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In Conflict Revolution – Mediating Evil, War, Injustice and Terrorism, author, lawyer and mediator Kenneth Cloke proposes that we revolutionize the way we resolve armed conflict, global warming, terrorism, catastrophic species extinction and, yes, who should do the dinner dishes tonight. Household chores aside, few people have the audacity to even suggest that problems on this scale, of this complexity and with this persistence can be solved. Reduced, maybe. The sharpest edges rounded. The problems contained, diminished or off-shored. But solved?
As Cloke warns:
Every change entails a loss of certainty stimulated by the temporary transition from order to disorder, even if it is only in preparation for evolving to a higher, more successful level of order. Change therefore means, at least on a transitional and symbolic basis, surrendering the need for order and control, and accepting the inevitability of a period, however brief, in which there is disorder and loss of control.
We are a fractious, competitive, self-seeking, emotion-driven species. We compete for property, power and prestige. We wrestle with one another for the affection of our family members, potential romantic partners, and the esteem of our communities. We are fearful of hunger, thirst, disease and exposure. Living in a world of scarce resources and limited opportunities, we see your gain as our loss.
That we have resolved our conflicts over scarce resources for millions of years without wiping ourselves from the face of the earth is the most surprising thing about us. Confronted with our documented taste for one another’s blood, the only apparent explanation for our persistence as a species is our lack of the technology to finish the job. Now that self-extinction is possible, we either move to the next level of conflict resolution or we die. But where do we begin?
The medicines Cloke prescribes as remedies for our local and global conflict “dis-ease” are not new. As Cloke notes from the start:
Mediation, informal problem-solving, group facilitation, collaborative negotiation, public dialogue, prejudice reduction, and other conflict resolution techniques have amply demonstrated, in countless conflicts over the last three decades, that there is a better outcome than winning and losing, a more successful process than accusation and blaming, and a deeper relationship than exercising power over and against others.
What is new about Cloke’s conflict therapy is how thorough-going it is. This book contains the architecture necessary for the transition from the flying buttresses of Notre Dame to the curvaceous steel exteriors of a Frank Gehry concert hall. Cloke reminds us that the exterior creates an interior and the interior makes the exterior possible. Therefore, to make the transition from a rights-based to an interest-based society, we need not only to transform our own ways of viewing conflict but also to change the way we see our political, social, and economic systems.
To pick up these new conflict resolution tools, we first need to put down the ones we’ve been using with such mixed results. Why should we? Because, as Cloke explains, the resolution of conflicts based upon rights requires the use of: legislation, litigation, adversarial negotiation, bureaucratic coercion, rules and regulations, contractual agreements, and policies and procedures.
And those “rights based processes” tend to:
generate winners and losers, undermine relationships, and result in collateral damage, . . . Since rights rely on rules, change is discouraged, though not prevented, and conflicts are settled rather than prevented or resolved.
We begin to change by taking a look at the institutions that contain us and our bickering clan. Cloke writes:
Most efforts at resolution. downplay or ignore the profound influence that social and cultural environments have on conflicts, and rarely examine or seek to resolve the underlying social assumptions, myths, mores, expectations, and ways of thinking and behaving that link seemingly isolated individual conflicts with the methods by which people ascribe and interpret their meaning.
If we do not recognize and provide for the context in which conflict arises, we have no hope of resolving our differences at either the individual or the societal level.
Have we done this before? Yes we have. Not so long ago, an entire generation of post-war women came together to learn about the social and political causes underlying their very personal and frustrating limitations. It was called “consciousness raising.” Did our education of repression lead us to wallow in self-pity? No. We went back to school. We changed our career aspirations from the three or four we believed to be available to us (waitress, wife, teacher, nurse) to the multitude we now inhabit as rightly our own—professor, lawyer, doctor, mechanic, machinist, welder, cabbie, firefighter.
As Cloke observes: Social evolution and personal transcendence are . . . . linked. Each may take place in isolation, internally, and personally; or collectively, externally, and socially. We are therefore led to consider how conflict resolution principles might be used to proactively design social conditions that encourage the prevention, resolution, transformation, and transcendence of individual and social conflicts.
To the adage “know your enemy,” Cloke adds the exhortation that we also know ourselves and our friends, our comforts and our addictions, our fears and our resistance to change. If name be needed for our enemies, let them be called Prejudice, Nationalism, Xenophobia, Discrimination, Domination, Orthodoxy, even Capitalism, Competition and Money. But do not expect Cloke to take “sides” in the cultural and political wars of the 20th Century. Cloke is not talking about change. He is talking about transformation and transcendence:
For transformation and transcendence to occur systemically, we not only need to eliminate the social, economic, and political sources of chronic conflict, but to shift the paradigm of change itself, creating a “revolution in the revolution,” and changing the way we change . . . .
After an exhaustive analysis of successful revolutions followed by failed economic and cultural orders; the triumph of a market economy that rests upon the back of an oppressed and impoverished “third” world; the problem of evil, the persistence of injustice and the horrors of terrorism, Cloke brings it all back home. Changing the way we change, he tells us will. . . . require us to recognize that interest-based conflict resolution techniques carry a price in our willingness to listen to people and ideas we do not like or agree with, and to share power and control over outcomes with people who are very different from ourselves. Ultimately, transcending conflict means giving up unequal, inequitable, and autocratic power- and rights-based practices and institutions and seeking instead to satisfy interests and the reasons people adopt power and rights approaches in the first place. . . .
In the penultimate section of Conflict Revolution, Cloke outlines the ways in which our existing systems can be redesigned. In many cases, these redesigned systems already exist, including victim-offender mediation for crimes against “the people”; peer mediation programs for conflict in our public schools; and workplace conflict resolution systems. Others will require the revolution in resolution that Cloke prescribes such as creating alternatives to capitalist and socialist markets; and designing interest-based political institutions.
Cloke has described himself as having an optimistic heart and a pessimistic mind. In forming Mediators Beyond Borders, Cloke has put both heart and mind together to raise the questions and implement the solutions outlined in Conflict Revolution. As Cloke explains:
The most effective international projects, in my experience, have been those that extend over decades, with people returning year after year to follow up, learn what worked and what didn’t, and provide fresh information, more advanced techniques, and nuanced advice as circumstances evolve and change. It will undoubtedly take considerable effort and commitment to design and implement such projects. Yet, as conflict has no borders, neither does compassion, or commitment to making a difference. We can only choose whether we will be distant, helpless victims of what we mistakenly regard as other people’s tragedies, or active participants in resolving disputes in our own human family, regardless of where, how, or among whom they are occurring.
This call to action—made expressly to mediators—has already been answered. The Founding Congress of Mediators Beyond Borders met this February at a retreat in Colorado to plan projects, discuss strategy, and to learn from one another how to transform conflict into committed activism worldwide.
The good news about this book is that you can begin to practice its principles right now. You do not have to believe Mr. Cloke’s thesis. You needn’t take an oath or recite a pledge. The resolution technology presented here will work whether you believe it will or not. Pick up a single tool offered by Cloke and try it out on something simple—household chores come immediately to mind. If that works, take another look at Cloke’s prescriptions and widen the scope of your effort. Eventually, you will become one of the millions and tens of millions in possession of the “secret” to saving the planet. And because this work requires courage, keep in mind what Ralph Waldo Emerson so long ago reminded us—what lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
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RESOURCES
Cloke, Kenneth, Conflict Revolution Mediating Evil, War, Injustice and Terrorism – How Mediators Can Help Save the Planet, Janis Publications, April 2008.
