So far we have had around 2 months of IFP, and during these sessions, we discussed various topics such as collaboration, conflict, violence, and peacebuilding.
Conflict and violence are very tied into one another, usually, conflict leads to violence. However, I believe that although conflict is inevitable (due to everyone’s differing opinions), violence is inevitable if we consider the consequences of our actions and take other people’s opinions into account before making decisions. Violence does not necessarily only have to be physical, it can be emotional, verbal or even cultural, and I strongly believe that all these forms of violence can be avoided if only people become more self-aware and less selfish.
We also discussed the different forms of conflict and violence that arose from the movie Crazy Rich Asians. This movie sparked a lot of controversies because of the lack of representation of “brown” people – Indians and Malays – in Singapore. One response to this movie mentioned the racism present in Singapore, and how nobody talks about it, and I kind of agree with this, but I also believe that the levels of racism in Singapore are not as high as other countries such as the USA. I believe that certain forms of conflict might take hundreds of years to be resolved, or it might never be resolved. This is because humans are just naturally very self-centred narcissists who will find the smallest of things to use against others as long as it leads to them feeling more superior to others. However, I believe that through educating people, they will learn more about the consequences of violence and why they should not act upon the conflicts they have with others, and instead should try to resolve them. This will definitely make the world a more peaceful place.
We also did an activity a few sessions ago, where we spilt ourselves into two groups, the Jahs – a poor country that doesn’t trust rich countries as they have been exploited by them – and the Kays – a rich country that have good intentions that just wants to help the Jahs. The Jahs were not given any information about the Kays other than the fact that they are a rich country, and the Kays wanted to help Jah prosper and be a better country. The objective of this task was to come to a conclusion on how the Kays will be able to help the Jahs, but the misinformation and being unable to communicate effectively really prevented us from getting to a conclusion, instead we reached a conflict. From this activity I learnt that in order to communicate effectively and maintain peace, we need to let others make their statements without any interruption, hence building a wall of trust between the two parties. We also need to keep in mind that everyone has different opinions, hence it really will not be effective to have one single person represent a whole group of people. If there was only one person representing a whole group, then there is bound to be internal conflict within that group, and this might hinder their ability to interact with others.
So far in IFP, I have really been able to build my collaboration skills (LO5) and I have also been able to learn more about how to be a better collaborator and maintain peace instead of creating conflict.