Newsletter #53 -- September 21, 2022
In This Issue
- From BI's Co-Directors
- Setting the Stage for an Important Discussion about Existential Problems and Neutrality
- Colleague Activities
- Links to five things that our conflict and peacebuilding colleagues are doing that contribute to efforts to address the hyper-polarization problem.
- Beyond Intractability in Context
- Links to ten articles from around the web, more insight into the nature of our conflict problems, limits of business as usual thinking, and things people are doing to try to make things better.
- About the MBI Newsletters
- For Previous Newsletters
From Beyond Intractability's Co-Directors—Heidi Burgess and Guy Burgess
Comparing Two Fundamentally Different World Views
After writing our CRQ feature article on hyper-polarization, Heidi and Guy read Bernie Mayer and Jackie Font-Guzmán's book The Neutrality Trap. Bernie and Jackie have a profoundly different way of defining the core problem(s) facing America today (they say it is oppression, while we say it is hyper-polarization). Not surprisingly, these differences are accompanied by very different recommendations for repairing and strengthening U.S. society.
We were interested in exploring these differences with Bernie and Jackie, so we wrote them and asked them to read our feature article and contribute their thoughts to the discussion. Bernie responded by asking us to tell him what we saw the differences as being. We answered him, he and Jackie then replied to us, and we now have replied to them, making a three-post string. At this point the four of us decided to suspend our exchange and invite others to weigh in on the topics we discuss. Several of you already have, and we hope many more will. This is the first of at least three newsletters based on this exchange. (It will take three because of Gmail limits on the length of each newsletter.)
Clarification: What's in the Newsletter, What's on the BI Discussion Page
We hope to feature most of the contributed posts in our newsletter, but since the newsletter started quite a bit later than the discussion started, we are still playing catch up. We are, however, posting everything we get to the BI/CRQ Discussion page as soon as we can, so we urge readers to go there to see the latest posts that have come in. If you are interested in posts on a particular topic, such as the discussion about oppression and justice we are having with Jackie and Bernie, you can go to the part of the discussion page that is called "Discussion Topics" to see everything related to this discussion.
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If you like what you read here, we hope you will subscribe to the newsletter if you haven't, and get involved in the discussion if you have something to add.
Setting the Stage for an Important Discussion about Existential Problems and Neutrality
By Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess
The ultimate goal of the CRQ paper and this discussion is to figure out how those with conflict resolution-related insights might be able to do more to help democratic societies live up to their ideals and weave a highly diverse citizenry into an inclusive and equitable social framework. In other words, our goal is to use our collective skills to help build a society in which most everyone would like to live.
In pursuing this goal, one of the most consequential issues that has to be addressed is the relationship between the progressive, social justice movement's efforts to combat systemic racism and other forms of oppression and the conflict resolution field's traditional role as a neutral intermediary focused on bridging differences between deeply-divided communities.
In this regard, Bernie Mayer and Jacqueline Font-Guzman have written an important new book The Neutrality Trap: Disrupting and Connecting for Social Change. As they explain in the preface, their purpose is to argue:
that by promoting connections across our differences, conflict intervention efforts can play an important role in social change. Approaches such as dialogue, facilitated interactions, and restorative justice can be an integral part of struggles against oppression but only if they are in sync with concerted efforts at system disruption. Dialogue for the sake of dialogue and collaboration for the sake of collaboration, disconnected from a commitment to social change, is likely to reinforce the status quo. This is the neutrality trap. Unless our engagement efforts are matched by an equally strong commitment to disrupting oppressive systems, they will fail to make a profound contribution to social change. By trying to remain objective, neutral, impartial, and separate, conflict interveners and academics (along with many other professionals) reinforce system-maintaining norms, narratives, and practices that perpetuate a status quo that is calling out for change.
As readers of the Neutrality Trap will quickly discover, there are significant differences between the way in which we each frame the "conflict problem" and the steps that we think should be taken to address it. ("We each" refers to Bernie and Jackie on the one hand, and Heidi and Guy Burgess and co-CRQ author Sanda Kaufman on the other hand.)
Given this, we thought that it was important to invite Bernie, Jackie, and their colleagues to join this conversation. We want to clarify our differences and areas of agreement in ways that allow us to both learn from our differing approaches.
Bernie's First Response:
My initial take on your questions is that they perhaps imply, but don't explicitly say, anything about how to engage people in a productive way in efforts to deal with serious power inequities and long term systems change processes. I would be very interested in hearing directly from you about what you profoundly disagree with and a direct interchange about that would likely be very interesting. (Editor's note: Jackie will join this conversation in the next post.)
Guy and Heidi's Answer to Bernie's Inquiry:
Our fundamental difference and the one that made us highly uncomfortable reading your book, we now realize, is that we define America's (and other places') existential problem differently than you do. Please correct us if we are wrong, but you seem to define America's fundamental problem as oppression and your response to that oppression as fundamental system change in a way that will take power and privilege away from those who currently have it and redistribute it to those who do not.
While you do talk a lot about listening to "the other side" and learning how they think, that seems to be primarily for strategic reasons--to figure out how to bring others (presumably conservatives) around to the progressive point of view, or failing that, disempowering them, rather than figuring out how to also meet their interests and needs or, at least, compromising with them in a spirit of coexistence when agreement cannot be reached. Maybe we are wrong, but it seemed very much like a zero-sum sort of approach, rather than an integrative or positive-sum approach.
We kept on thinking about how a conservative would react to reading your book, and our conclusion was that they would feel as if they were being repeatedly attacked and blamed for all of America's problems and threatened with "system change" that would disempower them and potentially take away money, services, and positions they think they have legitimately earned.
Though you don't explicitly say that all white men (except, perhaps, allies) are the oppressors and women and BIPOCs are the victims of oppression, that message comes through implicitly over and over again. (Actually you do call out "what supremacy" a fair amount.) If that is really limited to people who, in the spirit of the KKK, honestly believe that whites are superior and deserve to dominate, that's maybe okay. Still, a great many progressives seem to use "white supremacy" as a broader pejorative term, which, like "racist," demonizes anyone who doesn't enthusiastically embrace the entire progressive agenda. This, it seems to us, results in further distrust, polarization, and escalation, which is what made us so uncomfortable with the approach you advocate in the book. Plus, we think that it will likely further amplify and reinforce oppression, rather than reducing it.
By contrast, our principal focus is on the dangers of runaway escalation and hyper-polarization which we see as posing serious threats to democracy in the U.S. and across the globe, and to Americans' ability to live together in peace. This is only a slight reframing of our long-held belief that America's existential problem is not oppression, but rather the inability to deal with conflict in constructive ways. That inability is preventing us from solving any of our other problems--such as inequality, racism, climate change etc.
After Trump's election we began to focus on escalation and polarization specifically, particularly looking at the way they are driving hatred, fear, and distrust in a complex set of interacting positive feedback loops, driving each higher and higher. The intensifying dynamics are well on their way to destroying democracy, likely replacing it with some form of anarchy or authoritarian dystopia (which, most likely) will make oppression much more severe, along with causing many, many other problems).
So yes, you are right, we don't explicitly say anything about how to engage people in a productive way in efforts to deal with serious power inequities because we don't see power inequality as the problem that needs to be addressed first.
We see escalation, polarization, hatred, fear, and distrust as the interlinked problems that need to be dealt with first. As we see it, it is impossible to successfully reduce power inequality when we frame it as a win-lose, us-versus-them existential struggle. Once we de-escalate our hatred, start to build intergroup understanding, trust, and most importantly respect, then we will be in a much stronger position to tackle oppression and injustice.
We do begin to lay out a strategy for long-term system change processes that we refer to as "massively-parallel peacebuilding," but we actually get to that in much more detail in a later paper that we wrote as a follow on to the one published in CRQ.
While these two sets of goals (reducing hyper-polarization and reducing or eliminating oppression) are not necessarily incompatible, there are tensions that urgently need to be explored. We are hoping to do that, and more, in the coming discussion.
Among the tough questions that we would like the CRQ discussion to ultimately address are the following:
- Can one act as a neutral and as an advocate at the same time? Is it possible to "mediate from a justice perspective" as I saw one training firm recently advertise?
- How can the conflict between the haves and the have-nots, the powerful and the powerless, the races, and the genders be waged constructively--meaning in a way that benefits the parties and the society overall, rather than hurting them further?
- Where does one draw the line between constructive efforts to mobilize support for political objectives and the kind of destructive demonization of political opponents that replaces consideration of legitimate political differences and compromise with mutual hatred and a desire to hurt or suppress one another?
- Can we develop a vision for a future in which both the left and the right would like to live, or are we condemned to perpetual struggle over who gets to dominate whom?
- How do we decide what views and evidence are constructive and worthy of public consideration and debate, and what ideas are unacceptable and should be suppressed?
- And, if there are ideas that do need to be suppressed, how should this be done? Is "canceling" really an effective approach or does it just create harmful and unnecessary backlash?
- Are there alternative strategies for pursuing a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive society that are not zero sum and hence not likely to generate as much pushback as the current approaches are doing?
At this point, we are trying to find a way to facilitate a constructive, online exploration of these critically important issues and other issues that you (Bernie and Jackie) as well as our other readers will suggest.
Bernie and Jackie responded together in the next post, which is available on BI now, and will be included in the next newsletter also.
Read the Burgess's Introductory Post Here
Colleague Activities
Highlighting things that our conflict and peacebuilding colleagues are doing that contribute to efforts to address the hyper-polarization problem.
- Big Picture Thinking Examples
Organizing for collective impact: The making of a mass pro-democracy movement — Provocative thoughts on a critically important (and often neglected) question, how can the many groups working to support and strengthen democracy integrate their efforts into an effective social movement? - Effective Communication Strategies
Rule Omega — Daniel Schmactenberger and Jordan Greenhall talk about listening for the meaningful "signal" hidden within the "noise" of any statement. - Constructive Communication
Democracy and the Epistemic Commons — The ultimate responsibility for good governance in a democracy falls to the voting citizenry, which can only exercise this duty well when it has accurate information about the world. - Effective Problem-Solving
Humanity's Phase Shift', Daniel Schmachtenberger — A video discussing why modern day governance isn't working, and what every individual must do within themselves to enable us as a community and society, to work out our problems together. - System Thinking Strategies
The Consilience Project — A project exploring how our social systems and institutions need to be redesigned if free, open, non-authoritarian societies are to survive.
Beyond Intractability in Context
From around the web, more insight into the nature of our conflict problems, limits of business-as-usual thinking, and things people are doing to try to make things better.
- Power-Sharing Strategies
If an Alternative Candidate Is Needed in 2024, These Folks Will Be Ready — A strategy for offering voters the choice of moderate, compromise-oriented governance in the event that both US political parties nominate extremist candidates. - Conflict Advice
Don’t Teach Your Kids to Fear the World — While there are plenty of things to worry about, we must teach the coming generation to see those concerns in the context of the many things that make life wonderful and our problems surmountable. - Effective Problem-Solving Efforts
Joe Biden should do some boring bipartisan commissions — A persuasive argument for remembering one way in which we can come together, put aside our acrimony, and get about the business of finding mutually beneficial solutions to our common problems. - Education
What Is School For? — Perhaps our most deep-rooted instinct is to protect our children. That's why school conflicts are so intense. In this context, set of essays to help us think things through what matters in education. - Intergenerational Conflict
The Kids Are Alright — Because of the rapid rate of social change, differences in the experiences that shape each generation commonly lead to intergenerational tension. To help address this, a reassuring essay about young people. - Developing a Unifying Vision
What We Owe The Future — For societies to flourish over the long run, they must find ways of assuring that the interests of future generations are protected. - Effective Communication Strategies
The art of listening — For a world in which we tend to focus on developing our ability to persuade and influence others, a plea, instead, for cultivating our ability to listen to (and be persuaded by) our fellow citizens. - Power Sharing
Only Bipartisanship Can Defeat Authoritarian Aggression — A persuasive argument that the only way in which we can protect ourselves from authoritarian threats (both external and internal) is by recommitting ourselves to working together for the common defense. - Effective Problem-Solving Efforts
A Functional Congress? Yes. — Amid today's political fury, a surprising observation -- the 117th Congress has actually been remarkably functional (often in a bipartisan way). - Escalation Limiting Projects
What Biden could gain from pardoning Trump — An example of the kind of "outside the box" thinking that might help reverse today's dismal political trends. We need to work harder to develop, evaluate, and (where appropriate) implement such ideas.
About the MBI Newsletters
Once or twice a week, we will compile BI news, along with new posts from our Hyper-polarization Blog and elsewhere on BI into a Newsletter that will be posted here and sent out by email through Substack to subscribers. You can sign up to receive your copy on our Newsletter Sign Up Page and find the latest newsletter here on our Newsletter page. Past newsletters can be found in the Newsletter Archive.
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Photo/Graphics Credits
Beyond Intractability Sunrise Photographs. By Guy and Heidi Burgess.
Arrow Constructive Conflict Initiative Graphic: By Guy and Heidi Burgess.
Crowd of People Cartoon Graphic. By Clker-Free-Vector-Images; Permission: CC0 Creative Commons.
News on Phone, Tablet, Computer Outline. By OpenClipart-Vectors; Permission: CC0 Creative Commons.
