Recent Beyond Intractability Posts
Including Hyper-Polarization Posts
Posts by BI Section
Lists of recent posts are also available separately for each BI Section:
Hyper-Polarization Discussion Posts | Earlier Constructive Conflict Initiative Blog
Things You Can Do To Help | Conflict Frontiers | Conflict Fundamentals
Beyond Intractability in Context | Colleague Activities
- Learning More about How the TRUST Network Does Massively Parallel Peacebuilding -- Democracy--and threats to it--are a complex adaptive system. We need complex, adaptive responses as well The TRUST Network is one. -- May 29
- Learning More about How the TRUST Network Does Massively Parallel Peacebuilding -- Democracy--and threats to it--are a complex adaptive system. We need complex, adaptive responses as well The TRUST Network is one. -- May 29
- Colleague and Context for Week of May 22 -- More news and activities from our peacebuilding colleagues and interesting readings from allied fields, particularly journalism. -- May 24
- Escalation is the Most Dangerous Force on the Planet. But We Continue to Drive It -- Driven by many interacting feedback loops, escalation can get out of control quickly--leading to violence or even worse. -- May 21
- Collaborating Across Differences to Reduce Authoritarianism: A Literature Review -- A literature review exploring the question: What are the practices that support groups that come together to collaborate across differences to reduce authoritarianism? -- May 20
- Paul Monteiro, Former Director of the Community Relations Service, Talking About How CRS Works its Magic -- A few of the many important things Community Relations Service Paul Monteiro shared about the way CRS operates, what makes it successful, and most importantly, how it needs help from locals. -- May 17
- The Woke University’s Servant Class -- A look at the hypocritical mismatch between the university's conspicuous commitment to social justice and the exploitive way in which it treats "contingent" faculty. -- May 15
- Colleague and Context Posts for the Week of May 15, 2023 -- Our weekly selection of interesting organizations and projects in the conflict/peacebuilding field, and articles of interest from outside our field. -- May 14
- Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding -- Podcasts highlighting the experiences of international religiously-motivated peacebuilders, plus many more text profiles of religious peacebuilders with descriptions of their work. -- May 13
- William Deresiewicz on the “Excellent Sheep” of the American Elite -- A really excellent social psychological analysis of the cosmopolitan elite that now effectively controls so much of society. -- May 13
- Moving Beyond Partisan Polarization: Some First Steps -- From Essential Partners: 5 steps (with detailed questions for each) to have illuminating conversations with yourself, allies, and others to reduce polarization. -- May 12
- An Award for NAFCM + Conflict Mapping and Other Tools for Understanding Complex Problems -- Conflict mapping is a tool to help understand what, besides "the other guys" are driving a conflict or social problem, and hence what might be done to fix it. -- May 11
- Divided Community Project -- DCP provides dispute resolution and systems-design expertise to help local community and university leaders enhance community resiliency and prepare for and respond to events that polarize their communities. -- May 09
- John Lande: The Importance of Really Listening – For Ourselves, Others, and Democracy -- Some of our biggest errors are that we generally assume that we correctly understand the world and that being wrong is bad. Rather, we often are wrong--and that is good! -- May 09
- Colleague and Context Posts for the Week of May 8, 2023 -- Colleague activities to strengthen democracy, and outside the field articles on democracy, polarization, and related issues. -- May 07
- Your political rivals aren’t as bad as you think. Our misunderstandings amplify hostility. -- From Kansas, evidence that our conflicts are more the result of misunderstandings and less the result of deep-rooted disagreements. -- May 06
- 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. -- May 05
- 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. -- May 04
- D.G. Mawn Talks About Community Mediation and NAFCM -- Conversation with D.G. Mawn about the National Association for Community Mediation and the work of the hundreds of member centers which have been helping resolve community conflicts for decades. -- May 04
- The Myth of the Myth of Neutrality -- More ideas to consider as we struggle to balance our personal partisan beliefs with the desire to serve in neutral intermediary roles. -- May 02
- Colleague and Context Posts for the Week of May 1, 2023 -- Colleague activities to strengthen democracy, and outside the field articles on democracy, polarization, and related issues. -- May 02
- Conversation with D.G. Mawn, President of the National Association for Community Mediation -- Video conversation with D.G. Mawn about the history and current activities of the National Association for Community Mediation and the work of the hundreds of member community mediation centers. -- May 02
- 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.) -- Apr 30
- 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. -- Apr 30
- The ‘Diploma Divide’ Is the New Fault Line in American Politics -- For a time when so many believe that the United States' principal fault lines revolve around race and gender, an argument that education is even more important. -- Apr 28
