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.
-
We need to think about social problems as complex adaptive systems requiring massively parallel problem-solving.
-
An explanation of why this may be our best/last chance to make democracy work (and avoid autocracy and anocracy).
-
Speeding society's ability to rapidly adapt to changing conditions should be a key goal of the conflict field.
-
An exploration of how understanding ecodynamics and evolution can help us deal with complex conflict.
-
Simple models won't work! We must develop conflict intervention models for higher-level complex systems.
-
Intractable conflicts are complex adaptive systems, so they need complex, adaptive responses.
-
Understanding the difference between complicated and complex systems is key to understanding that no one is in charge in intractable conflicts.
-
Neuroscience can explain why so many peacebuilding interventions don't work as hoped--and how to do better.
-
Complex conflicts require complex responses: the SAT and PAL models are linked approaches for doing just that.
-
Different from linear approaches, Coleman says intractable conflicts can still be tamed by 3 steps.
-
Peter Coleman says intractable conflicts are formed by powerful "attractors" or seemingly inescapable traps.
-
Everyone can play at least one of Ury's 10 "Third Side" roles--even the disputants themselves.
-
Diplomats are not just officials, but include 9 different types of people--all contributing towards peacebuilding.
-
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.
-
Peace cultivation and massively parallel peacebuilding: two ideas for a new complexity-oriented conflict paradigm.
-
If they'd just talk, they could work it out! Exploring this and other bad assumptions.
-
Can you be "rational" about conflict?
-
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!
