Hope in the rubble?

I came across a fascinating article in Strategy-Business today: an interview with Tokyo-based business scholar Ikujiro Nonaka, discussing knowledge management.  It appealed to me for many reasons, however one particluar point really stuck in my mind and prompted me to write my first blog entry. Why? Hope in a time of great uncertainty.
First, a little background about the kindly chap, from Wikipedia:   

Ikujiro Nonaka (born May 10, 1935) is Professor Emeritus, Hitotsubashi University Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy; the First Distinguished Drucker Scholar in Residence at the Drucker School and Institute, Claremont Graduate University; the Xerox Distinguished Faculty Scholar, Institute of Management, Innovation and Organization, University of California, Berkeley. He is best known for his study of Knowledge Management. He co-authored The Knowledge-Creating Company with Hirotaka Takeuchi. In 2008, the Wall Street Journal listed him as one of the most influential persons on business thinking.

So he’s a smart cookie on a global scale. He plays a pivotal role in modern human capital management. The revelation that struck me in his interview  though, was this: 

Nonaka’s insights about knowledge reflect the distinctive arc of his own career, which was rooted in his childhood experience during the Pacific War (the Japanese name for World War II). “I was in the first grade when children from Tokyo were evacuated to the countryside,” he explains. “We used to go outside and watch the B-29s in the sky over Mount Fuji, and the smaller Grumman F4F fighters flying lower. One day, an F4F dropped down and began strafing the children as we walked back from the school. It was so close I could see the American pilot in the cockpit. It looked to me as if he was smiling. I barely survived; I was very shocked. And being a small boy, my first thought was, ‘I will beat them someday!’ I was on fire with the desire to beat America.”

What a motivation. And what an accomplishment. As I sit here in the Middle East and watch the disaster continue between Palestine and Israel, I’ve been thinking about how an abused child can grow up to become an abuser.  What struck me about this article is the thought that, while children who have suffered great trauma may seek revenge on their perpetrators, what if more people who have suffered so much could be taught how to harness their feelings to pursue excellence and foster understanding? Thereby steering away from the cycle of abuse?

In saying this I feel somwhat naive in a way… of course the differences between Japan’s actions in WW2 and the Arab-Israeli conflict are huge and by no means do I think people should be brainwashed, nor their experiences, memories and feelings diminished or manipulated by any means. It’s just that, well, at a time when I see such damage and injustice inflicted on innocents, this interview gave me hope. Simple as that.