Newsletter #169 — October 30, 2023
Colleague Activities
Highlighting things that our conflict and peacebuilding colleagues are doing that contribute to efforts to address the hyper-polarization problem.
- Bridge Building
Peace: We Build It! Building Bridges Amid Division: Understanding America's Conflict Dynamics — In this podcast, AfP Executive Director Liz Hume discusses identity-based grievances, polarization, and social cohesion in the U.S with three experts across the political spectrum. - Bridge Building
Belonging Design Principles: A resource guide for building belonging — From the Othering and Belonging Institute, a set of ideas about how society can organize itself so that no one is "othered," and we all collaborate to build a society in which everyone wants to live. - Constructive Communication
The Horizon's Project Sensemaking Podcasts — Sensemaking, or what we'd call framing, is essential for understanding what's happening and how to respond to world events. Here are six short videos with leading peacebuilders about their sensemaking practices. - Trust / Trust Earning
Why a Lack of Trust Is So Damaging: Three surprising ways to build greater trust. — We can build greater trust in our lives by focusing on relationships, consistency, and expertise. - The Hyper-Polarization Threat
Why those concerned about worst-case Trump scenarios should see depolarization as important — Helping Americans get along better doesn’t mean us all liking each other. It means us disagreeing better; disagreeing in healthier, less toxic, less hateful ways so we can all move forward to what we want. - Leadership
Future Summit 2023: Shaping Leaders for a Unified Governance — In an era marked by political polarization and complex challenges, the annual summit plays a pivotal role in collectively shaping the trajectory of policymaking for young legislators. - Bridge Building
Bridge Entertainment Labs — Accelerating the creation of content that fosters social cohesion and pluralistic norms to transform the way Americans see and engage with each other across divides.
Beyond Intractability in Context
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.
- Cancel Culture
Sick of Cancel Culture? One Man Has a Surprising Solution. — An interview with Greg Lukianoff of the Foundation For Individual Rights in Education explaining an important new book and why the belief that having "to destroy freedom to save freedom" is a formula for tyranny. - Psychological Complexity
Talking Past Each Other: How Ideographs Hamper Mutual Understanding — More insight into the psychological complexity of human thought and communication. This article focuses on ideographs and how they influence our ability to understand one another. - Race / Anti-Racism
Why identity politics is poisonous to the ideal of human equality — Well-documented reflections on identity politics, the Plessy vs Ferguson Supreme Court decision (which enshrined the "separate but equal" doctrine), and the idea of human equality - Critical Theory
The End of Allyship — An assessment of the role that unquestioning "allyship" has played in a hyper-polarizing society by preventing constructive criticism. - Psychological Complexity
Diseases of the Intellect — A provocative exploration of some of the psychological dynamics that prevent us from constructively responding when things go wrong. - Race / Anti-Racism
Why My Generation Hates Jews — A heartbreaking account of how the now common educational practice of bifurcating society into oppressed and oppressor groups has metastasized in ways that have produced a generation with deeply anti-Semitic beliefs -- all of the name of social justice. - Climate Change
The Environmentalist Playbook Is Broken — An essay examining ways in which an inability to constructively navigate the many conflicts associated with the transition to a net zero energy economy is threatening to undermine the entire effort. - Pursuing a Unifying Common Vision
Searching for Humanity in the Middle East — From David Brooks, an extremely perceptive analysis of the principal frames/paradigms good people are using to make sense of events surrounding the Hamas' attack. To our three frames, he adds a fourth (which he says is even more important), "authoritarian nihilism." - Superpower Conflict
A World Without American Deterrence — While the United States has, during its reign as a superpower, done lots of truly terrible things, it does not necessarily follow that American decline will make things better. There is a critical need for better ways of deterring aggression and combating evil. - Critical Theory
Thomas Sowell on the Trouble With ‘Social Justice’ — We often take the pursuit of social justice as a desirable end in and of itself, without ever really being clear about what, exactly, it means. This article tries to force us to think more critically about the term. - Race / Anti-Racism
Robin DiAngelo Thinks Society Will Never Improve — A challenge to the depressing assertion that society is horrible and racist and can never be improved. - Social Complexity
The Missing Context — From Francis Fukuyama, an especially thoughtful and objective effort to explain the context surrounding Hamas' attack on Israel and the ensuing war. - Hate Mongering
What a lonely time to be a Jew in America — Reflections on the terrifying and heartbreaking experience of being a Jew in a world where so many excuse and, often, celebrate the barbarity of Hamas' attack on Israel and anti-Semitism, more generally. - Large-Scale Violence
I Might Have Once Favored a Cease-Fire With Hamas, but Not Now — From longtime peace negotiator, Dennis Ross, a description of what he sees as the most promising path toward a better future for both Israelis and Palestinians. - Israel / Hamas War
The Victory Hamas Has Already Won — An analysis of the depressingly successful strategy that Hamas has used to turn its barbarous conduct into a winning political strategy and thoughts about the terrible precedent that this sets. - Israel / Hamas War
As Gazans Scrounge for Food and Water, Hamas Sits on a Rich Trove of Supplies — A detailed look at what Hamas' strategy of using civilian shields looks like in actual practice and a description of the elaborate fortifications it has constructed and supplied under Gaza's civilian population. - Nihilists
A Different Concept of Death — An exploration of an especially troubling aspect of Hamas' war against Israel -- suicide bombers and martyrdom. This is something that has huge implications on the battlefield and for prospects of negotiating a coexistence-based resolution of the conflict. - Large-Scale Violence
What a Ground Campaign in Gaza Will Look Like — From a military perspective, an especially detailed and honest assessment of the unfathomable horrors likely to accompany Israel's invasion of Gaza and an explanation of why some better method of defeating Hamas is so badly needed. - Disinformation
The online information ecosystem during the Israel-Gaza crisis — In addition to its relatively narrow military objectives, the Gaza war is, perhaps most importantly, the battle for the hearts and minds of the global population. This article looks at the high-tech information ecosystem in which this battle will be fought. - Constructive Communication
My Friend, The Zionist — A rare look at what an in-depth conversation between friends who have been divided by an extraordinarily deep, and perhaps unbridgeable, conflict looks like.
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