Cultivating Respect for Identity Groups

5. Massively Parallel Goals

This introductory article was written by ChatGPT at the direction of Heidi Burgess, who reviewed, edited, and approved the final content.
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June 20, 2026

Most societies are divided, at least in part, by identity. People understand themselves through family, faith, race, ethnicity, nationality, many other sources of belonging. These identities give people meaning and dignity. But when people feel that an important identity is being mocked, ignored, or threatened, ordinary disagreements can quickly become much harder to resolve. As Lou Kriesberg explains in his Beyond Intractability essay on identity issues, conflicts tied to core identities often become persistent because people cannot simply set those identities aside in order to make a deal. For this reason, respect for different identity groups is a core goal of massively parallel action.

Massively parallel problem-solving requires a broad social norm of respect across identity lines. This does not mean pretending that all groups have behaved well, or that all claims are equally valid. It means beginning with the assumption that people on the other side have reasons for seeing the world as they do. Those reasons may come from experiences that outsiders do not know about, from fears that have been dismissed too casually, or from moral commitments that are not as foolish as opponents imagine. Starting with respect makes it more possible to learn what is actually driving the conflict. Starting with contempt usually confirms the other side’s worst fears.

This is why it is so important to avoid simple “us-versus-them” stories. In many conflicts, each side frames itself as decent, reasonable, and under attack, while portraying the other side as dangerous or morally defective. Our discussion of seeing the complexity behind “us versus them” warns that this kind of simplification makes it much harder to engage a conflict effectively. Once people are sorted into good groups and bad groups, listening feels like betrayal. Concession feels like surrender. Even curiosity can be condemned as disloyalty.

Respectful engagement is closely related to what conflict resolution practitioners call recognition: acknowledging that one’s adversary is a human being with a situation and concerns of his or her own. Recognition does not require agreement. It does not require silence in the face of injustice. It does, however, require resisting the slide into dehumanization, where opponents are treated as if they are beyond moral consideration. In a pluralistic democracy, people must be able to say, “I strongly oppose what you are doing,” without also saying, “People like you have no legitimate place in our society.”

Sometimes respectful coexistence is possible. People can share public space, accept fair rules, and leave one another enough room to live differently. At other times, confrontation is necessary because one group is being harmed, excluded, or denied equal standing. But even then, the goal should be constructive confrontation, not humiliation or revenge. Leaders, citizens, educators, journalists, advocates, and neighbors all have a role in building this habit. The initial stance should be respect, rather than suspicion. If evidence later shows that particular actors are acting dishonestly or cruelly, their actions should be opposed clearly. But a society that treats whole identity groups as enemies will not be able to solve its problems in a massively parallel way. It will simply keep turning difference into danger.

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This page was created by ChatGPT in response to this prompt. It was then reviewed, edited, supplemented and approved by Heidi Burgess. More information about how and why we are using AI in this way, and about the growing number of ways in which Beyond Intractability is using ChatGPT, Claude and other AI systems to generate content and build out the BI system, is available on our BI/AI Overview Page.