Beyond Intractability
Hyper-Polarization Blog
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- Addressing the Skeptics And Moving Forward -- Massive social change IS possible if people decide they want to work at it!
- Anne Leslie: Embracing Ambiguity -- Curiosity will get you SO FAR. …Never underestimate the power of being curious and likeable! It will get you so far in life! And it’s massively, massively underestimated.
- Conversation with Kristin Hansen, Executive Director of the Civic Health Project -- To really do bridge building work credibly, you can't assume an outcome. You have to move upstream. and you have to be about means and not about ends. You have to trust that the ends will go where the universe wants them to go. (Full interview)
- Kristin Hansen talks about the Civic Health Project's Work on De-polarization in America -- A discussion of ends and means, incentives, interventions, scale, challenges, successes, visions--Kristen's vision is clear and exceptionally wide ranging at the same time. (Summary of full interview)
- Massively Parallel Peacebuilding/Problem Solving -- Defusing the hyper-polarization spiral is an extremely large and complex task. This newsletter introduces a promising strategy for working at this level.
- Canaries, Constructive Advocates, and Intermediaries -- A comparison of three conflict roles, all of which are needed to successfully confront challenging and complex social problems and issues.
- Lou Kriesberg's Chapter 10 in Fighting Better - Recovering and Advancing Equality in the Future -- A review of Louis Kriesberg's seven elements of constructive conflict, as illustrated in the closing chapter of his new book Fighting Better: Constructive Conflicts in America.
- Review of Fighting Better: Constructive Conflicts in America by Louis Kriesberg -- A review of a new (December 2022) book looking at the struggle for class, status, and power equity in the United States from 1945- 2022, drawing lessons about what strategies work and which don't.
- Essential Elements + Obstacles = The Things That Need Doing Matrix -- Just as a body needs coordination between its different parts, so does the democracy ecosystem. Everyone has a role to play!
- Caleb Christen: Creating an Inter-movement Community -- Transforming democracy is an adaptive challenge requiring flexibility, adaptability and intentionality in organizing to enable organizations and millions of Americans to work in unison.
- Obstacles to Implementing the Elements of Successful Democracy -- Fixing democracy is everyone's responsibility: we can't leave it to our leaders or the other side. Everyone can -- and must -- do their part.
- Matt Legge: When Polarization is Beneficial -- Issue polarization can help people come closer to understanding "the truth" about controversial events or issues. How information is presented to parties in conflicts makes a big difference to the quality of the conflict that ensues.
- Essential Elements of Successful Democracies - Part 2 -- Boulding's First Law is ""If it exists, it must be possible." All of the essential elements of democracy exist--though sometimes in other contexts. We need to implement them in our governance systems.
- Is Polarization Good or Bad? -- Rising heat is not necessarily bad--it shows changes are needed. But we need to pursue those changes constructively, as attempts to overpower or destroy the other will also destroy ourselves.
- AfP Seminar--Toxic Polarization: What's the Left Got to Do with It? -- The language used to refer to the right is just making things worse, not better. The substance of the left's arguments matters too.
- Essential Elements of Successful Democracies - Part 1 -- Successful democracies control destructive escalation, promote respectful communication, use verified facts for decision making, and balance power among constituency groups fairly.
- Jean-Jacques Subrenat: Implementing Democracy -- Attacks on the rule of law in the U.S.A. are having an impact on the political mores of other democracies. The U.S. badly needs to update its own democracy to preserve the safety and prosperity of all around the world.
- Kristin Hansen: Are Bridge-builders Being "Too Nice" to the Right? -- The primary role of bridge-builders in America at this time is to "call in," not to "call out." That this does not make us irrelevant, it makes us essential.
- Matt Legge: Beware the Popular Idea That You Know a Hidden Truth -- This metaphor leads to a binary assumption: I'm right, they are wrong. We'd be well served dropping that assumption, and listening to others to learn how they might, actually, be right, and we are wrong.
- The 2022 Election – Did It Make Hyper-Polarization Better or Worse -- While the worst anti-democratic outcomes may have been averted, this election was still not good for hyper-polarization, and perhaps not good for democracy either.
- Frederick Golder on Common Ground instead of Polarization -- We cannot change anyone’s opinions, values, ideas, attitudes, judgments, or viewpoints, but, we can understand each other better through learning conversations and use those to find common ground.
- Guy Burgess: Finding Common Ground / Constructive Approaches for Addressing Differences -- This process focuses on five questions examining the nature of the different beliefs and opinions, and how they might be dealt with most constructively depending on whether they are fact-based, moral, or both.
- Andrew Harward: A Vision of Constructive Political Conflict in The United States -- A visioning exercise yields a credible plan for significantly reducing political polarization -- with many additional benefits to individuals, organizations, and society as a whole as well.
- Fighting Hyper-Polarization for Our Children and Grand Children -- This newsletter focuses on the importance of continuing our efforts to strengthen democracy, and considers one obstacle to doing that: being too sure of oneselves (the QED trap).
- Guy Burgess: The QED Trap -- The QED trap locks people into a win-lose struggle for power that eliminates any chance of learning, compromise, or collaboration.
