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.
-
Lederach's circle of conflict transformation shows how to design change processes that work.
-
Leaders at three levels of society all contribute to peace, but those at the middle-level are often the most effective.
-
Conflicts exist in many levels at once - seeing these helps you see the entire conflict system.
-
An introductory look at a developing new paradigm for peacebuilding: using systems thinking and complexity analysis
-
Intractable conflicts are "wicked problems" that need an entirely new paradigm to deal with, says Chip Hauss.
-
If your backlash coefficient is more than one, your cause cannot be won! Learn why!
-
Peace cultivation and massively parallel peacebuilding: two ideas for a new complexity-oriented conflict paradigm.
-
Are efforts to solve problems collaboratively now losing to naked contests of Machiavellian power?
-
If they'd just talk, they could work it out! Exploring this and other bad assumptions.
-
Can you be "rational" about conflict?
-
What is power? The ability to get things done? The ability to push other people around? Which is right? (Actually, they both are.)
-
In conflict, we often blame the other. But then that person or group gets defensive, and the conflict often escalates.
-
Are conflict and war inevitable? Is "compromise" bad? Common attitudes turn us into cynics and block learning.
-
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Why do we do that with conflict?
-
Business-as-usual strategies don't work for intractable conflicts--they often make them worse!
-
Conflict problems associated with wisely and equitably managing the social, political, economic, and environmental "commons" are society's real "limit to growth."
-
What are the parallels between intractable conflicts and climate change? There are many--and much to be learned from studying them.
-
Why can't we fix our serious social, economic, political, and environmental problems? Because we don't know how to deal with the underlying conflicts!
-
Intractable conflicts aren't impossible to resolve--they are just very difficult. Recognizing their true nature is the first step towards transformation.
-
Limiting the destructiveness of today's big and intractable conflicts will require majors advances at the frontiers of the peace and conflict fields.
-
Why are intractable conflicts like the earth and an onion? They all have multiple layers that hide the core.
-
The Conflict Frontiers syllabus explores new ideas for advancing the frontier of the intractable conflict field.
