Newsletter 332 — March 20, 2025

Heidi Burgess and Guy Burgess

In Brief 

In response to widely expressed concerns that bridgebuilders, and the conflict field more generally, are  "Fiddling while Rome Burns," David wrote that "to your worry that we may be rosining our bow with the ashes of Rome, I’d suggest giving some thought to certain ways that your framework of “massively parallel effort” provides practical answers to that concern." "Any single area of work," he wrote, "requires success in many other areas of work," in order to produce necessary change. In other words, bridging work — bringing people together, building trust, finding common ground and pursuing shared goals — is critical to putting out the fires of Rome, so long as change-makers are also speeding down the other parallel lanes of effort." Among those lanes he includes structural reforms, institutional reforms, better candidates, building intolerance for divisiveness spewing from politicians, media, and social media, reorienting our civic and political culture, and restoring citizens to their leading role in democracy and problem solving.

Bernie agreed that building bridges was important, but stressed that building social movements is equally important. "Building such movements  requires people to do more than reach out across our differences and understand the points of view that others have. It requires coming together in support of a program of action that will face resistance." "Power differences are always in play," he said, and focusing on bridge building alone "will almost always empower the already powerful."  He also argued that "the hate, anger, division, and chaos we now see is not equally the fault of both sides... any more than misogyny is the fault of feminists." It is particularly important to call out actions that are harmful or systems that are exploitive for what they are, if social progress is to be achieved. He goes on to say that "the bridge building that may be the most important right now is among the many groups seeking to counteract the oppressive and destructive actions of Trump and his adherents. There are many different views about what needs to happen and numerous divisive issues impeding the solidarity of the forces of resistance.  Building an effective movement requires building many bridges and finding lots and lots of islands. We all have work to do."

This is a very incomplete summary of both David's and Bernie's essays, so we hope most of you will read them in their entirety, below.

David Eisner

I appreciated this morning’s article, the questions as much as the answers. Please forgive the length of the response — it’s your fault, in any case, since you catalyzed these thoughts

Heidi, to your worry that we may be rosining our bow with the ashes of Rome, I’d suggest giving some thought to certain ways that your framework of “massively parallel effort” provides practical answers to the concern.

Bottom line: any single area of work requires success in each of the other work-streams among the massively parallel efforts for the work to have a chance of driving necessary change. In other words, bridging work — bringing people together, building trust, finding common ground and pursuing shared goals — is critical to putting out the fires of Rome, so long as change-makers are also speeding down the other parallel lanes of effort. These include:

• Structural reforms around primaries, elections, redistricting and campaign finance; 
• Recruiting and electing politicians who will prioritize the needs of Americans over those of party;
• Remaking institutions to be worthy of trust;
• Building intolerance for the divisiveness spewing from our politicians, media and social media;
• Reorienting our civic and political culture to better include the voices and needs of those who have lost faith and feel they don’t belong;
• Building deliberative and decision-making frameworks that restore citizens to their role of leading and producing democracy and problem-solving;

However, yes, it’s also true the we are are fiddling while Rome burns if we pursue building bridges without relying on, aligning with, and supporting these other massively parallel efforts.

Bridge building offers a unique capacity and responsibility to meaningfully support the success of many, if not all, of those efforts. Specifically, structural reforms, citizen-led problem-solving, remaking institutions, renewing civic and political culture are ONLY viable and polarization-reducing when they build broad support across our diverse society by effectively engaging best practice bridging approaches and skills. It is incumbent on us bridgers to continually infuse all the other elements of the renew-democracy ecosystem with the approaches, skills and best practices that bridging offers to increase their odds of success.

To slightly switch the metaphors: history would have regarded the orchestra playing on the deck of the Titanic as heroes who kept passengers calm and compliant while other groups took on other critical tasks: prioritizing passengers for each lifeboat; providing lifejackets and instructions to all passengers; ensuing each lifeboat has the necessary equipment and provisions; recording the entire process in the ship logs and passenger manifest; and more. When these parallel effort are operating in harmony, the music is helpful to the larger endeavor and appreciated.

On the other hand, when those parallel efforts fail — and some are not even attempted — history has rightly criticized and mocked the music-making as the boat sank.

Again sorry for an overlong answer, but it’s both practically and philosophically interesting that the long-term success of our work as bridgers is so highly bound-up in and dependent on the effort and success of so many others in the renew-democracy ecosystem.

Guy and Heidi's Response to David

Not surprisingly, perhaps, we really like David's point that massively parallel approaches are the answer to making our fiddling meaningful, and the notion that bridgers need to " infuse all the other elements of the renew-democracy ecosystem with the approaches, skills and best practices that bridging offers to increase their odds of success." We (Guy and Heidi) had a zoom conversation with David a few days ago where we explored this idea more.  Having recently come from a visit to our toddler grandchildren, Guy observed that many of the people we know in the "renew-democracy ecosystem" are engaging in what child development experts call "parallel play," rather than "cooperative play." (In parallel play, children play side-by-side, sometimes doing similar things, but they don't interact or cooperate on a shared task, as they do with cooperative play.) Such "cooperative play" is the foundation of division of labor forms of social organization that are humanity's greatest "superpower" — a power that those of us seeking to revitalize democracy need to take advantage of at every available opportunity. In practical terms, this means that democracy workers could be more effective if they would to engage with each other more, not necessarily through full collaboration on joint projects, but learning the key ideas from each sector that might have implications for their own sector.  Some of this is going on already of course, but more, we agreed, could be done to enhance the effectiveness of all. 

Being former rock climbers and mountain rescuers, the metaphor of a rope also seems to apply here. Ropes are constructed of hundred of filaments which are braided together to make the rope strong.  It would not be nearly as strong if the filaments all ran in parallel. So instead of referring to massively parallel efforts, we might have referred to massively braided efforts. But either way, the notion that strength comes from braiding your efforts together is the same. The other part of the metaphor that applies is that no matter how strong it is designed to be, the rope will break if pulled very hard in both directions at once, over a sharp edge. (We had to take great care when we were rescuing an injured rock climber to avoid lowering a litter held by ropes over a sharp rock, as that would cut the rope.) So if we keep on pulling our society very hard in two (or more) directions at once, and then some sort of triggering event happens, like a rope going over a sharp rock, all societal cohesion could break. 

One last thought about bridge building. Bridges make it possible for people to cross from one place to another or, in this context, one side of the political divide to the other. If, however, the environment that one enters once one has crossed the bridge is hostile and unwelcoming, nobody is going to want to cross. And if they do cross, they will quickly return back. This suggests that we need hospitality building as well — we need programs that make people who are brave enough to cross the bridge feel welcomed and valued for doing so. In the contemporary political environment that is going to be quite difficult. This is why we have been advocating the building of more hospitable "islands" — places where we can develop and then demonstrate the kind of hospitable environment in which those with very different viewpoints can, in fact, coexist with one another in a spirit of freedom, tolerance, and mutual problem-solving.

Bernie Mayer

Thanks for your post on Fiddling and Burning.  A few quick thoughts:

I think attempts to find bridges (or islands) across our most serious divides are worthwhile and when we are able to engage in such efforts on a programmatic or interpersonal level, more power to us. Or should I say more power so long as:

• We don’t discount that building social movements is as important as building bridges. 
• We recognize that building such movements (e.g., for immigration rights, climate action, improved health care, a just peace in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine) requires people to do more than reach out across our differences and understand the points of view that others have. It requires coming together in support of a program of action that will face resistance.
• We understand that power differences are always in play, and to focus simply on bridge building when these difference are significant will almost always empower the already powerful. 
• We don’t dismiss calling out behavior that is discriminatory, actions that are harmful, or systems that perpetuate exploitation as progressive “wokeness,” instead of being a tool that is essential to social progress.  Of course this can be done in a manner that is respectful or hateful, to the point or petty, but all important social movements have struggled at times to find the balance between strategic focus and the need for emotional expression, between realistic programs of action and overreaching demands.
• We avoid false equivalence.  We should of course recognize our own contributions to a breakdown in community and our ability to find common ground where possible.  Self-criticism is an important attribute for conflict interveners, activists, social movements, and indeed all of us.  But the hate, anger, division, and chaos that we see now is not equally the responsibility of progressives and the MAGA forces any more than misogyny is equally the responsibility of feminists and the defenders of patriarchy (or pick your example).

None of us wants to be naïve and predicting what will work and what won’t is an audacious exercise that risks naiveté all around.  Having said that, I think a focus on bridge building across our most extreme differences right now without focusing on how to build movements for change won ‘t work.  Understanding it as part of a process that requires us to both reach out across our differences and build powerful and often disruptive movements for change is from my point of view a considerably more promising approach. One further note on bridge building.  The bridge building that may be the most important right now is among the many groups seeking to counteract the oppressive and destructive actions of Trump and his adherents.  There are many different views about what needs to happen and numerous divisive issues impeding the solidarity of the forces of resistance.  Building an effective movement requires building many bridges and finding lots and lots of islands. We all have work to do..
 

Heidi and Guy agree that we all have much work to do. and we have much to say about Bernie's suggestions.  But that would make this newsletter too long, so we will include our comments in the next newsletter, scheduled for Saturday, March 22. 

Lead Graphic Credit: Picture Created by Shena Tschofen. Obtained from Flickr (https://www.flickr.com/photos/shenamt/11015203525)
on 3-5-25. Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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