The Divine Tragedy of Securing the Sacred

Abstract

Abstract How does a once familiar and benign ethnoreligious community become a stranger and a threat? Thematically consolidating the main findings and insights from the theoretical and empirical analyses presented, Chapter 6 stresses the importance of explicitly recognizing the emotive, symbolic, and perceptual mechanisms and elements propelling ethnoreligious otherings and passionate conflicts. Given the enormous material and ontological violence and insecurity that characterize these events, the chapter explains why conflict resolution and peacebuilding strategies that deliberately ignore them often fail. To escape from the resulting vicious cycle of mass hostility, security dilemma, and chauvinist political mobilization, the chapter explores available reconciliation and regulatory strategies designed to undertake the difficult but necessary task of addressing these deep-seated hostile emotions, symbolic predispositions, and perceptions. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the enduring security value and function of religion and nationalism amid the supposed universal modernization and secularization of contemporary politics.