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I provide in my preface a brief account of my development as a creative writer. Through this development I draw an analogy to the evolution of modern science by stating that my need for personal clarity is analogous to the charge for empirical clarity of modern science. Furthermore, I contrast the objectivism of modern science to the subjectivism of creative writing. The four short stories in my thesis range from a semi-autobiographical story, to two short stories that stem out further and further from the subjective origin of the first story. The story of greatest distance is “Fireflies,” which is not semi-autobiographical, but pure fiction. The final short story returns to the subjective origin of the first. The drive of Distances is thereby to create a sort parabola: a subjective, semi-autobiographical origin, to an objective, purely fictional crest, then a return to that subjective, semi-autobiographical origin. The entire collection is a holistic, ultimately subjective, and therefore personal experience; yet, through the use certain tropes,metaphors others can relate to, the stories are paradoxically sharable.

This research examines ethnic conflicts in Indonesia from 1998 to 2004 in an attempt to identify their underlying causes by using two case studies of ethnic conflict, one on Maluku Island and one in Poso, Central Sulawesi. The lessons learned that I drew from those two case studies address the questions, of why have ethnic conflicts in Indonesia taken place more frequently since 1998 and what the best strategies for the Indonesian government to use to prevent the eruption of ethnic conflicts in Indonesia in the future? With regard to the lessons learned from Maluku and Poso, this research generally concludes that underlying factors such as political disputes, economic and social disparities, religious and cultural differences, and tribal disputes have contributed to the current ethnic conflicts in Indonesia. Among the underlying factors, political disputes and economic and social disparities outweighed the other factors and played a more significant role in triggering the initial conflicts. This research contributes valuable information to the Indonesian government and nongovernmental organizations in dealing with future ethnic conflicts in Indonesia.