Peace reflexes

A peace reflex is any immediate and proactive act of appeasement towards a person or group, whose desire for violence is heating up. It is about making the choice of replacing one’s usual reflexes of violence, those which feed conflicts when faced with a physical, verbal or other kind of aggression, by peace reflexes which will bring appeasement. It is about offering balm in lieu of feeding the fire.  

Peace reflexes can be innate (spontaneous, heartfelt) or acquired. Practice helps people improve their peace reflexes and apply them in emotionally-charged situations, including seemingly unsolvable ones.

There are two types of peace reflexes, depending on whether it’s a relational conflict or a case of physical danger:

• In case of a relational conflict, peace reflexes will consist in reaching out to the other person, to his heart, to lower his tension and progressively build interpersonal relations that can become enjoyable, peaceful and long-lasting.  

• In case of physical danger, with the risk of being injured or killed, peace reflexes will consist in using tactics to disarm the aggressor’s desire of violence so as to protect oneself.

Those two types of peace reflexes also apply in case of ethnic or nationalist conflicts: peace becomes possible when both civilians and politicians succeed in adopting peace reflexes which appease past psychological and physical wounds in order to defuse the desire of violence of each party. This implies that civil society is proactive, ie it acts to positively influence politicians towards peace and conversely.

Peace reflexes are tools of appeasement and conflict resolution, which privilege:

• the desire to quickly calm the heart of the other, before anything else

• the choice to contribute oneself to the appeasement (proactive responsibility)

• the respect for the other’s dignity, of his/her physical and psychological integrity.

They take place upstream of the conflict resolution process and can be a useful complement to other tools and methods of resolution (emotional alphabetisation, overcoming fears, building self-confidence, listening and dialogue skills, facilitation, mediation, NVC (non violent communication) negotiation techniques, reconciliation processes…).

This begins with becoming aware of our desire for peace, of our human values (those which link us to the other person’s humanness, those which we wish to receive from others, such as respect, openness, greeting attitude, appreciation, empathy…) and our moral values (those which guide us not to do to others what we would not wish for ourselves, and notably, violence). It is this triple awareness that helps us to operate in peace reflex mode and to contribute more effectively to peace.

As for all conflict resolution methods, peace reflexes are centred on being skills (self-control to make peace possible) and doing skills (help the other side be able to make peace possible).

When faced with violence, physical or verbal, people usually see only two possible ways: fight or flight. For some, the only possible reaction seems to be paralysis. However, neither attack, nor avoidance, nor paralysis, can help solve a conflict. Peace reflexes are an additional avenue, to appease the conflicting sides so that true dialogue can start, and to create a good basis to start the resolution process.

It is the desire for peace which is the foremost requirement for peace reflexes. Being in peace is neither required, nor realistic during a conflict. It is thus about privileging the desire for peace before focusing on one’s own emotional needs; to put aside, temporarily, one’s own anger, frustrations and wounds.

Herewith some paths to develop one's "peace reflexes".