal or physical. It's very difficult at times to bring it to an end. There's no quick click off button. And that's one lesson I've learned growing up in my context, that deal with the issues before they get too bad.

[00:10:27] Gary: And as I was saying, colleagues in the United States, you have an opportunity. Now, I know the temperature's really, really high in the US at the moment, but as faith leaders. And political leaders, you have an opportunity to take the temperature down and a number of folks, thankfully, are trying to do that.

[00:10:43] Gary: There's a lot. I mean, the brilliant Jewish rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, who died a few years ago, sadly of cancer in his early 70s, has a great phrase there. Trisha, he calls it linguistic violence. And I've often said, as you look at linguistic violence, In the Middle East at the moment that we're watching on our TV screens, in the US at the moment, and as a young boy growing into my teenage years, I saw linguistic violence on a daily basis, sadly, both from religious and political leaders that led many men, and it was primarily men of my generation, to take up the gun to be involved in armed conflict.

[00:11:20] Gary: Obviously as a religious actor, I'm disagreeing with what they did, But it's not enough just to condemn them, you have to ask, what made many men of my generation, who now, as we talk in 2024, Trisha, would be deemed as boy soldiers?

[00:11:37] Gary: 15, 16, 17 year olds to take up the gun and kill people 100 yards away that they knew at times and at times didn't know.

[00:11:49] Trisha: I'm just, I'm seeking some clarification on that linguistic violence. Is that like labelling of people or is it encouraging people to step up to violence? How do you see that happening? How did you see it happening?

[00:12:02] Gary: As you would say, all of the above. So I'll do it in both theological and psychological terms there. Religious leaders, on my side, for example, referring to people as, not Christian as heretics, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm more than happy to say the history of the Christian church is not pretty. One thing that annoys me about the church, and I'm quite happy to say this, is the church is quite dishonest at times and doesn't take ownership of its history.

[00:12:30] Gary: I mean, the history of colonialism, slavery, all of it has theological roots. I mean, I stummed there, I think it was last year I was doing a lecture in the States, doing some research, the doctrine of discovery, which most of you are listeners will never have heard of, but it was a kind of a papal bull of the 15th century, which basically licensed rape, land possession, genocide, et cetera, et cetera, all in the name of Jesus.

[00:12:56] Gary: Of course,

[00:12:57] Trisha: Mm

[00:12:58] Gary: church only disowned that doctrine in March, 2023.

[00:13:03] Trisha: Wow.

[00:13:04] Gary: there is a classic, you know, the church as an organization, you should be, you'd be drilling into that Trish as an organizational psychologist, the church. I think the reaction when things go wrong is protect the institution.

[00:13:18] Gary: Child abuse being a classic example that was just seen in recent years.

[00:13:22] Gary: Not wanting , move that clergy person to another parish or, uh, or maybe they need to go to another country, but don't put your hands up and say guilty as charged. This is an organization that is telling humanity confession, honesty, et cetera. Yeah. Come on. So I'm happy to say as a religious leader, The church has been at times an incredibly dishonest, destructive organization

[00:13:48] Gary: and that influenced people against the other,

[00:13:51] Gary: both sides of the fence, Protestant and catholic, religious leaders, also political leaders, using phrases about the other, demonizing the other.

[00:14:00] Gary: Uh, there's a great quotation, Abraham Joshua Heschel, who was a Jewish rabbi, marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in the, in the sixties during the civil rights movement in the United States. And he's this great phrase where he says, it was words, not machines that produced Auschwitz. So in other words, Trisha, before people were using the efficiency of the death camps in Europe.

[00:14:25] Gary: It was language in the public square that demonized Jews as being vermin, rats, think Goebbels, think Hitler, think Göring, the language that was used. And so many of my

[00:14:37] Gary: school friends, I look back at my, what they know, boys, uh, high school, as they would call it in the U. S. And I look back, some of my colleagues are dead from natural causes, but some of them are dead because they made Choices as young man, pushed on actually by religious leaders, which I think is really, really, really sad.

[00:14:58] Gary: There's a great quotation there by Paul Valery, who is a French philosopher, where he says, this quotation always moves me immensely. He says, war is a place where young people who don't know each other and don't hate each other, kill each other, made on decisions by old people who know each other and hate each other, but don't kill each other.

[00:15:19] Gary: The way of war, be that Australians, Brits, Chinese, Africans,

[00:15:25] Gary: decisions in language made by politicians. I mean, one theologian that was studying war, I think in the 20th century, there's a thing called the just war theory in Christianity. Is there just. The war, and he suggested that probably from his perspective, the second world war was the only just war of the 20th century.

[00:15:46] Gary: And I thought about it and actually thought, Trisha, like, really, when you think that the first world war broke out over the assassination of a diplomat.

[00:15:55] Gary: God, diplomacy or sanctions, economic sanctions, as we call them today, would have been a better way. Cause I think of. You know, I think of probably your grandparents, my grandparents, my grandfather that was wounded.

[00:16:09] Gary: I lost a great grandfather in the First World War. Did we really need to do that?

[00:16:14] Gary: But language, again, language and rhetoric drives people to make bad decisions.

[00:16:18] Trisha: So as that young boy in high school, did you get caught up in that language, or were you able to recognize it for what it was doing to you?

[00:16:28] Gary: Yeah, no, I would say I was probably to a degree like most people caught up in it and never thankfully joined a paramilitary organization. But I do tell the story that, you know, I remember one night standing at the bottom of an iron wrought staircase on a street in Belfast and watching men of my generation, 15, 16, 17 year olds, you know, Going up into a darkened room with men, probably in their 20s and 30s to join certain non state actors or terrorist organizations.

[00:17:02] Gary: And as I often say Trish, you, you took a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other. I said, you always need a little bit of toxic religion to justify what you're doing. This kind of God is on my side mentality.

[00:17:13] Gary: In relation. I didn't do it. And I, I remember telling that story in the US and, uh, someone asking, well, why did you not do that?

[00:17:22] Gary: And I kind of teasingly said, teenage hormones. I had a date that night with a girl. I said, , so like teenage hormones keep me from coming a terrorist. It's a, story in reality. And I remember telling a story in someone on the other side of the fence who set out to join the IRA. and went to the wrong house and rang the wrong doorbell, said to me, you know, Gary, I woke up the next morning and said this wasn't a good idea.

[00:17:46] Gary: So how the acts these people did was fundamentally wrong

[00:17:51] Gary: but it's not simple enough just to class them all as seasoned psychological killers. There was a context here and the people can argue against me say well Gary I didn't make that decision and neither did you and I go well like lucky us in a sense because many people are very normal and the statistic Trisha that backs it up onto the Good Friday Agreement, prisoner releases were part of the agreement.

[00:18:13] Gary: Something like 30, 000 political prisoners here, who now have all been released, many are now dead. But statistically, only 2 percent of those people have re offended. That is the lowest statistic.

[00:18:26] Gary: Normal, re offending rates some places are 30 someplace there

[00:18:29] Gary: actually 50 percent , so while what they did was wrong. The motivation for this, was not what you call it. The British sense or ODCs, as we call them, ordinary decent criminals.

[00:18:41] Gary: Driving these people, politics and religion that are very, very compelling forces.

[00:18:46] Trisha: and I mean you were saved if you like because you had a date but there must have been other people for whom their friends or their family members were taking them there. And so they were just following in the footsteps of others. And so you can sort of see, and I think your question, which was if I was born, 100 meters down the road, what would I choose? You know, I would be different. And so recognizing that there's circumstances, there's belief, and it's not necessarily, a massively shocking step to take in those environments.

[00:19:21] Gary: And that's it., and as you look at the Israeli Palestinian theater at the moment, and we'll not go down that rabbit hole, because as I said, everyone now I've been working there extensively 14 years, but as I said, yeah, everyone's an expert. Now they've got it worked out through Tik TOK or Instagram. I mean, all conflicts.

[00:19:37] Gary: I say, Trisha, I described it like the San Andreas fault in California. There's many fault lines and what choices are people making today in Lebanon, Gaza, Israel, West Bank, wherever, because of what is happening there. And that's why leadership is absolutely crucial in relation to this. And I know that's very much a discipline you're interested in.

[00:20:02] Gary: And it's interesting, I've hosted over a thousand Israelis and Palestinians in Belfast and Dublin over the last 14 years. And there's five items they highlight that they learn, but they talk about political leadership and civic leadership being absolutely essential to achieve peace. And we ask as we look at many conflicts at the moment. The leadership just is not there. I mean, Mandela obviously in South Africa was a key leader in moving his constituency in the right direction. And the most moving story I heard, which was a true story that someone that was very close to him told me, he said, you know, Gary, when he was released from Robben Island.

[00:20:42] Gary: He sat in his, in a car in the backseat, like looking at the prison officer that had watched over him for 27 years. And subconsciously, Trisha, he said, Mandela said to himself, I have one of two choices, one bullet, one white settler, or I create a coalition, and he chose the latter. Now he could have chosen the former, and you'd end up with an absolute bloodbath of people of our skin color in South Africa, and obviously people of different skin colors who are seen as collaborators with the reigning white regime, but he had the courage and thank god the wisdom, I will create

[00:21:22] Gary: the rainbow nation, that's really needed because he could have turned into so well, I think I'd become a psychopath and give these people. They're just rewards, but he didn't.

[00:21:32] Trisha: I think we all, I mean, we love the idea of a Mandela, and, and a leader who inspires and changes people, but sometimes societies don't have that. Did, I mean, what happened to bring about the Good Friday Agreement? Was there a leader? I, from my history perspective, I'm not aware of it, but maybe there was.

[00:21:51] Gary: probably Trisha series of things. We end up what academics call in the early 1990s. We had a mutually hurting stalemate. So that simply means that there was never going to be a military victory. Now, you and I know, the Brits are pretty seasoned warriors, to put it mildly, one of the top 15 armies in the world, but the British army were never going to defeat the IRA and British generals were starting to say that in the early nineties.

[00:22:17] Gary: They were able to contain them, so they could have contained them, and what we really had, some of these are awful phrases when you look back on it, we had an acceptable level of violence, so in 1972 when I was a little boy, we had a terrorist incident every 40 minutes, and nearly 500 killed in a tiny space like Northern Ireland of 1. 5 million people,

[00:22:38] Gary: the IRA were never going to defeat the British, and they knew that, nor the loyalist paramilitary groupings, We're going to feed the IRA and there are rules both within those paramilitary groupings and politically different leaders who began to say there must be another way to do this and I mean, people like Jerry Adams, who was the spokesperson, let's be honest, for the most lethal terrorist organization or freedom fighter organization in Western Europe, but began to realize there has to be a different choice.

[00:23:08] Gary: There has to be a different yes. David Irvine, whose funeral I did, like I'm doing a, a gig tomorrow night with the BBC former security correspondent, which I'm speaking about David's life. So David was a skilled bomb maker who became a peacemaker, John, non violent leader of the social democratic and labor party.

[00:23:26] Gary: And eventually people like David Trimble over that period from 1990 to 1998 began to map out. Another way of doing things, and that was absolutely crucial for us. And a lot of these were backroom conversations. Uh, the story that I often tell there, Trisha relates to president Bill Clinton, who came to Belfast in November, 1995, and actually did his keynote address on the interface, in a building just behind my church in the Springfield road.

[00:23:57] Gary: And after that was over, Clinton got into that massive car that the Americans called the Beast drove down a road that probably none of your listeners will know called the Springfield Road in Belfast. The vehicle swung left onto the Falls Road, very well known Republican neighborhood. The car stopped, and coincidentally, Jerry Adams was just leaving the bakery with his little brown bag of morning scones as Bill Clinton

[00:24:21] Trisha: Wow.

[00:24:22] Trisha: Clinton

[00:24:22] Gary: shook his hand. Now, the kind of fallout of that was several fold.

[00:24:27] Gary: People were saying, in the name of God, what the hell is the most powerful person in the world doing, shaking the hand of a spokesperson for a terrorist organization? Clinton was clever. He wouldn't have got to where he was if he wasn't, as you and I know only too well.

[00:24:41] Gary: Clinton knew there was a struggle for the soul of the IRA. Do we continue terrorism or political violence? Or do we move towards politics?

[00:24:50] Gary: This was not

[00:24:50] Gary: an overnight phenomenon. There were years of conversations because the IRA had a twin track approach that they developed in the 80s. Prior to that it was just political violence, political violence, drive the Brits out by violence.

[00:25:03] Gary: But they then developed the ballot box on one hand. So Clinton's goal was to get them to ditch the ArmAlight. Adams, other people like Martin McGuinness, other key Republican leaders, were able to go back to the hard men of the IRA who wanted to pursue armed struggle because there was enough weaponry on the island to do that for another 50 years and say, guys, this is what you get.

[00:25:26] Gary: This is the action we get if we move away from the gun. And the success story of Sinn Féin proves that that was the correct decision. They're now the largest political party in the island of Ireland, the largest party in Northern Ireland, the largest party in Belfast City Council, but that was not an overnight phenomenon.

[00:25:43] Gary: think of the highest building there in Australia, Trisha. I think of the highest one maybe in New York because there are not a lot of high buildings in Belfast. Somebody said it was like going into the highest building in the world and switching off the lights one switch at a time. There's no like instantaneous solution to say, we meet, show of hands guys, the war's over. No, no, there were meetings with four people, five people, 300 people to really bring all that constituency together. Because as you and I know, and you know, particularly better than I do as an organizational psychologist, you've got to bring your people with you and you find out the means to do that.

[00:26:20] Gary: And so there's a classic example within the world of. militarism or terrorism, but the same thing has to happen because the last thing you wanted was the IRA splitting down the middle. There's still a few dissident groups here, but they don't hold any sway. So it's a classic piece of organizational psychology and making sure all the troops moved in the right direction.

[00:26:40] Gary: And so it was choreographed in a hundred and one different ways.

[00:26:43] Trisha: Thanks for joining us, everyone. I'm sure that you are looking forward as much as I am to next week's episode so that you can hear more about Gary speaking about the challenges in Northern Ireland in peacekeeping and peacemaking. so please don't forget to push follow or subscribe so that you can make sure that you receive next week's episode.

[00:27:07] Trisha: And in the meantime, if you're interested in following along a little more, we now have a presence on Substack. So if you're on Substack, please let us know that you're there. we are there under Trisha Carter, T R I S H A C A R T E R and The Shift Learning Community.

[00:27:27] Trisha: So we'd love to meet you there as well. And we look forward, as we said, to next week's episode of The Shift.