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The Future of Conflict Resolution

This is a PAST event. See "Meeting Notes" section for audio, video, documents and other information.

Original event date/time: Friday August 25th, 2006, 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm

Annie Mannering will be leading a discussion on "The Future of Conflict Resolution". The discussion will focus on the prospects for peaceful conflict resolution in the future.

Abstract:

This is a past event.

Meeting Notes:

Our topic was "The Future of Conflict Resolution". We started with Annie Mannering's list of questions:

• What do we mean by peace? What would that look like?

• Is the world more peaceful than in the past? Is there a progression toward peace in human history?

• How does peace relate to the holy trinity of love, truth, and beauty?

• Do people really want peace? Enough to make any sacrifice, work for it, nurture it? What would you do?

• How does nature, especially human nature, help or hinder peace? Do we as humans have the biological ability to understand, want, make peace?

• What are the trends, official and not, toward peacemaking? Are these effective strategies?

• What are some of the organizations, individuals, themes addressing peace? What conditions have or might promote peace? Are these possible?

• Is "conflict resolution" as good as it gets? What is it and where is it going?

• What personal experiences have you had in conflict resolution & peacemaking in your personal life? Could these have a broader application?

• What do peace protesters accomplish?

A lot of our discussion centered on two things, technology, and human nature. And within the "human nature" area, there were "positive" and "negative" aspects.

In the "technology" area, we discussed things such as how, in the last 50 years since the invention of the nuclear weapon, warfare has gone down. However, we could not be certain this trend would continue. Also the increased interconnectedness brought about by the internet and other technology, mass media, etc, which seems to have both good and bad effects (increased communication and understanding but also increased sensationalism distortion, propaganda, etc).

In the "human nature" area, in the "negative" area we talked about "might makes right", how humans tend to disregard truth in favor of power and status, innate obedience to authority, the tendency for whoever has political and military power to define the rules of morality, etc.

On the "positive" side, people are capable of great empathy and seeking morality. A lot of these ideas fall under the umbrella of "spirituality". Leaders like Abraham Lincoln and FDR developed their sense of empathy and used it for tremendous positive change. Everyday citizens do the same thing every day. So the question is, how can the "positive" be encouraged while the "negative" aspects of human nature reduced?

We also discussed conflict out of the context of warfare, such as competition for wealth and poverty.

A lot of our discussion centered on one particular conflict -- the Israel-Palestine conflict. It is important because of its potential to escalate into broader conflict in the world, and it gets a lot more press than other world conflicts because it involves people that "look like us, talk like us, have a common culture with us" (more so than, say, two African tribes).

And it makes an interesting case study because of its apparent total intractability. None of us had any idea how this conflict could be resolved. Clearly anyone who could figure out how to resolve this conflict would be achieving a great breakthrough in the art of conflict resolution.

Anyway, that about sums it up. For those of you that missed the meeting, unfortunately we don't have any audio this time. (Amanda, who has our recording gear, couldn't make it this month. We missed you Amanda.)