Newsletter #158 — September 21, 2023
Colleague Activities
Highlighting things that our conflict and peacebuilding colleagues are doing that contribute to efforts to address the hyper-polarization problem.
- Interstate War
Reinvigorating Peace: A Critical Look at the UN’s New Agenda for Peace — Boutros Boutros Ghali's 1992 "Agenda for Peace" taught us the word peacebuilding. This article looks at the United Nations' recent update of this important document. - Developing a Unifying Vision
A New Agenda for Peace — S.G.'s Guterres' New Agenda for Peace outlines his vision for multilateral efforts for peace and security, based on international law, for a world in transition. - Effective Problem-Solving
Citizen Solutions: America's Hidden Opportunity Revealed. — Starts With Us' inititiave to empower Americans to overcome our misperceptions and co-create solutions to shared challenges. This article shows how badly we misjudge "the other" on many dimensions. - Class Inequity
The Violence, Inequality and Power Lab (VIP Lab) at the Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice at the University of San Diego — The VIP Lab seeks to understand how power inequalities cause violence. They provide actionable ideas to be implemented at the systems level to confront harmful power inequalities and reduce violence. - Developing a Unifying Vision
One Humanity Institute — One Humanity Institute is a social incubator, a global nexus where one can experience both the micro and macro potential of a united humanity. - Peacebuilding
Catholic Peacebuilding in Times of Crisis — Vol. 12:2 of the Journal of Moral Theology featuring original articles coming out of the the Catholoic Peacebuilding Network's summer 2022 conference . - Developing a Unifying Vision
Indigenous voices on reconciliation — Do you ever feel that you’d like to advance the work of reconciliation, but you’re confused or unsure where to begin? Videos from indigenous voices in Canada compiled by the Canadian Friends Service Committee can help.
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.
- Saving Democracy
Good Intentions Gone Awry — A must-read explanation of why it is so critical that we "save" democracy and the pitfalls of many popular strategies that people are using to pursue this goal. - Rule of Law
The Supreme Court Isn’t Rogue — An article about the Supreme Court that makes an important distinction between conflicts over differing legal philosophies and attempts to subvert the rule of law. - Psychological Complexity
In Defense of the Human Brain — A reassuring argument that the human brain really does differ dramatically from the artificial brains that are causing so much concern. - Interstate War
Beware the False Prophets of War — For anyone who thinks that we understand war and can reliably predict its outcome, a review of failed predictions (and an argument for not trying to "ride the tiger"). - Improving Problem Assessment
How not to be fooled by viral charts — For those who don't want to be lied to with statistics, a lesson on how to protect yourself. - Persuasion
Ross Douthat’s Theories of Persuasion — It is a lot easier to get people to change their opinions and behavior through persuasion. Force tends to lead to backlash, defiance, and intensified conflict. - Saving Democracy
Polarization is a choice — More insight into the dynamics underlying our hyper-polarized society and the role that our conscious actions play in this process. - Authoritarianism
I Watched a Democracy Die. I Don’t Want to Do It Again. — From Chile, a retrospective and agonizing account of what happens when democracies do, in fact, fail and authoritarians take over. - Interstate War
Why U.S. Presidents Really Go to War — A review and summary of a new book that examines the complex forces that have led to the United States' wars -- forces that are not as rational, dispassionate, and honorable as we would like to believe. - Climate Change
The Climate-Change ‘Emergency’ Is Coming for You — A skeptical account of the wisdom of many current climate change policies and a preview of emerging conflicts over those policies. Protecting the climate will require more constructive responses. - Education
Americans Are Losing Faith in the Value of College. Whose Fault Is That? — A wake-up call for higher education. It is losing the support it needs to fulfill its mission. To rebuild that support, it needs to fulfill that mission much more effectively. - Society-Wide Conflict
The U.S. Is the Most Troubled Nation, Except for All the Others — Complex social systems never function very well – they continually muddle from crisis to crisis. While we need to work harder to address each crisis, we also need to put those crises in perspective. - Gender / LBGTQ+
Academia’s Missing Men — Illuminating statistics documenting the remarkable progress that has been made toward racial and gender equity and the possibility that we are starting to undermine this progress with reverse discrimination. - Gender / LBGTQ+
The Misogyny Myth — More on the argument that, in our efforts to combat discrimination against women, we have to started discriminating against men in ways that are hard to justify.
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