Intractable Conflict Challenge and Opportunity

2. Intractable Conflict Threat and Opportunity

Beyond Intractability's mission is to make more easily accessible what we collectively know about how to handle intractable and hyper-polarized conflicts in ways that strengthen rather than undermine our societies, communities, and interpersonal relationships.

In Brief:

We believe destructive intractable conflict is the most serious threat to humanity's common future — more serious than climate change, infectious disease, inequality, racism, etc., because we can't solve any of those without first dealing with our destructive conflicts. These conflicts are also threatening the stability of democracies around the world and risking widespread violence.

At the same time, however, these conflicts present opportunities. Guy has long said that "conflict is the engine of social learning." These conflicts are pushing us to change our systems and the way we relate to each other. If we can meet the challenge they present us, we can all be better off and, at the societal level, democracies will be strengthened. But if we continue down our hyper-polarized, destructive roads, we are likely to all be in an ever-deepening world of fear, hatred, pain, and grief. We think the first road sounds better.

Destructive Conflict is the Most Serious Threat to Our Common Future

Many people believe that climate change is the most serious threat now facing humanity. We assert that destructive intractable conflict is not only just as serious—but it is the underlying problem that is preventing us from successfully addressing climate change.

Similarly, our inability to constructively handle difficult conflict is preventing us from learning to successfully live in diverse communities and nations, and it is preventing us from meeting the fundamental human needs of our fellow citizens (including not only physical needs, but also psycho-social needs such as the need for security and a secure identity).

In the United States, our inability to manage conflict constructively is preventing us from providing our citizens with good health care, good educations, and good jobs. It is threatening our very sense of who we are and what kind of country we want to live in. These conflicts are also being exploited by unscrupulous political actors as part of a "divide and conquer" strategy that is taking us closer to plutocracy and authoritarianism. There is also the very real danger that these conflicts could escalate into even more destructive confrontations, with the very real risk of large-scale violence.

And of course, large-scale violence is already raging in much of the rest of the world, and democracy is widely threatened or failing elsewhere. "Pax Americana," for all its problems, did lead to over a half a century of relative stability, and widespread improvement in the general well-being and safety of people all around the world.

But for many reasons, destructive conflict being high among them, Pax Americana has given way to global chaos. Even if we wanted to, we are not going to be able to restore what we had. We are going to have to develop a better way to live together and to control the many bad-faith actors who are sowing chaos around the world.

If we just sit back and watch, in apathy or fear, we will likely get all the dystopian outcomes that appear to be on the doorstep, including anocracy (completely failed governance), autocracy, or war. Instead, good faith actors, people who wish for the betterment of all humankind (or at least their own communities) need to start working wherever they have agency to change the way we are dealing with conflict to make it more constructive. BI is a resource to learn how and where everyone can do this.

Intractable Conflict As An Opportunity

Guy often points out that all problems create opportunities. They show us things that need to be fixed. Another of his favorite sayings is that "conflict is the engine of social learning." Without conflict, we continue to do the same things over and over again, ignoring unfairness, ineffectiveness (things that don't work as well as they should), and damaging outcomes. It takes conflict to open our eyes to such issues and push us to fix problems so that societal challenges are successfully addressed and people and groups are dealt with in fairer ways. That's why the depression and despair that is so rampant in U.S. and other societies is so particularly damaging. It prevents us from acting on the opportunities we have to make our own lives, our community, and our society better. There are always some optimists who are doing their best to address such problems, but they cannot possibly succeed if they are one in one thousand. We all need to figure out where we have an opportunity to "do conflict" better and engage on whatever issue(s) we care about in more constructive ways. BI is a resource that can help you do that!