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Civic Knowledge and Skills That We All Need to Constructively Handle Intractable Conflict >
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Complexify Worldview

BI Article
Intractable Conflicts Are Always More than "Us-Versus-Them"
A discussion of the dangers of over-simplification and what can be done to better understand the complexity of a conflict before you choose a course of action.

BI Article
What Makes Conflicts Intractable?
An overview of the many "core" and "overlay factors" that tend to make conflicts intractable. The more there are, the more likely intractability will occur.

BI Article
The Complex Causes of Social Problems
An introduction to the Burgess's notion of "massively parallel problem-solving," this video looks at inequality in this way.

BI Article
Embracing Complexity: The Key to Dealing with Intractability
This section outlines the Burgess's take on the intersection of complexity, systems thinking, conflict transformation, and peacebuilding.

BI Article
Complex vs. Complicated Systems
An explanation of the key distinction between complex (organic) systems, and complicated (mechanical) systems. This distinction is critical.

BI Article
The Engineering and Medical Approaches to Fixing Broken Systems
Complex adaptive systems cannot be fixed using typical engineering problem solving. Rather they need to be approached using a "medical model," which is designed to deal with systems we don't entirely understand.

BI Article
Core And Overlaying Issues
Conflicts are never simple us-versus-them. By sorting out the core and overlaying factors, disputants can come to a much clearer understanding of what needs to be done to transform their conflicts.

BI Article
An Award for NAFCM + Conflict Mapping and Other Tools for Understanding Complex Problems
Conflict mapping is a tool to help understand what, besides "the other guys" are driving a conflict or social problem, and hence what might be done to fix it.

BI Article
System Levels
This is drawn from an article written by Kenneth Boulding in 1956. The ideas, largely forgotten, are of utmost importance to modern systemic peacebuilding.

BI Article
Engineering and Medical Troubleshooting Models
The difference between complex and complicated systems requires different types of responses for each.

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The Illusion of Simplicity
Much of the intractability problem stems from the fact that we fail to recognize the complex nature of intractable conflict and, instead, fall back on simplistic images that see conflict in hyper-polarized, binary terms (e.g. good vs. evil, us vs. them).

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Pursue a Complexity-Oriented Approach
It is not enough to abandon simplistic, us-vs-them thinking. We need to develop and embrace realistic strategies for working at the daunting scale and complexity of modern society.

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Types of Complexity
Society is so complex that no single scientific field can possibly understand it all. That's why we have wide range of social science disciplines, each focused on a different aspect of the social, economic, and environmental systems.

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The Additional (and Even Bigger) Challenge of Societal Complexity
It isn't just scale, the intractability of society-wide conflict is also attributable to the complexities of human psychology, social interactions, high-tech communication systems, modern economies, environmental constraints, and other factors.

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Complexifiers
Specialists working in the various academic disciplines help us understand the complex workings of society in their areas of expertise and, especially, dynamics that threaten the viability of the system as a whole.