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
- Don’t Worry About Donald Trump. Worry About Yourself. -- An important reminder that demonizing those with whom we disagree is actually a direct and serious threat to our own welfare. -- Jan 07
- Colleague and Context Posts for the Week of January 7, 2024 -- Readings on Israel/Hamas war recommended by readers, more colleague activities articles and news, and writing from people in allied fields. -- Jan 06
- What Biden Needs to Tell Us -- From David Brooks, a must-read essay about how both the left and the right have abandoned win-win politics – the idea that our problems can be solved in mutually beneficial ways. -- Jan 06
- Growing Strawberries on Coconut Trees: The Nature of Peace and Peacebuilding in a Collectivist and Illiberal World -- To understand why the peacebuilding field has failed to live up to its lofty ambitions, we have to unpack the world we inhabit today. Peacebuilding is not possible in many societies, and peacebuilders need to understand where their processes can work and where they cannot. -- Jan 05
- U.S. Election BI in Context Posts for January 3, 2023 -- A compendium of ideas from conflict strategists about the nature of the US hyper-polarization problem and ways to address that. -- Jan 02
- A New Year's Gift from Jay Rothman: 31 Definitions of Peace and You -- An exercise to help us all appreciate our inner and social experiences of peace, wholeness, and connection, as defined by many cultures around the world. -- Jan 01
- Humanism and Its Discontents -- A review and summary of an important new book looking at the evolution of humanistic philosophy and the difficult struggle to build societies based on that idea. -- Dec 20
- What Happens When We Have ANOTHER Election That Both Sides Absolutely Positively Can't Afford to Lose? -- The US 2024 presidential election is shaping up to be extremely challenging to U.S. democracy, but there are things that can be done to make sure it is both trustworthy and trusted. -- Dec 20
- Colleague and Context Posts for the Week of December 17, 2023 -- More thoughtful articles from colleagues, the media, and writers in allied fields. -- Dec 18
- If you care about movements, you have to care about leaders -- Leadership is the single most important indicator of the likelihood of success for any movement for good or for ill. -- Dec 16
- Why liberalism and leftism are increasingly at odds -- A really thoughtful analysis of the increasingly significant conflict that is emerging between social justice progressives and traditional liberals. -- Dec 16
- Jack Williams and the Burgesses Discuss the Israel/Hamas War - Part 1 -- An exchange between the Burgesses and Jack Williams examining how the Burgesses have come to make the several controversial assertions with respect to the Israel and Hamas war. -- Dec 15
- The Orwell Test -- Thought-provoking reflections on what one of history's leading experts on authoritarianism might think of contemporary politics and the many people who are trying to co-opt his ideas. -- Dec 15
- Envisioning a Future (Almost) Everyone Will Want to Live In -- How much could we change if we could just accept the fact that "America belongs to all who live here" and we set about the task, as South Africans did, to figure out how we could make that work for everyone? -- Dec 13
- What is Peacebuilding -- The Alliance for Peacebuilding's new "story map" that explains what peacebuilding is and how it is done in words everyone can understand. -- Dec 13
- Why America Abandoned the Greatest Economy in History -- Reflections on what it was that made the United States' economy so phenomenally productive and thoughts about why those sources of strength are being abandoned. -- Dec 13
- Countermeasures for Mitigating Digital Misinformation: A Systematic Review -- This Synthesis Report reviews the findings from 588 peer-reviewed publications, from around the world and many disciplines, to highlight the most effective countermeasures for disinformation. -- Dec 12
- Intersectionality Can Be Beneficial to Peacebuilding: Jay Rothman -- Jay Rothman shared his 2013 article in which "intersectionality" is seen as aiding intergroup cooperation, not harming it. -- Dec 11
- Colleague and Context Posts for the Week of December 10, 2023 -- Reports from colleagues and others in allied fields about US democracy and related topics. -- Dec 10
- Why I Am a Liberal -- A defense of liberalism and an explanation of why it offers a more unifying vision for the future than the views now dominant on the left and right. -- Dec 07
- Is Intersectionality Dangerous or Benign? Colin Rule Weighs In -- Colin Rule says that intersectionality means that all oppressed people should support each other in their mutual efforts to realize their basic human rights to live in peace and have self determination, and hence is good. -- Dec 07
- Lisa Schirch's 5-Point Peace Plan for Israel, Hamas, and the Palestinians More Broadly + Katja Rieger's Comments -- Both Israelis and Palestinians deserve safety, justice, and dignity. They will only find these basic human rights when they can give them to each other. -- Dec 06
- Massively Parallel Peacebuilding: A Strategy for Building a Democracy That Lives Up to Its Ideals -- A summary of the Burgess's latest thinking about massively parallel peacebuilding and democracy building explaining how it is already taking place on a large scale. -- Dec 02
- The Global State of Democracy Initiative -- This Initiative provides evidence-based, balanced analysis and data on the state and quality of democracy for 173 countries, producing a variety of indices and an annual report. -- Nov 30
- Isolationism Makes a Perilous Moment More So -- Given the world's many complexities and dangers, it is understandably tempting to withdraw from it all. This article explains why that would be a big mistake. -- Nov 30
