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
- Lou Kriesberg's Chapter 10 in Fighting Better - Recovering and Advancing Equality in the Future -- A review of Louis Kriesberg's seven elements of constructive conflict, as illustrated in the closing chapter of his new book Fighting Better: Constructive Conflicts in America. -- Dec 31
- Review of Fighting Better: Constructive Conflicts in America by Louis Kriesberg -- A review of a new (December 2022) book looking at the struggle for class, status, and power equity in the United States from 1945- 2022, drawing lessons about what strategies work and which don't. -- Dec 31
- Compassionate Humanity Community -- An emerging network of people working to build movements dedicated to serving humanity, the environment, and life. Reducing conflict and fostering collaboration are tools advocated to achieve these goals. -- Dec 20
- Trump Struggles, but America Is Still Feverish -- A reminder that the profound social problems that contributed to President Trump's success persist even though his political fortunes may be waning. -- Dec 20
- Why the ‘Smart’ Party Never Learns -- Increasingly, the left is the party of the more educated and the right is the party of the less educated. Reflections on how the resulting arrogance is undermining the left's ability to learn. -- Dec 20
- U.S. Extreme Weather in 2022 -- An extensive and long-term look at statistics on the incidence of different types of bad weather that makes it clear that it's not all climate change and that disaster preparedness is essential. -- Dec 19
- Essential Elements + Obstacles = The Things That Need Doing Matrix -- Just as a body needs coordination between its different parts, so does the democracy ecosystem. Everyone has a role to play! -- Dec 18
- More in Common -- More in Common works on both short and longer term initiatives to understand and address the underlying drivers of fracturing and polarization, and build more united, resilient and inclusive societies. -- Dec 18
- The End of the New Peace -- One of history's great accomplishments has been the expansion of Boulding's regions of stable peace (places where nobody considers war a serious possibility). With Ukraine, that peace is now in jeopardy. -- Dec 18
- The Woman Who Made Online Dating Into a ‘Science’ -- A look at the origins of one of the most dramatic changes in the way we form our most important and most personal relationships. -- Dec 18
- The “End” Of Neutrality: Tumultuous Times Require A Deeper Value -- Working to understand, test, and disseminate innovations that can make democracy more participatory, equitable, and productive with a focus on scale, redesign of the civic infrastructure, and measurement. -- Dec 17
- Conservatism in an Era Of Populist Revolt -- An enlightening explanation of the core beliefs underlying true conservatism and a look at the wide gulf that separates these beliefs from prevailing, right-leaning politics. -- Dec 17
- The midterms should be a stake through the heart of the mobilization myth -- An argument that the 2022 election further proves that base mobilization politics (with its extreme positions and hate-mongering) doesn't work. -- Dec 17
- American Bar Association's Corerstones of Democracy Conversations Guide -- The cornerstones are civics, civility, and collaboration, and this conversation guide helps lawyers (and others) as they work to strengthen all three. -- Dec 16
- Building Bridges Without a Foundation for Peace Won’t Work -- An article comparing different bridge-building strategies and the goals of negative peace versus positive peace. Just getting people to "talk nicely" isn't nearly enough to solve our problems. -- Dec 16
- America’s No-Majority Future Is Going to be Delicious -- A hopeful image of what the diverse society that we are evolving toward could actually look like. -- Dec 16
- America's Divided Mind -- New insights from Beyond Conflict about how polarization is fueled by Americans’ misperceptions about each other, and how we can start to reverse it. -- Dec 15
- Do ‘Ordinary’ People Commit War Crimes? -- Evidence that, under sufficiently terrible circumstances, normal people can commit unspeakable atrocities and another reason why we have to prevent such circumstances. -- Dec 15
- All Sides -- AllSides is a media solutions company that strengthens our democratic society with balanced news, media bias ratings, diverse perspectives, and real conversation. -- Dec 14
- Fire Them All; God Will Know His Own -- From the Harvard Crimson, an irreverent look at the administrative bloat that has led to skyrocketing college costs and profound changes in the nature of higher education. -- Dec 14
- The Curriculum Wars Are Based On An Illusion -- Reassuring news from a major new survey -- Americans are actually in surprising agreement on what schools should and should not teach about US history. -- Dec 14
- Caleb Christen: Creating an Inter-movement Community -- Transforming democracy is an adaptive challenge requiring flexibility, adaptability and intentionality in organizing to enable organizations and millions of Americans to work in unison. -- Dec 14
- The Flip Side -- Sharing thoughtful news stories from the left, right, and middle on a variety of issues--emailed once per day. -- Dec 13
- How Do They Know This? -- A review and brief overview of an important new book -- a primer on what everybody ought to know about statistics and how not to be misled by them. -- Dec 13
- When Was the Last Successful Revolution? -- At a time of widespread protest in China, Iran, and (perhaps, under the surface) Russia, a sobering look at how rarely revolutionary uprising actually succeed (and why authoritarianism must be avoided). -- Dec 13
