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
- Answers to 12 Bad Anti-Free Speech Arguments -- For those who find themselves engaged in free-speech debates, a review of strategies for rebutting common arguments against free speech. -- Sep 17
- Massively Parallel Peace and Democracy Building Links for the Week of September 15, 2024 -- We've been on vacation, so, to cover what we've missed, this is a long set of news, opinion, colleague, and recommended readings from our followers. -- Sep 15
- Matti Friedman: When We Started to Lie -- A look at how journalism evolved from a field devoted to truth telling to a field focused on supporting the "right way of looking at the world." -- Sep 14
- The Normalization of Terrorism in the West -- Reflections on the very different way in which Western societies have responded to the terrorist attacks of September 11 and October 7. -- Sep 14
- Reprise: Planning a Constructive Confrontation Strategy: Understanding the Relationship between Negotiation and Power -- Constructive confrontation calls for resolving most disputes through interest-based negotiation; only if that fails should one try a contest of rights, reserving nonviolent power contests as a very last resort. -- Sep 11
- Debate Without Hate: A Podcast to Help You Navigate the Election -- A podcast series with experts delving into our nation’s division, threats that arise from this division, and how we can all engage in healthier, more productive political discourse. -- Sep 09
- Massively Parallel Peace and Democracy Building Links for the Week of September 8, 2024 -- Readings on Israel, the U.S. political scene, and other intractable conflicts of note. -- Sep 09
- The Return of History: Liberal Values and Global Realities -- A must-read essay that raises a critically important question, does human society naturally gravitate toward power-with, egalitarian democracy or power-over authoritarianism? -- Sep 07
- The Distinctiveness of Human Aggression -- A review and brief summary of the thought-provoking new book, "The Goodness Paradox -- The Strange Relationship between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution." -- Sep 07
- Reprise: Constructive Confrontation: Applying Conflict Insights from a 1st Party (Not 3rd Party) Perspective -- A reprise of an old newsletter on constructive ways of engaging in conflict that is less likely to create backlash and more likely to achieve one's goals than typical adversarial approaches are likely to do. -- Sep 07
- For Students to Change the World, Colleges Must First Teach Them to Bridge Differences -- A commentary from our colleague Shamil Idriss observing that the spring's turmoil on campuses highlights what’s not on the curriculum: Young people need conflict resolution skills to lead us to a better future. -- Sep 06
- Deep Reading Will Save Your Soul -- A critique of higher education and a strategy for learning the things that you should have learned in college. -- Sep 04
- Guy and Heidi Burgess Talk with David Eisner about Threats to Democracy and How to Address Them -- The Burgesses talked with David Eisner about what he thinks the threats to democracy are, and how (and when) we might respond to them. We agreed, citizen involvement in governance is key. -- Sep 04
- Updating Our Impartiality Discussions - Part 1 -- The Burgesses update their 2-year old discussion of impartiality, adding to it Martin Carcasson's notion of "principled impartiality" which adds in quality information and "small-d" democracy. -- Sep 02
- Massively Parallel Peace and Democracy Building Links for the Week of September 1, 2024 -- More in our regular set of links from readers, about colleague's activities, and from outside news and opinion sources. -- Sep 02
- The West’s Next Challenge Is the Rising Axis of Autocracies -- The dynamics of hyper-polarization are also playing out on a global scale with autocracies increasingly forming alliances to help them more effectively challenge Western democracies. -- Aug 31
- Updating Our Impartiality Discussions - Part 2 -- In part 2 of this 2-part series, we apply Martin Carcasson's notion of "principled impartiality" to the Israel/Gaza/Hezbollah/Iran war, and to the political conflict in the United States. -- Aug 28
- Massively Parallel Peace and Democracy Building Links for the Week of August 18, 2024 -- Reader suggested links, and the Burgesses selections of articles about colleague's activities and other news and opinion articles of interest. -- Aug 21
- Equality Is Good, Actually -- Contrary to popular critiques, the liberal value of equality doesn’t make you weak or nihilistic. -- Aug 21
- A Potpourri Newsletter -- Short pieces about new books, and new ideas about the challenges we currently face and ways beyond them from John Paul Lederach, Lou Kriesberg, Kenneth Boulding, Deborah Laufer, and Guy and Heidi Burgess. -- Aug 18
- Liberalism Offers a Language of Resistance Against Authoritarianism Everywhere. The West may have become complacent about defending liberali -- Thoughts on the complex relationship between liberalism and authoritarianism and why fighting authoritarianism requires a stronger defense of liberalism. -- Aug 17
- Susan Carpenter and Heidi Burgess Reflect on Susan's 40+ Years' Experience Doing Consensus -- Susan Carpenter has been working in the field of collaborative problem solving for over 40 years. She talked about the changes she's seen over those years, and the time-tested approaches she has come to rely on for success. -- Aug 15
- The Tennessee 11 -- This intimate, fly-on-the-wall document puts you in the room where eleven local leaders from across the political spectrum gathered to discuss gun rights and safety — and to achieve the impossible: find common ground -- Aug 13
- Massively Parallel Peace and Democracy Building Links for the Week of August 11, 2024 -- Our weekly collection of links from colleagues and outside news/opinion sources on the many predicaments we are now facing around the world. It's pretty daunting! -- Aug 12
- Why You Should Feel Good About Liberalism: We need to get better at standing up for the greatest social technology ever devised. -- An argument that liberal democracy is one of humanity's greatest accomplishments – an accomplishment that we ought to do a much better job of defending. -- Aug 11
