Frontiers Seminar Blog
Constructive Confrontation Initiative Spring 2018 Posts to Date
See Syllabus for additional background posts and planned, future posts (many of which are now accessible).
Other Blogs: MOOS Fundamentals | BI in Context | Colleague Activities
Posts ordered from most recent to earliest.
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Simple models won't work! We must develop conflict intervention models for higher-level complex systems.
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Intractable conflicts are complex adaptive systems, so they need complex, adaptive responses.
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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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Neuroscience can explain why so many peacebuilding interventions don't work as hoped--and how to do better.
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Complex conflicts require complex responses: the SAT and PAL models are linked approaches for doing just that.
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Different from linear approaches, Coleman says intractable conflicts can still be tamed by 3 steps.
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Peter Coleman says intractable conflicts are formed by powerful "attractors" or seemingly inescapable traps.
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Everyone can play at least one of Ury's 10 "Third Side" roles--even the disputants themselves.
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Diplomats are not just officials, but include 9 different types of people--all contributing towards peacebuilding.
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Lederach's circle of conflict transformation shows how to design change processes that work.
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Leaders at three levels of society all contribute to peace, but those at the middle-level are often the most effective.
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Conflicts exist in many levels at once - seeing these helps you see the entire conflict system.
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An introductory look at a developing new paradigm for peacebuilding: using systems thinking and complexity analysis
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Intractable conflicts are "wicked problems" that need an entirely new paradigm to deal with, says Chip Hauss.
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If your backlash coefficient is more than one, your cause cannot be won! Learn why!
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Peace cultivation and massively parallel peacebuilding: two ideas for a new complexity-oriented conflict paradigm.
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Are efforts to solve problems collaboratively now losing to naked contests of Machiavellian power?
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If they'd just talk, they could work it out! Exploring this and other bad assumptions.
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Can you be "rational" about conflict?
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What is power? The ability to get things done? The ability to push other people around? Which is right? (Actually, they both are.)
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In conflict, we often blame the other. But then that person or group gets defensive, and the conflict often escalates.
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Are conflict and war inevitable? Is "compromise" bad? Common attitudes turn us into cynics and block learning.
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Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Why do we do that with conflict?
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Business-as-usual strategies don't work for intractable conflicts--they often make them worse!
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Conflict problems associated with wisely and equitably managing the social, political, economic, and environmental "commons" are society's real "limit to growth."
