Things You Can Do To Help Limit Destructive Conflicts Blog: Today's big conflicts are not created--or solved -- by leaders. Certainly leaders can affect conflicts -- sometimes profoundly. But everyone alive contributes towards these conflicts--for better or worse-- in myriad ways. By selecting what we read and what television we watch, we are forming images of the world situation and the way it works that differ from the way others see it. These images become very deeply-rooted in our psyches, making learning new things much harder and less likely. Where we choose to live, with whom we associate, how we spend our time, what we buy, and how we vote all contributes to the system that drives many intractable conflict.
But just as we inadvertently (and sometimes intentionally) contribute to escalating conflicts, we all--really ALL--can play a constructive role in de-escalating conflicts and making them more constructive. We just need to have an understanding of what we are doing to make conflicts worse, and then take action ourselves to make them better. None of us can act alone--but thousands people acting independently can change the "tipping point" of a system, making it transform into something much more constructive.
This blog contains posts highlighting things everyone--not just powerful people, not just important or rich people--but everyone of us --can do to help limit the dynamics that lead to destructive and intractable conflicts.
Each post contains one idea, explains very briefly what it is, how to do it, and why we suggest it. It then has links to more information about each idea--sometimes one BI essay or MBI video; oftentimes several essays and/or videos with more details.
Infographics
Things You Can Do To Help posts are being supplemented by a growing collection of Instagram-style Infographics highlighting simple but important ways in which we can all contribute to efforts to handle conflict more constructively. These graphics are free to print, use, and share under Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
