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Episode #17: “How Hyper-Polarization Threatens Our Future” with Guy and Heidi Burgess (Part One)
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This week, Duncan welcomes Guy and Heidi Burgess onto the show. They talk about how people have a moral obligation to get involved in solving our problems, and that our current way of thinking isn’t working for us. Climate change and conflict have many similarities, and Heidi explains what they are.
Uncover why our political system is broken, and how we can start fixing it. We’re deeply polarized, and our media and politics play into this issue for their own gain. Polarization stops us from coming together, and we need to fight back against bad actors.
Are you ready to be a force for good in our world?
Highlights in this episode:
Discover how a man in Uzbekistan inspired the Burgesses to make their content accessible to all.
Heidi explains the similarities between climate change and conflict.
Guy talks about the issue with watching our favorite news channel.
Understand why it’s imperative we bring people together from different disciplines. (Maybe that’s you!)
Heidi calls for people in the field to get involved in teaching people how to deal with polarization.
Guy explains why we need to solve problems the same way doctors do.
Uncover why our political system just doesn’t work.
Duncan explains why issues aren’t as simple as yes or no or this or that.
Heidi: “The thing about climate change is that it's affecting everybody all over the globe, and it is an extremely complex problem. We don't entirely understand it. We don't know how to control it. We don't know how to measure it. We don't know how to fix it. We've got some ideas, and we're trying things out, but it's not a manmade system.
Certainly, people are contributing to it, but the whole system isn't an engineered system. So it can't be fixed the way an engineered system can be fixed. And it is a very serious problem that threatens to upend life for many, many people all over the globe. And conflict has the same dimensions. It has the potential for causing great harm to people all over the world.
It is somewhat understood, but not entirely ‘cause we don't understand any social systems in their entirety. We know some things about what causes it, but we don't know that much, and we don't know entirely how to fix it. And again, if we're gonna fix either of these problems, it's gonna take the efforts of everybody.
It can't just be solutions that are given to us by experts. Everybody across the world is gonna have to be involved in fixing it. And the reason that we're so concerned about conflict is that we think that, until we, as a society and as a globe, learn how to work with, manage, and resolve conflicts better, we're not gonna fix anything else.
The reason, the main reason why we can't in this country deal effectively with climate is we're still fighting over whether or not climate change is real. And we're certainly fighting about whose fault it is and who should pay for it. And until we can resolve those conflicts, we're not gonna make any progress on climate.”
About this week’s guests:
Guy and Heidi Burgess are a husband-and-wife team of Ph.D. social scientists. They have been studying, teaching, and practicing conflict resolution for 40+ years. They co-direct the Conflict Information Consortium and its underlying projects, Beyond Intractability and the Constructive Conflict Initiative. Their biggest focus is creating an online resource library on www.beyondintractability.org about peacebuilding, strengthening democracy, and conflict resolution.
Connect with Guy and Heidi:
Email: burgess@beyondintractability.org
Here are some resources from the show:
The Hyper-Polarization Crisis: A Conflict Resolution Challenge
A feature article, published in the Conflict Resolution Quarterly
Check out the info-packed episode page later this week for more awesome resources. It’s worth the wait 😉
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