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Beyond Intractability: A Free Knowledge Base on More Constructive Approaches to Destructive Conflict
   


Introduction: Worldview conflicts are not a separate category of conflict, every conflict has a "worldview dimension." So says Jayne Docherty of Eastern Mennonite University. She notes the importance of differentiating between impasses caused by worldview differences versus those that are caused by bad faith on the part of the parties or communication problems.This segment is also contained in JDO1. For more on worldview conflicts, listen to other interview segments with Jayne Docherty. Try JDO 1 or 2. 


This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).

Worldview Conflicts
Jayne Docherty
Eastern Mennonite University
Interviewed by
Julian Portilla
2003

Worldview conflicts are not a separate category of conflict. Every conflict has a worldview dimension. And there may be some conflicts where it's not as relevant to the parties and you don't have to deal with it directly, but that doesn't mean that dimension of their interaction isn't there. If something breaks down in the negotiation process, we have to ask ourselves if we just hit a worldview block of some kind? As opposed to an integrity block, where parties are not operating with integrity or miscommunicating or something. You better go back to see if there's some sort of underlying reality problem. So that would be one key lesson that I've learned.

 
Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience. -- Thomas Merton

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