Promote Reconciliation

5. Massively Parallel Goals

This introductory article was written by ChatGPT at the direction of Heidi Burgess, who reviewed, edited, and approved the final content.
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June 20, 2026

Many societies carry the burden of terrible historical wrongs. Some of those wrongs involved killing, enslavement, dispossession, forced removal, or other harms that cannot be undone. The dead cannot be brought back. Lost years cannot be restored. But this does not mean that nothing can be done. Reconciliation is the long and difficult process through which people try to face those wrongs honestly, repair what can be repaired, and build relationships that make a shared future possible.

Retrospective reconciliation looks backward. It asks what happened, who was harmed, who benefited, and what forms of acknowledgment or repair are now possible. Sometimes this involves truth commissions or public investigations. Sometimes it involves memorials, education, reparations, or official apologies. The International Center for Transitional Justice explains that reparations are meant to acknowledge and repair the causes and consequences of human rights violations and inequality. They cannot make the victims whole in any simple sense, but they can signal that the wider society is no longer denying the harm or asking victims to carry the burden alone.

Apology and forgiveness are also important, though they must be handled carefully. A sincere apology admits wrongdoing, expresses regret, and gives some assurance that the wrong will not be repeated. Our essay on apology and forgiveness describes them as central parts of long-term conflict resolution. Still, forgiveness cannot be demanded from victims as the price of social peace. If it comes at all, it has to be offered freely. A society that pressures victims to “move on” without truth or repair is not promoting reconciliation. It is asking the injured to absorb the cost of everyone else’s comfort.

Prospective reconciliation looks forward. It asks how formerly hostile groups can live together without remaining trapped in fear, resentment, or revenge. This does not require everyone to agree on a single story of the past. It does require enough shared understanding to prevent denial, dehumanization, and renewed violence. Louis Kriesberg’s work on coexistence and the reconciliation of communal conflicts stresses the importance of equitable relationships and a willingness to imagine life together after violent or identity-based conflict. Prospective reconciliation is, in this sense, a practical civic project. It builds the habits, institutions, and relationships that allow people to share a society even when memory remains painful.

Promoting reconciliation is a Massively Parallel Peacebuilding goal because no single process can carry the whole burden. Courts, schools, religious communities, museums, local dialogues, public apologies, family conversations, and political reforms may all matter, but none is sufficient by itself. The task is to create many pathways through which a society can face the past without being imprisoned by it. Retrospective reconciliation asks people to acknowledge and repair what they can. Prospective reconciliation asks them to build a future that does not repeat the old wrongs. Together, they make it possible for a divided society to move forward without pretending that history no longer matters.

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This page was created by ChatGPT in response to this prompt. It was then reviewed, edited, supplemented and approved by Heidi Burgess. More information about how and why we are using AI in this way, and about the growing number of ways in which Beyond Intractability is using ChatGPT, Claude and other AI systems to generate content and build out the BI system, is available on our BI/AI Overview Page.