Bastian Berbner

This book started out like the beginning of a horse race, immediate galloping and then slowed down and meandered a while with a short pick up in the last chapter. I think I know why too! Division between groups, tribes, political parties, races and so on is a tough one to figure how to solve. In my own experience, I have been able to turn an enemy into a friend, but it then when you have large groups, the problem gets a lot tougher. I wrote the next paragraph when I was having the experience of joy reading this book.

The first interview in the chapter is with a former Neo-Nazi, some of his criminal activity is in the book and he seems to be the embodiment of evil. However, he was assigned a female black probation officer. She had to go into his home inspect for drugs, bombs, guns etc. but she sat down on the couch and listened to him talk. Not interrupting him. she had him tell her about his life. Not saying much, she said “Why don’t you take down that negative stuff on the walls and put up some Smilies? Not meaning it literally but when she came back the posters of the swastika and Hitler were gone and he put up smilies. Each appointment increased his trust in her and one day, he took her to a tattoo parlor where he had a man cover up the giant swastika on his with a bear so people could not see the scary symbol. He distanced himself from his former neo-nazi buddies and eventually went on tour talking to troubled youths and steering them away from where he had been to more positive futures. There are many interviews of people who were strangers who became life long friends.

Then this told of when empathy does not happen, the scientific experiments had such terrible results that it was painful to read about them. I found myself not wanting to read that part. The author winds up with the example of Boswana, where the government proactively moved people into different areas. The problem is that we cannot do that here or in most places.

What is the solution? None of us know, but the author makes a wonderful try.… (mehr)