Recent BI and Substack Posts

Polarization is good when it pushes us to change. It is toxic when it causes us to dehumanize and push away "the other." We need to sit with our conflict, explore it, and move through it together.

An argument that an improved and strengthened liberal democracy offers the most promising basis for imagining future in which those on both the left and the right would like to live.

What outcome do we want to achieve? When we lash out in anger, do these behaviors help or hinder our efforts to achieve that outcome? Are they making the problem worse?

Our current democratic system is inherently flawed because it relies on elected officials to represent people without an effective means of listening to them. We must fix that!

Interest-based processes that allow us to capture the positive aspects of polarization while reframing, minimizing, and transforming the destructive aspects is essential for positive change.

Conrad and Camus also pointed out what we called the Crane Brinton Effect--revolutions tend to lead only to an exchange of regimes with an even more brutal regime likely to replace preceding one.

Democracy is backsliding around the world, driven by polarization, attacks on democratic fundamentals by duly-elected "democratic" leaders, and clandestine, insidious incremental changes.

With this newsletter, we start imagining a less polarized future with lessons from South Africa from Ebrahim Rasool as well as observations from Neal Kohatsu, Ken Cloke, and Duncan Autrey.

We all agree society is in grave trouble.  We all have different notions of how to fix it. If we pool our knowledge and work together, we can create a better world for everyone. 

Amid calls for a political revolution to fight systemic oppression, a critical look at why revolutions fail with contributions from the Burgesses, Peter Adler, James Adams, William Donohue, and Mark Hamilton.

More insight into the complex relationship between social justice advocacy and peacebuilding from Larry Susskind, Louis Kriesberg, Jay Rothman, Ken Cloke, Greg Bourne, Lisa Schirch, and Martin Carcasson.

The Burgess respond to Bernie Mayer and Jackie Font-Guzman's assertion that polarization is a "false flag" and the real issue is justice and oppression.

Polarizing language demonstrates features that are readily identifiable. Can such warnings can be heard and action taken to enable people to shift from violence to problem solving before it's too late?

To abandon impartiality completely and simply join the fray as partisans will likely only further erode our political culture and exacerbate the problems of polarization, distrust, and misinformation.

Bernie Mayer and Jackie Font-Guzmán offer a critique of our focus on hyper-polarization based on their book, The Neutrality Trap.

We must overcome the hostile, adversarial, authoritarian forces that separate “us” from “them;” and realize that there is no “them,” there is only us. Then we can face our conflicts and crises together, as a diverse and cohesive community of problem solvers.

A summary of an article focused on how peacebuilding dialogue and the movement for social justice should be complementary, not at odds with each other. 

Do efforts to limit hyper-polarization undermine efforts to challenge oppression or does allowing hyper-polarization to flourish fuel the hatred that makes oppression possible?

The introduction to Ken Cloke's latest book focused on the many concurrent crises facing the United States and the world. It demonstrates compellingly how our only way out is through collaboration.

The President of the Institute for Global Negotiation shares his thoughts on how the education system writ large can help entire societies learn and use better conflict resolution techniques.

Kohatsu suggests we follow Adam Grant's "rethinking cycle" -- a progression through humility, doubt, curiosity, and discovering, circling back to humility.

Three contributions to the hyper-polarization discussion that explore ways of working together despite the divisive social climate.

We’ve seen up close the results of hate, discord and violence. We must choose the better path – and the first step begins with each of us making that choice.

A look at the many implications of living in a post-privacy society.

We should work to avoid inflaming the “all or nothing” consciousness that often leads in the direction of civil violence, and focus, instead, on our real enemy--the capitalist structure of wealth and power.