The Handbook of Conflict Resolution (3rd ed)

by Peter T Coleman

  Cooperation is superior to competition. Deutsch’s Crude Law of Social Relations stipulates that “cooperation induces and is induced by a perceived similarity in beliefs and attitudes, a readiness to be helpful, openness in communication, trusting and friendly attitudes, sensitivity to common interests and de-emphasis of opposed interests, an orientation toward enhancing mutual power rather than power differences” (Deutsch, 1999, pp. 19–20). In contrast, unhelpful competition induces and is induced by coercion, threats, deception, suspicion, self-serving biases, poor communication, and attempts to enhance the power differences between oneself and the other.

  Matsumoto’s voyager needs what Barnett Pearce (2005) calls cosmopolitan communicative virtuosity. For a cosmopolitan communicator, disagreement is an opportunity for learning and constructing new realities. Disagreement is a dilemma—rather than a catastrophe—that calls for further exploration to find creative solutions. Virtuosity means a “grand passion” for what we are doing, an ability to make insightful distinctions and engage in skilled performance.

  The term for Gandhi’s concept of firm respect and warmth, satyagraha (nonviolent action), is assembled from agraha (firmness-force) and satya (truth-love). This is the social glue of “Big Love” that Western individualism has delegitimized and that we have to regain (Lindner, 2010). The sense of serenity that is expressed by the word sukha has kinship to many concepts that point at appreciation, care, communal sharing, appreciation of compassion, faith in shared humanity, and the experience of divinity through awe and wonderment in the face of the wonder that our world represents. Concepts such as personhood, dignity, rights, character, autonomy, integrity, shame, humility, and entrustment are all intertwined here. We also have a duty for self-respect. We cannot be moral citizens if we violate our own dignity. Finally, apology has the power to heal.

  Social psychologists have researched the role of framing. When students were asked to play a game where they had the choice of cooperating or cheating on one another (the prisoner’s dilemma game) and were told that this was a community game, they cooperated. They cheated on each other when told that the same game was a Wall Street game.

  When we combine cooperation and framing, we can conclude that the notion of global consciousness, if grounded in human rights ideals of equality in dignity, is the only frame that has the power to lift cooperation and its benefits from a haphazard to a systemic level. Only when our consciousness, our scope of justice, and our actions become globally inclusive can cooperation become the cultural norm also at local levels and put competition at its service. Only then can we end the competitive race to the bottom that drives long-term social and ecological destruction.

  Eve and Adam gradually learn that there are other definitions of love and happiness around, not just love defined as mutual dependence in submission-domination. It is like mastering a totally new language. All their hypotheses about what works and what does not work have to be redefined. Time and again they fall back. However, they do not give up. They even attempt to achieve a global unity consciousness, a grand passion to join in and co-create a new future for our human family.

  CONCLUSION

  We have the right to be equal whenever difference diminishes us; we have the right to be different whenever equality decharacterizes us.

  —Boaventura de Souza Santos

  The person who says “it cannot be done” should not interrupt the person doing it.

  —Chinese proverb

  Ever increasing global ecological and social challenges require global cooperation for their resolution. Conflict and emotion are at the core of both the problems and the solutions. Social emotions at the global level are no longer defined and channeled by a few diplomats. They are felt and responded to by millions of people and become salient for conflicts in the global village in unprecedented ways. Global terrorism is one outfall, a terrifying one. Avoiding important conflicts for the benefit of unnecessary conflicts or denial is equally malignant. Psychology will gain ever more significance at the global level, since political scientists deal with relations between states, a frame that moves into the background in tact with increasing global interdependence.

  Is humankind prepared? Two processes stand out: globalization and the rise of human rights ideals. Currently, this mixture is a recipe for heating up feelings of betrayal, humiliation, and conflict.

  Globalization entails both opportunities and risks. Ingathering helps us recognize and act on the fact that we are one human family that has to collaborate to survive on our only tiny home planet. However, globalization also opens new arenas for power abuse as it increases levels of anxiety and risks for misunderstandings. Traditional in-group/out-group demarcations, for instance, must be overcome. In-group pride, if built on out-group enmity, is destructive when a globally united in-group is what is needed. We must create a global family of creative diversity and attend to our family problems in ways that good families do.

  The rise of human rights ideals is fueled by feelings of humiliation, and it fuels feelings of humiliation. And this happens in the global public arena as much as at home. At this point in history, at all corners of the world, formerly legitimate humbling turns into illegitimate humiliation.

  This happens in myriad ways. When inequality—rather than karma—is understood as a violation of human rights, the result can be violent conflict. Conditions such as poverty, inequality, and conflicts of interest can all be addressed constructively by cooperative “waging of good conflict”; enabling environments can be built jointly; scarce resources can be shared. It is when feelings of humiliation emerge that trust is destroyed and seemingly unbridgeable rifts are created. Double standards and empty human rights rhetoric compound this situation: “To recognize humanity hypocritically and betray the promise, humiliates in the most devastating way by denying the humanity professed” (Stephan Feuchtwang, personal note to the author, November 14, 2002). If feelings of humiliation are not overcome constructively, cooperation at best fails; at worst, violence ensues. Feelings of humiliation thus cross-cut other explanations of violence.

  All this is occurring at a time when humankind remains blind to the fact that it is emotionally unprepared. We have to learn to move back and forth, get into the others’ perspectives and feelings, and then step back into our own perspective. We have to learn to stay calm and use frustration creatively with imagination and inspiration. For that we need to nurture qualities of curiosity, courage, and patience in ourselves and in others.

  We must attend to our negative emotions first, knowing that they are the gatekeepers to our deeper, more positive capacities. However, “positive thinking” can be overdone—we do not want to descend into “blissful ignorance.” We need to learn how to foster positive feelings that are firm and take from negative feelings what is constructive.

  We must learn to wage good conflict through mutual entrustment and cooperative problem solving. It is not a question of some experts possessing a collection of smart techniques. We, all members of the global community—the global street, so to speak—have to forge new practices and institutions locally and globally. This chapter offers guidelines.

  We can no longer continue to hope that strategies of domination and submission will bring peace, justice, and love—at home or abroad. An adversarial culture with combative communication styles of sending messages of strength to each other triggers the fight-or-flight avoidance system and deepens rifts. In a globalizing world, the traditional pathways of defense and security can be suicidal.

  Human security means keeping a formerly fragmented world united in a new global in-group, a global community. To reach that end, the available cultural diversity within the human family must be harnessed in unity. Elements that violate equal dignity or are divisive no longer have a place. Cultural diversity needs to be increased. It is as crucial to protect and nurture cultural diversity as it is to protect biodiversity. However, diversity enriches only when embedded into the unity of respect for individual dignit
y and choice, the unity of acknowledging that culture is neither fixed nor unequivocally good (since cultural difference can also humiliate or be the result of humiliation). Subsidiarity is the way to achieve this. Subsidiarity is a word that points at layered approaches, be it the loops in our brain at the microlevel or, at the macrolevel, the way to organize societal institutions.

  We live in historical times when realistic optimism is warranted. Did our ancestors see pictures of our blue planet from the perspective of an astronaut? Did our grandparents have access to as comprehensive a knowledge base as we have about the universe and our place in it? Mature global citizenship can overcome the security dilemma as well as the commons dilemma (the problem that commons are vulnerable to free-riders and raiders). The present ingathering of humankind opens a window of opportunity to manifest Gandhi’s tenet that peace is the path.

  During my global life in all corners of our planet, I have experienced wonderful Buberian I-Thou orientation, connected knowing (rather than separate knowing, Mary Belenky), let-it-flow thinking (rather than verdict thinking, S. M. Miller), listening into voice (Linda Hartling), flourishing (Martha Nussbaum, Amartya Sen), and dialogue (Paulo Freire).

  I have coined the term egalization to connote the true manifestation of equality in dignity and match the word globalization to form the term globegalization (Lindner, 2006, 2010). And my term dignism means nurturing unity in diversity, preventing unity from being perverted into oppressive uniformity, and keeping diversity from sliding into hostile division (Lindner, 2012a).

  The Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies network (www.humiliationstudies.org), and the World Dignity University initiative (www.worlddignityuniversity.org) are examples of initiatives that work for a world where every newborn finds space and is nurtured to unfold his or her highest and best, embedded in a social context of loving appreciation and connection—a world where the carrying capacity of the planet guides the way in which everybody’s basic needs are met and where we unite in our respect for equal human dignity while celebrating our diversity.

  This is also the message of the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution, which was founded by Morton Deutsch and is headed by Peter Coleman. Its message is that cooperation is superior to competition—not the cooperation that serves global exploitation of resources for special interests, but global cooperation for the common good of all, for a new ethics of mutuality and care, for a new definition of success, wealth, well-being, and fulfillment. This can succeed only through understanding Deutsch’s reminder that in an interdependent world, fates are linked in a way that all sink or swim together. And this requires that we all, every member in the global family, develop a sense of truly responsible global citizenship (Lindner, 2010).

  In the final analysis, as Marshall McLuhan said, “There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.” We cannot expect that our diplomats will foster sufficient global cooperation on the conflicts that we need to solve if we wish to survive as a species. We all have to step in. Traditional sources of love, such as parental or romantic love, friendship, or charity, will not be enough. We must learn to nurture, intentionally and proactively, a new level of love to achieve global cohesion: the glue of worldwide interhuman love. Let us learn to be the family we are on our tiny home planet.

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