Politics are among the most ancient,
enduring, and consequential sources of conflict, as they determine how power will be
distributed among people, including over life and death, wealth and poverty,
independence and obedience. Conflicts concerning these issues have shaped the
ways we have interacted as a species over the course of centuries. At their
core, as Hannah Arendt wrote, is the conflict that, "from the beginning of
our history has determined the very existence of politics: the cause of freedom
versus tyranny." Freedom and tyranny are factors not
only in conflicts between minorities and nation states, but also in small,
everyday conflicts between parents and teenagers, managers and employees,
governments and citizens, and wherever power is distributed unequally. If we
define political conflicts as those arising out of or challenging an uneven
distribution of power relational, religious, and cultural
power, it is clear that politics happens everywhere. In this sense, "the personal is
political," yet the political is also personal, due to globalization the
reach and speed of communication, reduced travel barriers, and increasing
environmental interdependency. We can even identify an ecology of
conflict, in which rapidly evolving international conflicts have the ability to
overwhelm safety and security everywhere. Conflicts in Afghanistan, Sudan,
Brazil, and East Timor can no longer be ignored, as they touch our lives in
increasingly significant ways. We therefore require improved
understanding, not only of the conflict in politics, but the politics in
conflict. As our world shrinks and our problems can no longer be solved except internationally,
we need ways of revealing, even in seemingly ordinary, interpersonal conflicts,
the larger issues that connect us across boundaries, and methods for resolving
political conflicts that are sweeping, strategic, interest-based, and
transformational. A clear, unambiguous reason for doing so occurred on
September 11, 2001. (See Kenneth Cloke's editorial on
the U.S. response to 9/11 -- which was originally part of this essay.)
GOOD AND EVIL IN CONFLICT:
Journalist H. L. Mencken wrote, decades
before September 11, that "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep
the populace in a continual state of alarm (and hence clamorous to be led to
safety) by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them
imaginary." While his description remains valid, our hobgoblins are no
longer imaginary. There are seemingly unending conflicts
between Palestinians and Israelis, Indians and Pakistani's, Irish Catholics and
Protestants, Turks and Kurds, Hutu's and Tutsi's. In addition to these, there
are countless conflicts around the globe between rich and poor,
despots and democrats, leftists and rightists, labor and management, natives
and settlers, ethnic majorities and minorities, environmentalists and
developers, each accusing the other of evil. The deepest and most serious of these
conflicts are no longer confined to the boundaries of nation states, but affect
everyone everywhere. Even outwardly minor disputes between competing
communities can rapidly escalate into
world crises, triggering the slaughter of innocents, rape, ethnic cleansing,
economic collapse, the ruin of eco-systems, and hatreds that cannot be
dissipated, even in generations. Each of these acts directly affects
the quality of our lives, no matter how far away we feel from the actual
fighting. Following these disasters come those
who pick up the pieces and start over again. While it is always helpful to
offer aid in food, clothing and shelter, the victims of these catastrophes also
need to develop skills in resolution, recovery, reconciliation, and
regeneration of community. Recovery requires
acknowledgement of grief and amelioration of loss. Resolution requires
the dismantling of systemic sources of conflict within groups and cultures that
actively promoted violence. Reconciliation requires
the ability to engage in public dialogue, and speak from the heart.Regeneration of
community requires the creation of a new culture based on collaboration,
compassion, and respect for
differences. Together, these require an understanding of how assumptions of
evil, even in petty, interpersonal disputes, lead to war and terrorism.
In political conflicts, it is common
for each side to label the other evil. Yet what is evil to one is often good to
another, revealing that evil is present in miniature in every conflict. Evil
sometimes originates in the attribution of blame to someone other than
ourselves for harm that has befallen us, or the assumption that our pain was
caused by our opponent's pernicious intentions. Blaming others for our
suffering allows us to externalize our fears, vent our outrage, and punish our
enemies, or coerce them into doing what we want against their wishes. It allows
us to take what belongs to them, place our interests over,
against, and above theirs, and ignore their allegations of our wrongdoing. Evil is not initially a grand thing,
but begins innocuously with a constriction of empathy and
compassion, leading ultimately to an inability to find the other within the
self. It proceeds by replacing empathy with antipathy, love with hate, trust with suspicion,
and confidence with fear. Finally, it exalts
these negative attitudes as virtues, allows them to emerge from hiding,
punishes those who oppose them, and causes others to respond in ways that
justify their use. A potential for evil
is thus created every time we draw a line that separates self from other within
ourselves. This line expands when fear and hatred are directed against others
and we remain silent or do nothing to prevent it; when dissenters are described
as traitorous or evil and we allow them to be silenced, isolated, discriminated
against, or punished; when negative values are exalted and collaboration,
dialogue, and conflict resolution are abandoned and we do not object. At a more subtle level, identifying
others as evil is simply a justification and catalyst for our own pernicious
actions. By defining "them" as bad, we implicitly define ourselves as
good and give ourselves permission to act against them in ways that would
appear evil to outside observers who were not aware of their prior evil acts.
In this way, their evil mirrors our diminished capacity for empathy and
compassion, and telegraphs our plans for their eventual punishment. The worse
we plan to do to them, the worse we need them to appear, so as to avoid the
impression that we are the aggressor. The ultimate purpose of every accusation
of evil is thus to create the self-permission, win the approval of
outsiders, and establish the moral logic required to justify committing evil
oneself. Allegations of evil are therefore
directly connected with the unequal distribution and adversarial exercise of
power.
The German philosopher Nietzsche wrote that perceptions of good and evil
originated historically in social relationships of domination and
dependency between unequal economic classes: [T]he judgement good does
not originate with those to whom the good has been done. Rather, it was the
"good" themselves, that is to say the noble, mighty, highly placed,
and high-minded who decreed themselves and their actions to be good, i.e., belonging
to the highest rank, in contradistinction to all that was base, low-minded and
plebian.... [Thus, the] origin of the opposites good and bad is
to be found in the pathos of nobility and distance, representing the dominant
temper of a higher, ruling class in relation to a lower, dependent one. In contemporary terms, if we, as
individuals or nations, believe ourselves to be good and possess more power
than others, we will naturally seek to justify our use of unequal power by
indicating our intention to use it for the benefit of those with fewer
resources who are less good. But without empathy, compassion, and power
sharing, this will inevitably evolve into a belief that whatever benefits us
must benefit them also. This will lead us to regard their criticism of our
self-interested benevolence as ill mannered and ungrateful, and their
opposition to our power as support for evil. We will then interpret their
desire for self-determination as
rebellion and perhaps, as in Vietnam, seek to "kill them for their own
good." In order to exercise our power without
experiencing injury or guilt, we are increasingly driven to dismantle our
empathy and compassion until we are no longer able to recognize our opponents
as similar to ourselves. We can then feel justified in wielding power selfishly
and attacking them, or anyone who tries to curb our power or equalize its
distribution. It is at this point that simple, natural, innocent, self-interest
begins its descent into evil. At every step, it is aided by anger, fear,
jealousy, pain, guilt,
grief, and shame and
the suppression of empathy and compassion. Yet all these dynamics occur on a small
scale in countless petty personal conflicts every day, and are used to justify
our mistreatment of others, including children, parents, spouses, siblings,
neighbors, employees, even strangers on the street. Every dominant individual,
organization, class, culture, and nation manufactures stories and allegations
of evil to justify withholding compassion, using power selfishly, and violating
their own ethical or moral principles in response to perceived enemies. Worse,
these small-scale justifications can be organized and manipulated on a national
scale to secure permission for war and genocide just
as war and genocide give permission to individuals to act aggressively and
resist reconciliation in their personal conflicts. For these reasons, we need to carefully
consider how, as individuals and nations, we define our enemies, disarm our
empathy and compassion, organize our hatreds, and rationalize our destructive
acts through conflict. For example, we frequently combine the following
elements to create circular definitions of
"the enemy":- Assumption
of Injurious Intentions (they intended to cause the harm we experienced)
- Distrust (every idea or
statement made by them is wrong or proposed for dishonest reasons)
- Externalization
of Guilt (everything
bad or wrong is their fault)
- Attribution
of Evil (they
want to destroy us and what we value most, and must therefore be
destroyed)
- Zero-Sum
Expectation (everything
that benefits them harms us, and vice versa)
- Paranoia
and Preoccupation with Disloyalty (any criticism of us or praise of them
is disloyal and treasonous)
- Prejudgment (everyone in the enemy
group is an enemy)
- Suppression
of Empathy (we have nothing in
common and considering them human is
dangerous)
- Isolation
and Impasse (blanket
rejection of dialogue, negotiation, cooperation, and conflict resolution)
- Self-Fulfilling
Prophecy (their
evil makes it permissible for us to be an enemy to them)
[Based partly on work by Kurt R. and
Kati Spillman]: We can deconstruct and transform each
of these elements, for example, by differentiating intention from effect, rebuilding trust through
small agreements, accepting responsibility for problems, identifying shared
values, adopting interest-based
processes, being self-critical and acknowledging, distinguishing
individuals within groups, extending empathy, engaging in dialogue and
negotiation, and refusing to behave in evil ways ourselves. To begin, we need
to recognize how evil is reflected in the language we use to describe our
conflicts, enemies, issues, and ourselves.
THE LANGUAGE OF CONFLICT:
In every country, there are not only
national languages and local dialects, but thousands of micro-languages,
ranging from professional terminology to ethnic phraseology, popular slang,
bureaucratic technicality, family vernacular, and generational jargon. There
are, for example, distinct languages for organizational management, political
candidacy, ethnic minorities, social classes, economic cycles, and criminal
pursuits. Each of these languages serves a unique purpose and produces unique
results in the attitudes and behaviors of those who use them. There is also a distinct language of
conflict. There is the conscious use of exaggerated statements to disguise
requests for reassurance, as in stock phrases such as "you always,"
and "you never." These words are not intended as statements of fact,
but mean "You do too much or too little of X for me" and "I
would appreciate it if you would do X less or more." Yet the mere use of
these phrases indicates the presence of deeper emotional problems, impelling us
to:
- Camouflage
our requests as statements of fact
- Exaggerate
the truth
- Stereotype others
as unreasonable
- Not
take responsibility for communicating our needs
- Fail
to accurately describe what we really want from others
- Miss
opportunities to become vulnerable and invite others into more intimate
conversation
- Ignore
others' needs, explanations, or reasons for acting in their self-interest
- Miss
openings to collaboratively negotiate for satisfaction of mutual needs
When we are uncomfortable with intense
emotions, or want to camouflage a hidden agenda, it becomes difficult to
describe our feelings accurately. When asked how we feel, we use words implying
that we are being coerced by
others, instead of words accepting responsibility for how we feel about what
others have done. Our words contain judgments -- not merely about what others
did, but of who they are. We say, for example, "He is
infuriating," or "He made me mad," instead of "I am
angry." Or, "She is a blabbermouth," instead of "I feel
betrayed." Or "He is out to get me," instead of "I am
afraid he is going to fire me." By translating or reframing these
statements, we convert a language of powerlessness into a language of empowerment,
just as do by turning"you"
statements into "I" statements, being precise about what
we are feeling, transforming conflict
stories, and recognizing that beneath accusations lie confessions and requests,
either of which serves our interests better. These are all valuable
interventions, but they do not address the underlying problem. A more careful
examination of the language used in political conflicts reveals a deep set of
issues. Psychologist Renana Brooks describes
the ways language is used to reinforce abuse and domination in power
relationships. She cites, for example, broad statements that are so abstract
and meaningless they cannot be opposed; excessive personalization of issues so
they can only be addressed individually; negative frameworks that reinforce
pessimistic images of the world; and inculcation of a "learned
helplessness" that assumes change is impossible. Mexican novelist Octavio
Paz describes how this deterioration of language reflects a broader social and
political decay: When a society decays, it is language
that is first to become gangrenous...and alongside oratory, with its plastic
flowers, there is the barbarous syntax in many of our newspapers, the
foolishness of language on loudspeakers and the radio, the loathsome
vulgarities of advertising -- all that asphyxiating rhetoric. A similar asphyxiation occurs in the
rhetoric of conflict as a result of distortions produced by adversarial
assumptions in speaking and listening, the strangled expression of intense
emotion, the coexistence of fear and rage, the weight and weightlessness of the
issues, the craving for revenge and forgiveness, and the simultaneous
exhibition of power and powerlessness, arrogance and humility, domination and
dependency. Language in organizations can also
become an instrument of domination and control, reinforcing assumptions of
hierarchy, bureaucracy and autocracy. Even seemingly innocuous corporate
expressions such as "upper management," "direct reports,"
"bottom line," "alignment," "getting people on
board," "raising the bar," "lean and mean,"
"accountability," "pushing the envelope," and similar
expressions reveal myths and assumptions that distort communications. In
similar ways, the language of law is replete with terminology conveying
arrogance, incomprehension, and hostility directed toward emotionality,
vulnerability, artistic thinking, human error, collective responsibility,
compassion, frivolity, redemption, play, and forgiveness.
LANGUAGE AND FASCISM:
In our time, political speech and
writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the
continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the
dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by
arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square
with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has
to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.
Defenceless villages are bombed from the air, the inhabitants are driven out
into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with
incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of
peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no
more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification
of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the
back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is
called elimination of unreliable elements. The simplification, distortion, and
abuse of language by turning it into propaganda is not restricted to fascist or
Stalinist states, but is responsive to a far deeper problem, which is the
forced, impossible effort to suppress half of a paradox or polarity, deny part
of a contradiction, and obstruct inevitable changes. Alex Cary, for example,
attributes the widespread use of propaganda to increasing conflict between democracy and
corporate power: The 20th century has been characterized
by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy,
the growth of corporate power, and the growth of propaganda as a means of
protecting corporate power against democracy. Yet the same distortion of language
into propaganda can be heard in statements made by US political leaders prior
to the war in Iraq, falsely collapsing Iraq into Saddam Hussein, accusing him
of hiding weapons of mass destruction that could threaten US cities, linking
September 11 to the Iraqi government, stereotyping Arabs as terrorists,
demonizing international opposition to the war, and making "preventive
war" seem necessary and inevitable. Similar distortions can also be recognized
in ordinary conflict stories, which routinely demonize and stereotype our
opponents, link them with events beyond their control, make them seem more
powerful than they actually are, ignore the systemic sources of our suffering,
personalize our problems, and trigger the fear and anger that make our
stories successful. For this reason, it is important to recognize that evil is
not something "out there," inside someone else, beyond our reach, or
in poorer nations, but also something "in here," inside ourselves,
within our reach, and happening every day in wealthier nations, including the
US.
ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICTS:
There have been countless conflicts in
the history of the world in which accusations of evil have been used to justify
the commission of atrocities. A painful example today is the Middle East, where
there is so much raw, unresolved grief and insensible hatred that antagonisms
feel more like civil wars than wars between opposing states. Entire nations
vie, not only in their capacity for revenge, but in their stubborn refusal to
accept the necessity of learning how to live together and accept joint
responsibility for their slaughter of innocents. As former Israeli Prime Minister
Golda Meir painfully noted: "We can forgive the Palestinians for murdering
our children, but we can never forgive them for forcing us to murder
theirs." When we examine these chronic
revengeful conflicts, we cannot exclude Ireland, the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda,
the Koreas, Southern Africa, and examples of internecine warfare and national
vendetta, from which no region is immune. By doing so, we can identify seven
features that routinely block resolution and invite assumptions of evil. These
include:
1. Continuous, intimate, non-consensual
relationships between closely related yet diverse parties
2. Gross inequalities in the allocation
and distribution of scarce resources, power, wealth, and status
3. Disrespectful, unfair, oppressive,
and exploitative attitudes and behaviors by those with more power against those
with less
4. Contemptuous, hostile, jealous, and
resentful attitudes and behaviors by those with less power against those with
more
5. Use of "legitimate"
forms of power to coerce or
manipulate outcomes favoring the powerful and disfavoring the powerless
6. Use of "illegitimate"
forms of power by the powerless to block or provide wider access to legitimate
forms of power controlled by the powerful
7. Sufficient accumulation of
unresolved grief, loss, fear, and pain on both sides to fuel allegations of
evil, suppress compassion, amplify rage, encourage revenge, and obstruct
closure
These features can also be found in a
wide range of personal, familial, organizational, social, economic, and
political conflicts. On every level and scale, we become stuck in conflicts and
justify our negative behaviors based on genuine experiences of pain and anger
that bolster our assumptions of evil. At a simple level, it feels logical:
"If I am good and have been hurt by you, it can only be because you are
the kind of person who hurts people for no reason." In the process, we
successfully disregard the injuries and insensitivities we caused, stereotype
our opponent, and justify our refusal to listen to their explanations or pain
because ours have not been heard or ameliorated. At a deeper level, everyone always and
everywhere seeks power or control over their environment, and few seek to share
it or are willing to be on the unequal side of its distribution. Yet power is
fluid by nature and cannot be fixed. This causes those who possess it to hoard
it and distrust anyone who does not, and those who lack it to act in ways that
justify its use and intensify their desire to seize it. Since neither side
knows how to collaborate without appearing to betray their family, nation,
culture, or cause, their conflict slips into a descending cycle of accusation
and denunciation, rebellion and repression, terror and war. The coexistence of intimacy with
inequality and exploitation inevitably leads the powerful to hold the powerless
in a subordinate, dependent position, triggering a polarization of attitudes
and cascade of aggressive behaviors that lead to accusations of evil on both
sides. A subconscious awareness of the unfairness of inequality and
exploitation in the minds of the powerful lead them to fear the loss of their
unequal status and the retributive violence of the powerless. This causes them
to become further entrenched, protect their gains, and resist liberalization,
democratization, collaboration, and conflict resolution, which require power
sharing. The powerful increasingly come to
believe they have only two alternatives: either agree to the demands of the
powerless and lose power for themselves, their families, friends, and what they
see as their civilizing mission; or use "legitimate" forms of power
to crush the powerless, thereby reinforcing the opposition of those they have
oppressed, strengthening their resistance, and encouraging them to use violence
or terror to achieve what they see as justice. These dynamics lead to stereotyping, prejudice,
discrimination, and marginalization
of the powerless, including genocide and
ethnic cleansing, on the assumption that the powerless as a group are
innately evil. In response, the powerless increasingly
come to believe they also have only two alternatives: either accept a
temporary, tactical surrender, thereby permitting inequality and exploitation
to continue unabated; or use what the powerful define as
"illegitimate" forms of power to break their monopoly and end their
exclusive control over power and resources, thereby reinforcing the fears of
the powerful, strengthening their resistance, and encouraging continued
destruction on both sides. Each side behaves toward the other in ways that
justify their worst fears, causing the engine of violence to turn in a
self-destructive circle. Using interest-based conflict
resolution methods, it is possible to identify a third choice for both sides,
which is to share their problems, acknowledge that they are brothers, recognize
that the true evil is not who they are, but their readiness to
regard each other as evil, and that they cannot brutalize each other without
brutalizing themselves. It is to understand that nothing can be gained through
other methods that is worth the cost; that their mutual slaughter has been a
gigantic, tragic, pointless waste; and that they can reach out at any time to
their opponents without glossing over their differences. It is to recognize
that there are no differences they cannot solve through dialogue, negotiation,
and conflict resolution, or that are worth the damage created by their
assumptions of evil. It is to engage in open, honest, collaborative, on-going
negotiations over issues of justice and equality; strengthen political,
economic, and social democracy; develop interest-based conflict resolution
skills; and elicit heartfelt communications that invite truth and
reconciliation.
HOW SHOULD WE RESPOND TO EVIL?
None of this is intended to imply that
there is no such thing as evil, or that it is justifiable, but rather that
there is a genesis and logic to its development which, when ignored, call forth
adjunct evils in response. Evil is like a cancer that replicates itself by
demanding its own destruction, but only through evil means. As the Greek
playwright Sophocles wrote, "With evil all around me/There is nothing I
can do that is not evil." Evil has been attributed to everything
from the external intervention of Satan to the natural, internal operations of
the Id. The French Philosopher Blaise Pascal thought it came from "being
unable to sit still in a room," while Novelist Jeanette Winterson wrote
that "to change something you do not understand is the true nature of
evil." Evil is simply the opposite of good, or rather, the good of one
that undermines or counteracts the good of another, as what benefits a parasite
destroys its host. Yet if good and evil are opposites, it is impossible to end
one without also ending the other. From a conflict resolution perspective,
evil is sometimes just a story describing what our opponents did to harm us,
while leaving out what we did to harm them. Sometimes it is a failure to
separate the act that caused harm from the people who engaged in it, or an
inability due to previous conflicts to experience empathy or compassion for
others. Sometimes it is negligence, accident, or false assumptions. Sometimes
it is deep disappointment, the outpourings of a culture of
defeat, or a desire to blame others for our own false expectations. Sometimes
it is a way of depriving others of the happiness we lost, or subconsciously
trying to recreate in others the conditions that caused us pain. As Mary
Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote: "No man consciously chooses evil because it
is evil, he only mistakes it for the happiness that he seeks." Yet there are people
who take pleasure in the suffering of others, and it is little consolation to
know they had an unhappy childhood or are merely mistaken in seeking their
happiness when we suffer as a result of their actions. While there is good in
the worst of us and evil in the best of us, there are hierarchies of evil, and
some, like those who engineered the holocaust, belong to a different order.
What, then, do we do in the face of such evil?
While there may be people, times, and
places when it is impossible not to answer violence with violence and evil with
evil, it is difficult to distinguish these moments from those that occur
everyday in ordinary interpersonal conflicts, except by subjective measurements
of their proximity and impact on us. The greater and closer the harm feels to us,
the easier it is to justify committing evil in response. Do minor evils then
justify minor evils in response? If so, where does it end? And who decides
which evil is worse, or whose suffering is greater and more deserving of
retribution? Many people view truth, forgiveness,
and reconciliation as laudable, yet impractical in the face of evil and terror,
and believe the only effective response is to crush them wherever they exist
with whatever power is available. Yet evil has always been a response to prior
evil acts that are used to justify the commission of equal or greater evils in
return. In this way, "eye for an eye" responses add to the total sum
of blindness, while assumptions of evil turn suffering in a circle. While there may be times, as Bertold
Brecht wrote, when it is necessary to "embrace the butcher" to end an
evil that will not desist until forced to do so, these cases cannot be
contained or defined. How do we know we are not simply transferring our pain to
someone else? When and how do we stop? What do we do in response to subtler
forms of terror, and commonplace evils? Who do we become as a result? At what
price? As Dwight Eisenhower told the London Guardian, "Every gun that is
made, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who
hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed." Ultimately, there are three consistent
responses to evil that do not end up replicating it. The first is to use
whatever means may be required to isolate, disarm,
and contain it, while at the same time addressing the underlying injustices
that brought it into existence. The second is to shift the way we react from power- to
rights- to interest-based approaches that do not invite evil
responses. The third is to systematically strengthen our skills and abilities
in heart-based communications, including forgiveness and reconciliation, which
disable evil at its source in the tormented hearts and minds of those who feel
powerless to end or grieve their suffering. These responses require us to encourage
dialogue, joint problem solving, and conflict resolution, while simultaneously
acting to discourage vengeance, retaliation, and unilateralism. They require us
to negotiate, especially with our enemies, while
simultaneously minimizing their ability to create harm. They require us to
accept responsibility, for example, for the rise of fascism, as a result of our
imposition of a vindictive Treaty at Versailles, unwillingness to confront
anti-Semitism, support for brutal Tsarist regimes that inspired the Russian
Revolution, lack of financial aid for the struggling Weimar Republic, failure
to assist the Spanish Republic, and similar acts. Finally, they require us to
recognize that can be no peace without justice there.
NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE:
FROM POWER AND RIGHTS TO INTEREST:
Political conflicts can only support
justice and serve as engines of constructive political, economic, and social development if
the means and methods by which they are resolved promote just, collaborative
ends. The principal means we have used to resolve political conflicts for
thousands of years have been oriented toward power, including war, genocide,
terror, domination,
and suppression of those seeking change. Over the last several centuries, we
have developed less destructive methods of resolving conflicts based on rights,
including adjudication,adversarial
negotiations, bureaucratic procedures, coercion,
and isolation of those seeking change. What we now require are interest-based
methods for resolving political, economic, and social conflicts that integrate peace with justice and
undermine resort to evil, including informalproblem solving,
collaborative negotiation, team and community building, consensus
decision-making, public dialogue, mediation and
actively rewarding those seeking change. The problem with most efforts to
suppress evil or redress injustices is that they adopt power- or rights-based
approaches which result in deeperpolarization,
resistance, and win/lose outcomes
that simply trade one form of evil or injustice for another. One side then
becomes frightened of going too far, tired of fighting, willing to tolerate
continuing injustices, and settles or compromises their conflicts rather than
resolving, transforming, or transcending them. 
Approaching evil and injustice from an
interest-based perspective means listening to the deeper truths that gave rise
to them, extending compassion even to those who were responsible for evils or
injustices, and seeking not merely to replace one evil or injustice with
another, but to reduce their attractiveness by designing outcomes, processes,
and relationships that encourage adversaries to work collaboratively to satisfy
their interests. Evil and injustice can therefore be
considered byproducts of reliance on power or rights, and failures or refusals
to learn and evolve. All political systems generate chronic conflicts that
reveal their internal weaknesses, external pressures, and demands for
evolutionary change. Power- and rights-based systems are adversarial and
unstable, and therefore avoid, deny, resist, and defend themselves against
change. As a result, they suppress conflicts or treat them as purely
interpersonal, leaving insiders less informed and able to adapt, and outsiders
feeling they were treated unjustly and contemplating evil in response. As pressures to change increase, these
systems must either adapt, or turn reactionary and take a punitive, retaliatory
attitude toward those seeking to promote change, delaying their own evolution.
Only interest-based systems are fully able to seek out their weaknesses,
proactively evolve, transform conflicts into sources of learning, and celebrate
those who brought them to their attention.
CONFLICTS AND POLITICAL CHANGE:
Yet we can go further and develop
preventative, strategic, scale-free approaches to conflict resolution that use storytelling techniques,
for example, to promote understanding between hostile social groups; public
dialogue techniques to stimulate understanding between representatives of
opposing points of view; public policy and environmental mediation techniques
to locate complex solutions to intractable political problems; prejudice
reduction and bias awareness techniques to increase
cross-cultural understanding; and heart-based techniques such as truth and
reconciliation commissions to promote reconciliation. Whether our conflicts are intensely
personal and between private individuals, or intensely political and between
nations and cultures, three critical areas require on-going improvement and
transformation. These are: our personal capacity for
introspection, integrity, and spiritual growth; our interpersonal capacity
for egalitarian, collaborative, heartfelt communication and relationships; and
our social, economic, and political capacity for designing
preventative, systemic, strategic approaches to conflict resolution, community,
and change. By creatively combining conflict
resolution systems design principles with strategic planning,
team building, meditation and spiritual practices, community organizing, and
heart-based conflict resolution techniques, we can significantly improve our
ability to resolve international political and cross-cultural disputes before
they become needlessly destructive. Yet conflict resolution carries a price in
the form of our willingness to listen to ideas we dislike and share power and
control over outcomes with people different from ourselves. Ultimately, transcending conflict means
giving up unjust, unequal power- and rights-based systems, and seeking instead
to satisfy interests, which is why we seek power and rights in the first place.
This means surrendering our power to take from others what does not belong to
us, and right to coerce them into giving what they are otherwise unwilling to
give. Accepting this price allows us to achieve a higher value and right, merge
peace with justice, and immensely improve our personal and political lives.
Cloke, Kenneth. "Mediating Evil, War, and
Terrorism: The Politics of Conflict." Beyond Intractability.
Eds. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Information Consortium, University
of Colorado, Boulder.
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