Not to prevent conflict

The job of the mediator is not to prevent conflict, nor even to eliminate it, but to find ways to have persons meet and live together, in the face of the conflict. I started to write “despite the conflict” but that is too narrow. The conflict is to be respected and encouraged; it is only the turning to violence that is the negative. Violence in fact comes out of the thinking that conflict is bad. In a diverse world, with divers peoples, conflict is not only inevitable, it is good, so we grow.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on January 13th, 2008 | No Comments »

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