The ghosts that haunt the present

Imagine a battlefield. The weapons have fallen silent, but the ground remains charged with millions of invisible fragments: shrapnel, fossilized tears, whispered vows of vengeance from ancestors. These “ghosts” are not supernatural—they are invisible debts, accumulated over generations, trapping peoples in cycles of violence. In this first episode, we explore how these debts—emotional, memorial, ecological—hinder peace and how systemic thinking can help tame them.

1. What Is an “Invisible Debt”?

“Invisible debts are like poisoned roots. If they are not pulled out, they choke any new growth of peace.”

An invisible debt is an unresolved imbalance in a system that is transmitted and transformed over time. Unlike financial debt, it cannot be erased by a payment—only acknowledged, transformed, or… exacerbated.

Three Forms of Invisible Debts:

? Emotional debt: Unrecognized suffering (e.g., survivors of the Nakba or the Holocaust whose pain is denied).

? Memorial debt: Conflicting historical narratives (e.g., “WE are the victims” vs. “YOU are the aggressors”).

? Ecological debt: Polluted lands, depleted resources that deprive future generations of their heritage (e.g., Gaza’s soil contaminated with phosphorus).

2. When the Past Wraps Around the Present

The Treaty of Versailles (1919)

• Financial debt: Germany, deemed solely responsible for World War I, must pay 132 billion gold marks.
• Invisible debt: National humiliation fuels resentment, later exploited by the Nazis. Economic debt becomes an identity debt.
• Systemic Lesson: A poorly managed debt creates a feedback loop: reparations → anger → revenge → new war.

The Marshall Plan (1947)

? The United States invests $13 billion (equivalent to $150 billion today) to rebuild Europe, including Germany.

? Systemic effect: Economic debt becomes a lever for cooperation → lasting peace in Western Europe.

3. Debts as “Psychological Games”

According to Paul Watzlawick, persistent conflicts often follow “never-ending games,” where each side fuels the other’s distress to avoid an existential void.

Israel-Palestine

? The debt of recognition:

? Palestinian side: “Acknowledge our suffering since the Nakba.”

? Israeli side: “Acknowledge our right to exist after the Holocaust.”

Vicious Cycle: The refusal to recognize the other’s debt reinforces one’s own → making dialogue impossible.

What if peace required declaring bankruptcy? Not to deny debts, but to transform them into shared capital.

4. Giving a Voice to the Ghosts

Systemic Constellations, an approach developed by Bert Hellinger, reveal the invisible loyalties that bind the living to the dead. Applied to geopolitical conflicts, they highlight three dynamics:

a. The “Unburied Dead”

In modern wars, missing bodies (e.g., 20,000 Palestinians missing since 1948) create a grief debt that cannot be resolved. Without a burial, ghosts haunt the living, symbolically demanding vengeance.

b. Children as Hostages to Debt

In Gaza, 65% of the population is under 24. Many carry, through epigenetics (Rachel Yehuda), the biological marks of parental trauma. Their debt? Choosing between loyalty to past suffering or betraying their community.

c. The Land as a Silent Creditor

In a symbolic Constellation, Gaza’s land might say:

“You fight over me, but you poison me. Who will pay my ecological debt?”

5. Breaking the Spell: Three Systemic Approaches

a. Rituals of Recognition

South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission allowed apartheid victims to tell their stories. Perpetrators had to listen, without responding → the debt was acknowledged, but not monetized.

b. “Mapping” Debts

Creating mind maps of systemic debts: Who owes what to whom? Which debts are material, which are symbolic?

c. Art as an Exorcism

The Gaza’s Soundtrack project recorded Palestinian children’s voices sharing their dreams, mixed with traditional Jewish songs. Art creates a transitional space where debts become dialogues.

Peace Is an Archaeology of Ghosts

To build peace, we must be willing to dig—dig into wounded memories, into polluted soils, into genes carrying trauma. This is not the work of diplomats, but of systemic archaeologists: identifying debts, naming them, then placing them in the museum of History—not to forget them, but so they no longer haunt us.

What if future peace agreements included a chapter on “Invisible Debts,” written by poets and children?

?? Join the conversation: What invisible debts do you see around you? How would you transform them?

Orianne Corman

Systemic Intelligence expert

Systemic facilitator and trainer