Conflict News and Opinion Blog
From around the web, more insight into the nature of our conflict problems, limits of business-as-usual thinking, and things people are doing to try to make things better.
Beyond Intractability's efforts to promote more constructive approaches to conflict occur within the larger context of efforts to promote wise and equitable solutions to a broad range of social problems. This blog highlights readable news and opinion articles, "infographics" and reports that help us understand the costs--and hence, urgency -- of the conflict problem, the dynamics that make it so difficult, alternative responses, and innovative success stories about people who have successfully confronted various aspects of the problem in different settings.
Frontiers Seminar posts offer articles and video lectures that offer a more in-depth look at many of the ideas being discussed in the
Hyper-Polarization Discussion
There are four ways to participate in BI Seminars and Discussions.
- Visiting and Searching: Browse the BI homepage or particular seminar landing pages (particularly the right side) to see what's new (or what you may have missed), or use our search tool if you are looking for specific information.
- Subscribe to Our Free Substack Newsletter: You can sign up for Beyond Intractability's newsletter and get updates about everything that is new sent directly to your email.
- Discuss: We are inviting anyone with thoughts on how to better meet the many challenges posed by hyper-polarization to contribute their ideas to the ongoing BI/CRQ discussion on the topic. The invitation to participate contains more details.
- Contribute: We, of course, appreciate financial contributions which we are now collecting with a GoFundMe Page. We also welcome suggestions about anything that might be done to strengthen Beyond Intractability, as well as information about things that you are doing that relate to BI. (We add information about these activities to our Colleague Activities Blog.)
- Obama challenged the notion that "the only way to win is to scold and shame and out yell the other side." -- Obama’s DNC Speech Had a Hidden Message to Democrats
- A thought-provoking and doubtless controversial look at the ways in which Hamas has managed to weaponize global sympathy for the plight of the Palestinian people (a plight that they deliberately cultivated). -- Weaponizing Sympathy: 'Pro-Palestinian' blackmail takes center stage.
- A provocative essay exploring the intersection between technology and culture. -- The Hacking of Culture and the Creation of Socio-Technical Debt
- A personal account of both the horror of being one of Hamas' hostages, and the horror that follows when one becomes a focal point in the globa propaganda war over the war on Gaza. -- I was a captive of Hamas. After I was freed, I was imprisoned by online trolls.
- An explanation of the ways in which Democrats used, during their recent Convention, patriotic imagery to alter popular perceptions that they have been overly critical of the United States. -- The Democrats embraced patriotism after all
As BI tries to understand the broader context surrounding today's most divisive and intractable conflicts, we have started to compile a list of Newsletters that offer important perspectives that supplement those provided by mainstream news sources.
The full text of the Beyond Intractability system, external articles cited by the Beyond Intractability In Context, and other useful conflict-related articles can be searched using our Google Custom Search Engine.
We welcome your suggestions of articles and other materials that we should post in this blog. If they are things written by yourself, though, please also consider contributing them to the "Colleague Activities Blog"
