This blog contains posts highlighting things everyone--not just powerful people, not just important or rich people--but everyone of us--can do to help limit the dynamics that lead to destructive and intractable conflicts.
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Things You Can Do To Help Blog
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Break Down Negative Stereotypes
Don’t assume a person you don’t know is just like you expect them to be. Give them a chance to surprise you!
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Be Willing to Consider the Possibility That You May Be Wrong
Most of us are so enmeshed in our own worldviews that we don't consider that we might be wrong. It helps to listen to outsiders and consider that possibility.
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Listen Actively and Empathically
Empathic listening is amazingly powerful--sometimes that is all that is needed to defuse destructive conflicts.
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Practice - and Preach - Civility in Public and Private Discourse
Incivility begets more of the same, while civil discourse can help de-escalate conflict and improve relationships.
Visit briefly, follow, or join our Conflict Frontiers Massive Open Online Seminar (MOOS) to explore and discuss strategies for more constructively addressing the many challenges of the large-scale, complex, intractable conflicts that threaten contemporary society.
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System Levels
Simple models won't work! We must develop conflict intervention models for higher-level complex systems.
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Complex vs. Complicated Systems
Intractable conflicts are complex adaptive systems, so they need complex, adaptive responses.
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Embracing Complexity: The Key to Dealing with Intractability
Understanding the difference between complicated and complex systems is key to understanding that no one is in charge in intractable conflicts.
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Robert Ricigliano: Making Peace Last
Complex conflicts require complex responses: the SAT and PAL models are linked approaches for doing just that.
Brief readings and videos which highlight the conflict and peacebuilding field's fundamental building blocks – ideas which help address both "tractable" and intractable conflicts more effectively.
Fundamentals Home | About | Syllabus | Follow
LATEST POSTS
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Oppression and Conflict: Introduction
This intro to a 6-essay series focuses on the causes and impacts of oppression and how it can be overcome.
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Power
If power were one-dimensional, we could agree who has more and who has less. But we are often surprised at how power struggles come out.
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Social Status
Social status is intrinsically linked with ideas of power, humiliation, dignity and hierarchy--all of which drive conflict.
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Moral or Value Conflicts
Moral and value conflicts often become intractable, as neither side is willing to compromise their deeply-held beliefs.
Beyond Intractability's efforts to promote more constructive approaches to conflict occur within the larger context of efforts to promote wise and equitable solutions to a broad range of social problems. This blog highlights readable news articles that help us understand the big picture.
Many other people are doing important and interesting things in an effort to move beyond intractability-in theory and in practice, in different locations and on different conflicts. Please share what you are doing here so we can all learn from each other.
LATEST POSTS
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Crowdsourcing Expert Capacity in Congress Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation, Georgetown University
This project, undertaken by Lorelei Kelly, is using a "massively parallel" approach (our term) for addressing the the bad lack of knowledge which stymies good decision making at the Federal Level.
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Peter Coleman: Conflict Intelligence and Systemic Wisdom
Peter Coleman asserts that conflict intelligance and systemic wisdom are two "meta-competencies" that will allow people at all levels to resolve conflicts effectively.
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New Book: Governance for Peace
A new book examining how good governance (including both government and civil society) can contribute to peace and prosperity.
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The State of American Democracy: A National Conversation
Chip Hauss reports on his participation in this first of five working conferences focused on what can be done to fix American democracy so we can better address today's most difficult problems.
