My friends and I who live in different parts of the world decided to gather in Damascus in order to enjoy the peace of this city and the freedom in it. After a quick compromise the choice was Kyiv, where a friend has to do a very important surgery and we decided to support him. Suddenly we got aware of the world’s shape. When I fell asleep in the evening, I dreamt:

I have a dream

Imagine we all could be friends all over the world. What would be different? We can meet and visit us without being afraid. We can learn from other cultures and improve ourselves. If there is a problem we can talk about and find amicable solutions. We support us where help is needed to the benefit of everybody without losses. We could respect each other and take interests of everybody into consideration. Nobody would need bombs to prove that he is important. Nobody needs to starve. We would live in peace and feel secure, so that we can care for things that really need to be done. We together could heal humanity and nature. We could live in harmony.

Suddenly I wake up. Now I am faced by more than 20 wars in the world.(https://www.wiki-to-yes.org/article1204-Konfliktbarometer). The number is raising. And the war is coming closer and closer to everybody. I see violence in TV every day disguised in movies and reported in the news. I find violence, bullying and oppression in reality around me all the time as if we were not able to communicate. Now I am aware it was just a dream. I wonder if it ever can become true.

Honestly, I am desperate and I feel helpless. More and more I’m afraid my dream will never come true. I guess humans probably need to pass another evolution step in order to get there. Unfortunately, each step of evolution takes some hundred thousand of years. Not sure if human kind will survive till then. Right now, I feel we are developing backwards. Thinking about evolution we move into the wrong direction. Guess we reached the middle age already heading to stone age in quick steps. Wars are convoying evolution all the time. But opposite to former tenses, wars have never been that dangerous and cruel like today. We didn’t use evolution to live in peace but to improve our knowledge constructing nuclear weapons and bombs. We declare to not use them. But that’s a lie. We are proud of the power we could get through them. That’s an error. We elect national leaders who rather are strong for fighting than wise. That’s not smart. We favor to develop weapons that make killing more effective. That doesn’t help out of destruction. But it makes us proud though we should feel ashamed. Today we are able to build weapons that are strong enough to destroy whole countries. Do we take into consideration that they will primarily destroy the last areas of the world where living is possible? Seems that power and stupidity is an unhealthy couple. Shouldn’t we be aware that people we bomb to pieces are living in those areas of the world which are getting smaller anyway but where life still is possible? Countries we bomb are fertile areas not deserts, where life is not possible anyway. The way we go, makes the world smaller and smaller and we artificially make living more and more difficult and dangerous. As if nature was not able to do so itself. But nature is. It warns us by climate change and pandemic. We do not hear the warnings. Maybe nature now is using humans themselves in order to get rid of them. Can it be, that we search our enemies at the wrong place?

My dream now becomes a nightmare. Fortunately, a nightmare also still is a dream. That comforts a bit and it allows a piece of hope coming up. Maybe humans indeed have the power to change this disaster. Maybe they can become friends with everybody and they can hear the nature’s voice: “Don’t do that you are going to kill the nature and through that you are going to kill human kind”. “Yes we know“, is the answer. “But we can do it quicker and more effectively”. Now we are looking at the dark side of the force.

Back in reality we get aware that the force has two sides and that there is another side of humans as well. We do have friends; we do support us. We definitely are able to solve problems. At least some of us are able to do so. They for sure are not the war lords and no assassins. They are quiet and hardly visible among the detonations of the bombs. But they are many. It’s a real dilemma. Should they build bombs as well and even bigger than the others to get visible and to receive a voice that can be heard? Are they really forced to play the stupid killing game with the others? Do we really need violence to stop violence? Are we really that helpless against human stupidity?

It is a question we have to face. And if we do, we see the two sides of the medal as mediation does. Mediators know that there is a way out of confrontation. They know that cooperation is more effective and possible. Mediation provides an exit strategy from war and a strategy to heal humans and the world. Mediation is the name of my dream described before. We do not need to be friends. We just need to use our brain a bit in order to understand that we are neighbors who cannot move away from earth. Friendship will be the outcome as soon as we start to think and if we start to respect nature. It works. At least, if we do understand mediation as to be not just an isolated legal procedure improving the culture of disputes. If we see it as a kind of thinking and a way of understanding, it improves and strengthen the culture of peace. That’s what we need and that’s the way integrated mediation goes. Thinking can be used anywhere and anytime. If that is a truth, mediation can be used anywhere and anytime as well.

Now there is a group of integrated mediators which wants to figure out the options mediation can provide to all of us. Indicated by the Ukraine conflict, the violence and the disaster, we decided that we as mediators have to do something. Since mediators know about the damage conflicts can achieve, it is hard to see if even states get involved and not just some neighbors or some couples, where the damage is rather big but limited. This group of mediators got together the 30th of March founding a department at “integrierte Mediation e.V.” where we want to share our views and develop our insights helping out of this mess. We called the department “peace mediation”. The name is our program. Members are mediators from different countries in the world, driven to give peace a chance.

We are aware that we as mediators do have a chance not everybody has. Mediators are able to analyze conflicts. For that we see the conflict parties of the Ukraine conflict not just as to be Russia and Ukraine. We believe that conflict parties are all the world powers playing a power game. We believe, that the Ukraine conflict is just a deadly symptom of a conflict where rules in the world have to be readjusted, where every state is involved as well as every human being. It’s another appearance of the same conflict since the climate change and the pandemic wasn’t heard. Mediators are impartial why they can listen to all the conflict parties carefully. They are obliged to understand them without judging and evaluating. They can face that the conflict parties do not understand each other at all. For that they can feedback a reality that not everybody likes to hear. They can mirror humans in that game and they know, how to get out of that self-destructing game.

Yes, I have a dream. Imagine everybody would think like mediators should do. We can meet and visit us without being afraid. We can learn from other cultures and improve ourselves. If there is a problem we can talk about and find amicable solutions. We support us where help is needed to the benefit of everybody without losses. We could respect each other and take interests of everybody into consideration. Nobody would need bombs to prove that he is important. Nobody needs to starve. We would live in peace and feel secure, so that we can care for things that really need to be done. We together could heal humanity and nature. We could live in harmony. Would you like to transform this dream into reality together with us?

Join us. The more we are the more that dream will become reality. Please contact: