Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Bernie Mayer on September 6, 2017 at 6:33pm

Thanks for this MIchael. Your work in Senegal seems extremely interesting.  Is there a place to read about this further?

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Jason Gladfelter on September 6, 2017 at 2:17pm

 

An interesting topic!  I have not read all of the previous replies, so I apologize if something is repeated. I think the Age of Trump, the Divide Nation, the political/social chasm, etc. are all symptoms. As a conflict resolvers we are trained to dig. Dig. Dig. Find the source(s) of tensions and address them. While symptoms can be problems in and of themselves, there is something deeper.  This goes well beyond, and before, Trump.

 

Without getting into thesis mode, I’m just going to throw stuff upon the wall and see what sticks!

 

• Discussion about how to engage dialogue is needed, but it puts the cart ahead of the horse, in my opinion. Dialogue is voluntary, and misunderstood. Debate gets the attention, and even it is misunderstood. The public not only doesn’t not know how to engage in dialogue, they don’t even know what it is.
• I run a somewhat monthly free public dialogue that engages various topics. What I’ve noticed is that political loyalty is not much different than sports loyalty. For sports fans, there is a personal identity attached to “their” teams. They bask in victories and lay blame with defeats. They’ll change their attitudes on certain viewpoints to reflect how their team is doing. In politics, this is tied to candidates, office holders and platforms. The single-issue voting strategy has been altered to single-person voting. “We won” or “we lost”. The personal attachment to someone we have never met, who does not one thing about us individually is one wedge that divides us. And that ties into psychology and projection and all that stuff J
• And this leads to the us v. them, zero sum identity challenge, which in turn fosters ad hominems and “shoot the messenger” mentality.
• And then this leads to “resistance” and protesting, which as of late is not tied to problem solving. The band Bon Jovi has a great line in their song, “Living on a Prayer”. It goes… “you live for the fight when it’s all that you got.” Perhaps that has a tinge of “instant gratification” to it.
• Ignorance may not be bliss, but it’s better than Belief. With 24-hour news, social media and online comments, the public is aware of thousands of issues all at once. There is a greater social/political divide now partly (maybe mostly) because we are aware of more things that can divide us. What we lack is the time, energy and (seemingly) willingness to educate ourselves on each topic. Instead, we trust others to tell us how we should think, feel and react. Those we trust manipulate our emotions and fears to gain said trust. And we believe they are correct, Right or Left.
• Tie that in to the notion that biologically we are resistant to Dialogue. If we think about what dialogue is, we can see the risk. Dialogue requires time, energy, risk, effort and change; things that could have spelt doom to our ancient ancestors. Be wary of strangers: Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.
• So, if dialogue is voluntary and against our primitive nature, how do we do it? Very carefully, methodically, impersonally and generationally. There is no magic wand to fix the mess we have now. We have to triage it: stop the bleeding and stabilize the situation. Going against Trump directly will exacerbate the problem(s).  Stick to issues at their base levels. Teach the next generation how to discover, address and solve problems. Highlight our mistakes.
• A lesson we should have learned from Reagan calling the USSR the “Evil Empire”; judging someone/thing doesn’t address the problem. Soon, banks and Wall Street and others were “evil”. Motivations were assigned to policies and to its supporters without asking the basic question, “why?”
• If people think Debate is the answer, then let’s do it. A straight, logical and reasoned debate on issues. Call out fallacies, hedges, qualifications, etc. Educate while debating. If an argument doesn’t hold water then it fails.
• People are reluctant to change themselves, which would require admitting being wrong. We need to change that focused thinking. It’s not that we are “wrong”, it’s that we could be more “right”.  In our public dialogues mentioned above, I help people with argument formulation…no matter which side they advocate. Because, I tell them, if your argument is weak, then your position cannot endure. After they brush up on some logic tips, they usually change not only their argument and position, but viewpoints on various topics. In a way this takes the passion out of politics, which may not be ideal, but it’s better than rioting.
• And then that leads me to Values.  The “I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it” doctrine, if you will. We find it noble that Marines, for example, risk their lives to recover a fallen soldier. Yet we cannot risk our own viewpoints to help ourselves, our town, state or nation.  “Being right” has replaced “doing right”.

 

 Cheers!

Jason

 

 

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Teresa Hartnett on September 6, 2017 at 2:30pm

Powerful insights. I'll be thinking about these for a few days - at least. All best, Teresa.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Bernie Mayer on September 6, 2017 at 6:42pm

Thanks for this Michael.  I love the Bon Jovi quote.  The interesting thing about debate as a framework rather than dialogue is that debate suggests that argumentation is an important part of the process--dialogue suggests that it's more about saying what we think and listening to others.  I think we need both.

One disagreement--I think  your statement that dialogue is against our primitive nature is not born out by either anthropological or evolutionary evidence.  We evolved to be cooperators every bit as much as competitors and we are hard wired for that.  Check out the work of Martin Novak (Nowak, M. “Why We Help: The Evolution of Cooperation.” Scientific American, July 2012.)

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Jason Gladfelter on September 9, 2017 at 2:27pm

Agreed, with a caveat.  We have evolved to overcome challenges, yet remnants remain; wisdom teeth, tails, appendixes were all "evolved out", but still exist. I think when pushed, we go back to fearing others. Or maybe it's not others we fear, but the thought of being wrong. 

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Bernie Mayer on September 6, 2017 at 6:29pm

 

A Macro Strategy and Korea Too

 

There is so much to discuss this week that I almost don’t know where to start.  Macro strategies?  Deeper communication?  Daca? Hurricane lessons and challenges? Taxes and the budget?  NAFTA? Where conflict specialists fit into any of this?  But it seems obvious to me that all of these pale in comparison to the truly existential threat of war with North Korea.  So I am going to take that on first.

 

Hard to believe, but the world seems a lot more dangerous than it did just one week ago.  I doubt we will end up in a nuclear war in the immediate future, but I say this without conviction or certainty.  And if we do, for what reason—how would war help solve any problem for anyone? Now more than ever we need the calming voice of diplomats, peace builders, and conflict specialists.  This is not to say that diplomacy or negotiation alone will solve the crisis.  It has been long in the making (going back at least to WWII but really much further than that), and a wise, strategic, and prolonged strategy is needed to wind it down.  At the moment, I don’t have faith that the right voices or strategies are in strong supply anywhere.  While it is not even close to anyone’s interest that war erupt, we also know that people do not always act in their own interests—especially when they believe their basic security or fundamental identity is at stake. 

 

As a mediator of complex, multi-party disputes, the question that is always at the forefront for me is “who should talk to whom, about what, when, and how—and how can I help make this happen?”.  So that is what I have been thinking about now.  I am sure there are many conversations going on that we have no idea about, but one that is not happening is between the US and North Korea.  I don’t think that is going to happen in the short term, and maybe it does not yet need to. The critical direct conversations with North Korea right now need to involve China, South Korea, Japan, and possibly Russia.  But these need to be coordinated conversations and the US needs to be part of the coordination.   Such coordination is not furthered by trade wars and bellicose public threats against potential partners in this effort.

 

But what should they be talking about?  It seems from public statements, particularly from the US, that almost all the discussion is about how to pressure North Korea to stand down from its nuclear program.    If the “fire and fury” threats are the foundation of our approach, we are in for some very scary and difficult times.  And it won’t work.  There is a role for consequences (provocability in game theory terminology), but that only works if it is part of a more complex and sophisticated strategy in which rewards and cooperation play a crucial role.  Furthermore, the consequences have to be realistic, tailored, and not so over the top that they cause a deeply defensive response.  This of course is true for North Korea’s actions as well, but we can’t wait for them to take the lead on this for obvious reasons (although you never know).  All this is to say that it seems to me we need to spend a lot more time thinking about what is truly important and meaningful to the North Koreans at this time, and how can we address there most important concerns.  The problem is that we don’t have very good information about this, and  that makes it hard to craft a workable strategy.  So the intermediate question becomes how can we work together to best assess this, how we can gain more insight into the North Koreans understanding of what is going on and into the matrix of needs and forces they are dealing with.

 

If the upshot is that what is most important to them is to gain a credible threat to impose unacceptable damage on China, Japan, South Korea, and the US in order to gain a long term ability to stand up to historic enemies and put pressure on historic friends, as it well it may be, then we are going to face a very difficult choice.  Do we accept this reality and try to work to bring them into a more reasonable posture as a nuclear power (and of course can we work over time to eliminate nuclear weapons altogether), or do we continue to amp up the pressure on them in the hope that this will ultimately induce them to reevaluate their nuclear policies.  There are major problems with both approaches, but the second one is particularly problematic because it means imposing significant hardships on the people of North Korea. 

 

The problem with any of these approaches is that they won’t work if  they are implemented in coordinated and coherent way, although there is room for different roles and tactics.  Coordinating will not be easy under the pressure of an immediate crisis.  One thing that we desperately needed is to dial back the assumption that immediate action is essential or we will be forever stuck with an nuclear armed and dangerous North Korea.  It seems to me that the chances of preventing North Korea from continuing its nuclear program right now are extremely small, smaller than the chance of getting them to wind it down later on—which may be small as well.  Our best chance over time is to work with others, specifically those who  have a better capacity than we do to influence North Korea, and together to adopt a more nuanced, coordinated, and in the long run powerful strategy.

 

I am not a Korea expert.  What I have been laying out is how I as a conflict specialist understand this situation.  There are others in the conflict and peace building world who know much more about North Korea than I do.  Nonetheless, I want to put my thoughts about this out here in brief (and though it may not seem so, this really is brief for such a complex subject) because doing so is part of how I may have something relevant to offer, how we all have something to at this critical moment.

 

There are other things we can offer as well:  we can try to organize discussions in our communities, religious institutions, at our conferences, or on-line.  We can reach out to those who take a different view about this than we do.  We can support organizations like the Alliance for Peace Building, Search for Common Ground, Partners for Democratic Change, the Public Conversations Project, and others who see their role as encouraging a more creative approach to our most troubling divides.  We can talk with and listen to our friends, neighbors and families, write op-eds, offer webinars, organize town-halls, and more—please share other ideas.

 

But now is also the time to contribute to building a peace movement that can counteract the forces pushing us to the brink of war.  OK, that is for another post. It’s not that any of us can do all of this, but all of us can do something.  And if not on this issue, on what, if not now, when?

 

Before I end this overly long entry, I want to try to answer some of Gail’s questions—namely what do I mean by macro strategy, what does it look like, can I offer examples?  That is what I have just tried to do. I think trying to talk to extreme hawks on this issue may be fruitless at this time—but if given the opportunity to do so, I would certainly try.  If any of you favor military action against North Korea, please let me know—I really am up for listening to you—but will ask the same of you.  But as a macro strategy (by which I mean an overall strategy—not necessarily focusing on national or macro level processes—sort of a version of thinking globally, but acting locally), I think our job is to work with others who are looking for a peaceful way through this, to talk about what is going on, to share our views, to raise our level of knowledge, and to encourage a more nuanced, thoughtful and reasoned approach to what is perhaps the most dangerous time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

 

And that is what I think is needed on other issues as well—climate change, DACA, race, etc. There is a broad spectrum of people who we should be trying to talk with in whatever way we can, and there are already significant ways this is happening.  But the purpose of doing so is to build better understanding and stronger alliances that will enable us to better address over time the essential issues we face.  If any you reading this do not believe that human action is a major factor in climate change—I would love to talk.  But who I most want to talk with now are those who are concerned about climate change and who want to understand it better and consider and what to do about it.  That certainly includes those who feel that the economic consequences of ameliorative action need to be considered.  And it includes those who feel that environmentalists have been overly rigid and self-righteous in their approach.  But I don’t think the focus ought to be on ewhether human potentiated climate change is occurring or who support the gleeful approach to deregulation of our current leadership.  I think we need to broaden the opposition to that approach as effectively as we can. Hopefully this opposition will come to include many of those who supported Trump—they have much to contribute.  I want to hear them and of course I want to be heard as well.

 

Thanks for bearing with me.  I would REALLY like help in refining my formulation and understanding of any of these issues.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Greg Rooney on September 6, 2017 at 8:30pm

Hi Bernie

I wonder if it would be helpful to step out from within the eye of the storm and look at the big picture issues raised by the arrival of Donald Trump. 

For me the fundamental question is whether Trump represents a vision of the future or the last vestiges of a passing era. 

I would argue the latter.  Trump’s rise and that of Brexit is in some ways an understandable reaction to a world that has changed beyond recognition in the last two decades.

We now live in the age of complexity and interconnection. We are influenced by multiple factors in our environment that we can never fully understand. It therefore requires leaders who have a deeper understanding of the broader context in which we operate and the ability to not shy away from this complexity and paradox. Leaders who can modulate that complexity to allow for the emergence of new.  

It’s the fear and the uncertainty of the new that is unsettling people uncomfortable with change. It is very hard to have trust in something you don’t understand or feel comfortable with.  Trump’s success came through presenting himself as the new Messiah with the offer to provide certainty and comfort for those hankering for the imagined certainty of the past and the ‘lost America’.

Trump tries to make the complex simple and ordered by focusing on facts and outcomes rather than allowing patterns to emerge. He draws from the long tradition of the command and control approach to corporate management.   However this style of management inhibits emerging solutions, diversity, variety, innovation and the positive and creative aspects of disruption and conflict. This inevitably constrains the freedom of views and diversity of opinions.

The Trump approach is based on the cult of the alpha leader who seeks fail safe predictable outcomes. He does this by hypothesising an end state solution and then applying pressure to close the gap.   It is ultimately counter-productive because it leads to black-and-white answers and rigid group think not only by his supporters but also by his opponents. The result is a breakdown in community trust, communication and shared understanding which are essential ingredients for surviving in our modern complex world.

The 20^th century command and control model of corporate leadership that Trump represents is breaking down because commanding and controlling doesn’t work in a complex environment particularly in our modern political, commercial and social life.

A complex world requires a different form of management leadership. One that requires a higher state of alertness and the ability to provide a real-time response to emerging patterns and behaviours.   It requires an experiential mode of management in which political and corporate leaders step back and allow patterns to emerge. It is how the new digital economy and the rise of disruptors have evolved.  The focus is on managing the present and seeking out its evolutionary potential. Leaders like no-drama Obama come to mind.

So if we accept Trump’s rise as just the natural consequence of this changing world then we can use the crisis and the energy that he brings as a way of facilitating the new to emerge.   Yes it will test the strength of America’s institutions and spirit. Maybe this is a good thing because out of it will rise of a new state of trust.  This is essential for the future of the US and the world because trust is the basis of any well functioning system. 

So battling the idea of Trump is just battling the idea of the past.  Of course there needs to be a boundary put around his excesses. But the new boundaries that emerge out of the Trump experience will represent a renewed USA.

See the following blog on ADRHub titled “Brexit, Trump and the Nash Trap.  A loss of Trust”

http://www.adrhub.com/profiles/blogs/brexit-trump-and-the-nash-trap-a-loss-of-trust

Regards Greg

 

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by John Lande on September 7, 2017 at 9:27am

What do you think about the idea of using truth and reconciliation processes to help heal our polarized society?   A column in today’s Washington Post advocates such a process in Virginia to deal with racial conflict, describing the rationale and a possible approach.  Efforts like this might take place at the state or local level.  Politics at the national level seems too polarized and hard for most people to engage for this to work well there now.

Such processes have been used in other countries including, but not limited to, South Africa.  I think that there have been scholarly analyses of the effects of such efforts and factors that may make them more or less effective, but I haven’t read that literature.  Can anyone share these insights?

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Bernie Mayer on September 7, 2017 at 3:00pm

Hi John

Interesting suggestion.  I think we used the concept of restorative justice in many different ways.  There is a difference between the type of commission in SA and Rwanda where perpetrators of crimes were offered an alternative to criminal prosecution if they "came clean" and there was a reparation process and a more general dialogue among different members of the community about what has happened historically.  In Canada there was a version of this used to deal with the with the experience of First Nations people with residential schools that ripped them away from their communities and often abused them.  When I was in SA,there were very mixed feelings about the TRC--many felt it was a way for perpetrators to get off the hook and then there were no meaningful reparations.  For others it was much more healing and it was essential to moving on from the apartheid era.

So it helps to specify a bit what you might have in mind.  It gets back to the basic question, who would be talking to whom about what and how?  I think building some common historical narrative among those who have been brought up believing that the Civil War was about slavery and those who believe it was about States' Rights would be very useful--but it would require people to start out by accepting the horror of slavery.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by John Lande on September 7, 2017 at 9:50pm

Hi Bernie.

You asked what I have in mind. The answer is learning more about different experiences with past truth and reconciliation / restorative justice efforts and what factors seem to promote various beneficial effects – as well as possible unintended negative effects. I gather that some scholars have studied these issues in different contexts and I am curious what insights they have developed.

When I was in South Africa, I heard similar reactions as you did. Some people were disappointed that serious wrong-doers were not punished. Others felt great relief at reconciliation and development of a more acceptable normal (though things still are problematic).

Someone said that of truth, reconciliation, and justice, you can have two but not all three. Efforts to attain justice by punishing wrong-doers can interfere with efforts to gain truth and reconciliation as the process would involve legalistic procedures creating incentives for denial by defendants, which could re-victimize some people and drag things out for a long time. Perhaps that would produce truth and justice, but we know that this is not always the result of legal procedures, especially in societies with limited financial and social resources.

I wonder if it would be different in a situation where there aren’t living wrong-doers to deal with, as in the case of slavery and Jim Crow. I imagine a process in which the participants were open to hearing each other and learning together. Obviously, that excludes some people but I can imagine that a broad range of the population could be represented and engaged. Perhaps that’s unrealistic.

Some people may believe that they can achieve their goals through outright political victory for their side, where the other side is decisively defeated and does not re-emerge. This seems unlikely to me in our situation.

In any case, it may help to consider the alternatives. One option is the status quo, without truth, reconciliation, or justice – or worse, if the status quo deteriorates. Another possibility is some improvement, albeit imperfect. And it is possible that poorly designed and implemented processes could actually make things worse.

I believe that we clearly are in a situation where the (unattainable) perfect is the enemy of the good. When people expect their ideals to be achieved, especially without accommodation of others’ legitimate perspectives, they are likely to be disappointed.

So I think that it is important to have realistic expectations. Of course, it’s hard to know what is realistic. Some things that people believe to be unrealistic turn out to be seen, in hindsight, as inevitable. On the other hand, some expectations really are unrealistic.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by MARIA VICTORIA MARUN on September 11, 2017 at 6:44pm

Hi all. I was so glad to meet Professor Bernie Mayer  at Ten anniversary event of the Werner Institute, into ACR Annual Conference,in Baltimore,  last year.  It was a real honour  to receive the mail inviting  me to participate in this  important and interesting dialogue. I was reading  and “listening” respectfully your dialogues, thinking  that  the topic  treats  problems  about  your own country. Then, as I live in Argentina,  I thought “you must not participate”.  But Bernie and some others have spoken in the dialogue  about  issues such as “divided Nation”, “polarized  society”. Then I thought that I could share our own experience in my country. We are suffering  the same problem : a divided Nation. We call the problem “the crack”

I think that  there are many countries that are suffering the same problem around the world.  And we have  a responsibility  as conflict resolvers. We must to help, first,  doing  what we are doing here, talking about the problems,  sharing experiences,   thinking , designing new tools….etc.-   I think that the education is the most important tool in order to get peace.  Now I’m working in a project, teaching   the students  tools  to prevent  and solve conflicts  into the high school  

And we  would be able to return to ethical reflection.-  The area of philosophy that deals with questions about how we should act and how we should live is called ethics. When we talk about ethics we talk about morality, the rightness and wrongness of people and their actions.

Thus, We have to purpose ouerselves, topics such as:

• “morally right” -  “morally wrong”
• “correct / incorrect”
• The  study of actions? …or...”how do  we judge actions?”
• Developing skills in articulating  your own values
• There is a great need for citizens  all over the world today:  to be able to listen to one another and to be able to express their thoughts
• Important questions…
• ¿Am I able to listen to the other?
• ¿Am I aware of the presence of the other?
• ¿Is it important for me the presence of the other?
• Are human beings forgetting “The Other”?

I think Bernie that previously to Ask ourselves WHATS AND HOW,  we have to ask ourselves ¿WHY?. If we are able to know Why…We will be able to  design What And How.

Emmanuel Lévinas[1]  said that “The Other name me, therefore I am”. We need to know what Levinas means by “the face of the Other.” First, what does he mean by “face,” and by “other?”

“Other” (sometimes capitalized, sometimes not) usually translates the French word autrui, which means “the other person,” “someone else” (i.e., other than oneself). It is thus the personal other, the other person, whoever it is, that each of us encounters directly or experiences the traces of every day. Of course, we encounter a multiplicity of others, but Levinas more often uses the singular “other” to emphasize that we encounter others one at a time, face to face.

By “face” Levinas means the human face (or in French, visage), but not thought of or experienced as a physical or aesthetic object. Rather, the first, usual, unreflective encounter with the face is as the living presence of another person and, therefore, as something experienced socially and ethically. “Living presence,” for Levinas, would imply that the other person (as someone genuinely other than myself) is exposed to me and expresses him or herself simply by being there as an undeniable reality that I cannot reduce to images or ideas in my head. This impossibility of capturing the other conceptually or otherwise indicates the other’s “infinity” (i.e., irreducibility to a finite [bounded] entity over which I can have power). The other person is, of course, exposed and expressive in other ways than through the literal face (e.g., through speech, gesture, action, and bodily presence generally), but the face is the most exposed, most vulnerable, and most expressive aspect of the other’s presence.

MaríaVictoria Marun

                                                

 

---

[1] Emmanuel Levinas (French: [ɛmanɥɛl ləvinas]; 12 January 1906 – 25 December 1995) was a French philosopher of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry who is known for his work related to Jewish philosophy, existentialism, ethics, Phenomenology and ontology. Some works: 1948. Le Temps et l'Autre (Time and the Other); 1982. Ethique et infini (Ethics and Infinity: Dialogues of Emmanuel Levinas and Philippe Nemo); 1984. Transcendence et intelligibilité;  1988. A l'Heure des nations;  1991. Entre Nous; 1995. Altérité et transcendence (Alterity and Transcendence)

 

 

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Bernie Mayer on September 7, 2017 at 2:52pm

Thanks for this very interesting comment Greg--putting this in a larger context is very helpful--and particular in terms of complexity.

Another larger concept is how the wealthy have historically used race (and more generally fear of the other) to divide and conquer those they exploit.  The history of this in the US is long and dismal.  As the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest becomes greater than ever, the steps taken to divide those who are being exploited are going to become more extreme.  For an interesting economic discussion of this--and how this is reflected in today's discussion of taxes in the US (but with implications elsewhere)--take a look at this from today's NY Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/07/opinion/trump-tax-increase.html?...

I would be curious about your take on whether this applies in any way to Australia (where we will be in January by the way).

• ▶ Reply

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• Next ›
• Page