We feel something - someone - is missing from this 'cheerful' issue. We have been looking at violence and conflict from the human perspective - but what about our fur and feather friends? Eye has been reading some fascinating material about what academics call 'non-human animals' and we see there are wonderful lessons to be learned in the matter of conflict resolution.
We would direct readers with a love of animals to the work of Frans de Waal, a psychologist and primatologist, who has written learned but popular books even accessible to Eye. They have intriguing titles such as Chimpanzee Politics and Peacemaking among Primates.

The clever professor is a pioneer in studying the emotional and social lives of animals. Early in his career in the Netherlands, Frans worked on aggression but found he was more interested in what happened after fights.
'I got interested in seeing these fights going on in a group of primates and then seeing that fifteen minutes later everyone settled down' he said during an interview for the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. 'I got puzzled by how they built aggression into their social life.'

After fights, chimps kiss and make up, and there are similar 'reconciliations' among other primates. Such behaviour was spotted first at Arnhem Zoo but researchers have now refined their methods of observation and realise that conflict resolution is widespread. In one study of chimps, former antagonists were attracted to each other after fighting. The researchers believe that chimps show one of the highest conciliatory tendencies among primates. Frans de Waal says information from primatology is relevant when studying violence between people.


To take this theme further Eye has two stories. One concerns a cat called Lilly, who was the companion of Eliza Johnston. Eliza attended Hampstead Meeting. For many years she was in and out of hospital suffering the disastrous effects of bipolar disorder (manic depression). Then, in 1998, Eliza acquired Lilly from the Battersea home for cats and dogs. When Lilly stepped out of her box into her new home 'I got a wonderful sense of a beautiful white light spirit arriving with her.' It was the start of a ten-year relationship in which Lilly rekindled a sense of responsibility in her owner. ‘She gave me a way to learn how to look after myself by caring for her,' says Eliza. 'The thought that I could be sectioned, leaving her alone, possibly left to die, compelled me to stay well.' When Lilly did eventually die, Eliza says she was able to mourn for her companion without being overwhelmed. (We hope to bring you the story of Lilly in a later Friend).

Our second tale is of Molly Brown, a 'love dog'. Molly was the best friend of a professor of philosophy, Anne Benvenuti. In writing of her relationship with the brown and white Jack Russell (in Presence, the international journal of spiritual direction), Anne says 'the most important, immediate and shocking thing I learned when I met baby Molly was that I had a heart.' The dog, she said, prepared her heart for human habitation, and opened the entire non-human world to her awareness. '...we cannot be human without the guidance and support of the nonhuman world,' she concluded.

It seems to us that communing with animals can play a big part in reducing tension and violence in humans.