Constructive Conflict Massive Open Online Seminar (MOOS)
Selected Seminar Posts
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In addition, lists of recent posts are available separately for each BI Section:
Things You Can Do To Help | Conflict Frontiers | Conflict Fundamentals
Beyond Intractability in Context | Colleague Activities
- Small Scale Reconciliation – Part 5: Take Advantage of Opportunities for Mutually-Beneficial Joint Actions -- Even when conflicts are stalemated, some common ground is likely to give disputants a toe-hold onto transformation. #mbi_fundamentals
- Small Scale Reconciliation – Part 4: Leveling the Playing Field -- Equalizing power actually helps both the powerful and the powerless, as it makes negotiation and mutually-beneficial outcomes possible for all. #mbi_fundamentals
- Small Scale Reconciliation – Part 3: Develop a Unifying Vision for Society -- Small groups can use the tools of large groups to develop consensus visions of their future relationship--often with even more success. #mbi_fundamentals
- Small Scale Reconciliation – Part 1: De-escalate Destructive Us-versus-Them Confrontations -- Reframing us-vesus them, conciliatory gestures, and using the optimal power strategy mix are several approaches that can further reconciliation. #mbi_fundamentals
- Small Scale Reconciliation – Part 2: Promote Effective Communication -- By first listening, and second speaking in respectful and surprisingly "reasonable" ways, people can de-escalate conflicts and begin to work on reconciliation. #mbi_fundamentals
- A Guide to More Constructive Approaches to Intractable Conflict -- A Introduction to a five-part strategy for overcoming the conflict problems that are preventing us from building a society in which we would all like to live. #mbi_frontiers
- The King Soopers Shooting: This Time It Was Personal -- Motivated by a mass shooting in our community, we've spent the last week thinking about how our insights into the intractable conflict problem can help. #mbi_cci
- Saving Democracy and Biden’s Challenge to the Conflict and Peacebuilding Fields – Part 2 -- Democracy is a system for wisely, equitably, and nonviolently managing conflicts between people with deep cultural differences who are also in continuing competition for scarce resources.
- Saving Democracy and Biden’s Challenge to the Conflict and Peacebuilding Fields – Part I -- An exploration of what we need to do to bend the arc of history back toward peace and democracy and away from autocracy, problem-solving paralysis, and civil strife.
- Pragmatic Compassion/Empathy -- An explanation of why it is in our best interest to empathize with our enemies (even when we don't expect them to reciprocate).
- Envisioning -- You can't get to where you want to go, if you don't know where it is. So how can you get to a desired future, if you don't know what that future looks like? #mbi_fundamentals
- Positive Thinking -- Giving "the other" the benefit of the doubt most of the time will lead to better outcomes for everyone. #mbi_cci
- Conflict Styles -- Competition, collaboration, compromise, avoidance, and accommodation all have costs and benefits. Know which is best when! #mbi_fundamentals
- Cultural Lag -- Today's culture wars are largely attributable to the fact that the different generations adapted their beliefs to very different social conditions. #mbi_fundamentals
- Constructive Conflict Initiative Video -- Based on the Constructive Conflict Initiative, a 45 min. video that explains to students and others concerned about the world's many problems why the conflict threat is as serious as climate change and what they can do to help address it. #mbi_cci
- A More Positive "Take" on "The Jeep Ad" -- The outcry over the ad was more a reflection of ourselves than it was about the ad. If we look more deeply at our reactions, we might be able to see the value of its basic message. #mbi_cci
- Retrospective Reconciliation: Looking Back to Right Past Wrongs – Part II -- No matter how hard forgiveness may seem, there are strategies that have been successfully used to make it work. #mbi_fundamentals
- Retrospective Reconciliation: Looking Back to Right Past Wrongs – Part I -- Using Lederach's "Meeting Place' metaphor, we consider how "truth and mercy have met together; peace and justice have kissed." #mbi_fundamentals
- Prospective Reconciliation: What Should We Work For—And How? -- If you want reconciliation to “stick,” you need to design it in collaboration with all affected parties, designing a place everyone would want to live in, not just your side. #mbi_fundamentals
- Ingredients of Reconciliation -- Using the metaphor of baking, reconciliation can be made with a variety of ingredients, in different amounts, and added in different orders. #mbi_fundamentals
- Reconciliation as a Noun and a Verb (Outcome and Process) -- Reconciliation can be visualized as a balance beam, where everyone needs to maintain their balance to keep reconciliation from failing. #mbi_fundamentals
- Complexity-Oriented, Massively Parallel Reconciliation -- Simple solutions won't work in complex conflicts; one needs a complex solution to match the complexity of the conflict. #mbi_fundamentals
- Identify--and Scale Up--Your Areas of Influence -- We need to think about the complexities, where our areas of influence are, and how we can scale up our influence go over the tipping point. #mbi_cci
- Avoiding a Category 5 Socio-political Hurricane -- We need to figure out how we can live together if we want to avoid a threatening disaster. Prospective reconciliation helps us do that.
- Living with Uncertainty in the COVID-19 Era -- An overview of common mistakes that people make when trying to deal with uncertain situations like COVID-19 (and strategies for avoiding them). #mbi_cci
