Recent BI and Substack Posts

While the worst anti-democratic outcomes may have been averted, this election was still not good for hyper-polarization, and perhaps not good for democracy either.

We cannot change anyone’s opinions, values, ideas, attitudes, judgments, or viewpoints, but, we can understand each other better through learning conversations and use those to find common ground.

This process focuses on five questions examining the nature of the different beliefs and opinions, and how they might be dealt with most constructively depending on whether they are fact-based, moral, or both.

A visioning exercise yields a credible plan for significantly reducing political polarization -- with many additional benefits to individuals, organizations, and society as a whole as well.

The QED trap locks people into a win-lose struggle for power that eliminates any chance of learning, compromise, or collaboration.

This newsletter focuses on the importance of continuing our efforts to strengthen democracy, and considers one obstacle to doing that: being too sure of oneselves (the QED trap).

Julia Roig, Lisa Schirch, Colin Rule and Duncan Autrey examine the meaning of, and the benefits and costs of polarization, and what could be done to limit the costs and improve our democracy.

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.

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.

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.