Newsletter #110 — May 2, 2023
Colleague Activities
Highlighting things that our conflict and peacebuilding colleagues are doing that contribute to efforts to address the hyper-polarization problem.
- Developing a Unifying Vision
Building The Bridge To Peace: Reframing Peace And Peacebuilding — A discussion of existing mindsets around peacebuilding plus research-based suggestions for reframing the way we present this work to outsiders so they understand what it involves. - Effective Communication Strategies
AllSides for Schools — AllSides provides tools and activities teachers can use with students to help cultivate their skills and proficiency in bias awareness, news literacy, and dialogue across differences. - Constructive Communication
Narrative Engagement Across Difference (NEAD) Project — A deep look at narrative practices to reflect on how we can better understand and deploy narratives that will help unlock more effective collective action within diverse, broad-based movements. - Understanding The Issues That Divide Us
“Woke” is a Perfectly Meaningful Word - Better Conflict Bulletin #43 — An examination of what the term, "woke," means, how it is used, and how it is used as an excuse--by both progressives and conservatives to avoid talking about real issues. - System Thinking Strategies
The Networks Festival — The Fito Network's "Network Festival" seeks to bring together (online and in person) 1000s of people from other networks to deepen understanding of how we can leverage relationships to transform the world. - Effective Communication Strategies
Speaking Out to Strengthen the Guardrails of Democracy — A new report from the Ohio State University Divided Communities Project focusing on how effective speech can encourage hope, counteract fear and hate, and strengthen democracy. - Suppressing Opponents
Backfire Basics — A primer from the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict on how to create backlash against injustice, making it less likely for oppressors to "get away with it."
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.
- Crime / Policing / Guns
Why are Americans shooting strangers and neighbors? ‘It all goes back to fear.’ — A reminder that the United States' gun problem is downstream of the collapse of mutual trust and the fact that we increasingly fear one another. - Developing a Unifying Vision
American Crisis -- How we lost our faith in the future and how to get it back — One of the downsides of our excessive focus on our society's failings is that we start to believe that success is impossible (and we quit trying.) - Improving Problem Assessment
Focus on the Research, Not the Researcher — A look at the 'positionality statements' that increasingly accompany scientific publications, and the possibility that they may be contributing to the further politicalization of facts. - Saving Democracy
Small-dollar donors didn’t save democracy. They made it worse. — A reminder that we always need to consider the possibility that sensible sounding reformsc could wind up producing unintended (and potentially counterproductive) outcomes. - Efforts to Limit Concentrated Power
Disney v. DeSantis: How Strong Is the Company’s Lawsuit? — In the context of the Disney v. DeSantis dispute, a look and the legal principles surrounding efforts to limit corruption. - Social Complexity
The Myth of the Myth of Neutrality — More ideas to consider as we struggle to balance our personal partisan beliefs with the desire to offer genuinely neutral conflict advice. - Saving Democracy
America Does Have a Way to Save Itself — An essay exploring the little used but potentially quite useful and important concept of "defensive democracy." - Improving Problem Assessment
Dr. Fauci Looks Back: ‘Something Clearly Went Wrong’ — As we think about the lessons that we should learn from the pandemic, reflections from Dr. Fauci on the relationship between pandemic management and conflict management. - Developing a Unifying Vision
Leave ‘the American People’ Alone — A thought-provoking argument that we spend too much time pursuing a unifying American identity and not enough time learning how to live with our differences. - De-Escalation Strategies
Are you ready to forgive? A new study shows letting go is good for health. — Food for thought for those who are trying to come to terms with the unrightable wrongs of the past. - Constructive Communication
Free Press, Regardless — As tensions rise over Russia and China's increasingly aggressive brand of high-tech authoritarianism, an update on efforts to undermine the propaganda that makes These regimes possible. - Superpower Conflict
America is exporting its worst ideas across the Atlantic — A look at the global implications of the United States' culture wars and the complex ramifications that accompany the diffusion of belief systems. - Power-Over Partisans
The angriest voices in Congress are mostly faking — Reflections from one of our newest members of Congress on the mismatch between the public and the private personas of some of our most inflammatory lawmakers. - Developing a Unifying Vision
The Case Against Consensus — For a field that prides itself on being able to build consensus, a skeptic's argument worth considering. (We always need to keep asking ourselves hard questions.) - Developing a Unifying Vision
Empathy, and then what? — An important reminder that we need to do more than understand the views and motivations of our adversaries, we need to use that information in ways that make things better.
Please Contribute Your Ideas To This Discussion!
In order to prevent bots, spammers, and other malicious content, we are asking contributors to send their contributions to us directly. If your idea is short, with simple formatting, you can put it directly in the contact box. However, the contact form does not allow attachments. So if you are contributing a longer article, with formatting beyond simple paragraphs, just send us a note using the contact box, and we'll respond via an email to which you can reply with your attachment. This is a bit of a hassle, we know, but it has kept our site (and our inbox) clean. And if you are wondering, we do publish essays that disagree with or are critical of us. We want a robust exchange of views.
About the MBI Newsletters
Once a week or so, we, the BI Directors, share some thoughts, along with new posts from the Hyper-polarization Blog and and useful links from other sources. We used to put this all together in one newsletter which went out once or twice a week. We are now experimenting with breaking the Newsletter up into several shorter newsletters. Each Newsletter will be posted on BI, and sent out by email through Substack to subscribers. You can sign up to receive your copy here and find the latest newsletter here or on our BI Newsletter page, which also provides access to all the past newsletters, going back to 2017.
NOTE! If you signed up for this Newsletter and don't see it in your inbox, it might be going to one of your other emails folder (such as promotions, social, or spam). Check there or search for beyondintractability@substack.com and if you still can't find it, first go to our Substack help page, and if that doesn't help, please contact us.
If you like what you read here, please ....
