Massively Parallel Peace and Democracy Building Links for the Week of January 12, 2025 -- Part 2
Newsletter #312 - January 15, 2025
Note: This is the second of two compilations of links collected over the holiday break.
Second note: Suzanne Ghais pointed out an error in our last newsletter. In reference to the article entitled "The Age of Depopulation: Surviving a World Gone Gray," we said that the world population was decreasing. It is not. The birth rate is decreasing, which is expected to lead to decreasing population in the future. Thanks, Suzanne!
Reader Suggested Links
Highlighting links suggested by our readers. Please send us links to things that you find useful.
Progressive Left
Why Antisemitism Sprouted So Quickly on Campus — From Jonathan Haidt, a must-read look at ways in which the left's oppressor/oppressed mindset is taking us deeper into the morass of mutual hate and closer to embracing acts of extreme violence.Media Reform
This company rates news sites’ credibility. The right wants it stopped. — Those wishing to be good citizens desperately need a reliable way of evaluating the credibility of various information sources. This article tells the story of the difficulties faced by one such effort.Superpower Conflict
Europe, on the brink, faces a pileup of threats for 2025 — For those who might have thought that Trump was the only threat facing democratic societies, a review of the many difficulties facing Europe.Terror
America, Afghanistan and the Price of Self-Delusion — As the world slides ever closer to another series of military confrontations, an appeal for the United States to look honestly at what it did in Afghanistan and why the mission ended in failure.Education
Why Is Academia A Fraud Factory? — A provocative exploration of the ongoing epidemic of scientific fraud and thoughts about what it will take to fix it.Israel / Hamas War
Everybody Hates the Jews — For a time when the social justice left is so fond of demonizing "hate groups," thoughts about why hating Jews has somehow become acceptable.Terror
Behind Afghanistan’s Fall, U.S.-Backed Militias Worse Than the Taliban — Based on the US experience in Afghanistan, a cautionary tale for those trying to figure out how to free oppressed societies from the rule of brutal tyrants.Artificial Intelligence
How A.I. Could Reshape the Economic Geography of America — An exploration of the possibility that AI technology may reshape labor markets in ways that also alter the geographic distribution of job opportunities.
Colleague Activities
Highlighting things that our conflict and peacebuilding colleagues are doing that contribute to efforts to address the hyper-polarization problem.
Bridge Building
The Potential of the Building Civic Bridges Act — The National Civic League describes what this legislation would do and how it is being pursued in the coming Congress.Civic Education
Our Common Purpose — A report from the bipartisan Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship, with 31 recommendations for strengthening U.S. democracy by reforming political institutions, investing in civil society, and transforming our political culture.Developing a Unifying Vision
How Do We Get Through This? — A new podcast mini-series with Beyond Conflict CEO Tim Phillips who speaks with leaders of other countries who were key to shaping their countries’ futures at times when everything was at stake.Family / Gender / LBGTQ+
Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL)'s Gendered Violence Division — PERIL’s new Gendered Violence Division analyzes patterns of gender-based bigotry and violence, including against the LGBTQ+ community, and designs and tests tools to prevent and respond to gendered hate and violence.Social Complexity
Our World in Data — Our World in Data’s mission is to publish the ”research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems.”Superpower Conflict
Diplomacy at the End of History, Part I: Ukraine and Cooperative Security | Thomas Greminger — From the Toda Peace Institute, the first of 3 videos featuring Ambassador Thomas Greminger and Toda Peace Institute Senior Research Fellow Keith Krause on prospects for the future of the war in Ukraine.Interstate War
Why War? A Reflection on Richard Overy’s Insights — A book review from CoPeSe (Conflict-Peace-Security) on British historian Richard Overy's thought-provoking analysis of why we can't seem to avoid war.Civil Society
How to Unite America at Scale — Colleague Peter Coleman touts the benefits of volunteering and service to build cross-partisan collaboration "at scale."Saving Democracy
Democracy Next — DemocracyNext is an international foundation working to accelerate the spread of high quality, empowered, and permanent citizens’ assemblies to give everyone meaningful power to shape their communities.Theories of Change
The Social Capital Atlas — Social capital – the strength of our relationships and communities – has been shown to play an important role in outcomes ranging from income to health. You can explore the social capital in your community here.Psychological Complexity
Healing Systems — How recognizing trauma in ourselves, other people, and the systems around us can open up new pathways to solving social problems.Media Reform
Beyond the Broadcasting Model — Today’s communications landscape demands that social sector organizations move away from a 20th-century broadcasting approach and toward dialogue, relationship-building, and fostering community.Psychological Complexity
What is the intention in your steps? — A reflection from colleague Anne Leslie on chooslng joy over cynicism, despair, outrage, sadness and anger. A beautiful essay on how--and why--we should all choose joy.Psychological Complexity
Your Brain on Deliberation — A description of the National Civic League's "It's Your America" workshop designed to introduce communities to deliberation, while strengthening civic skills, fostering community, and having fun.
News and Opinion
From around the web, more insight into the nature of our conflict problems, limits of business-as-usual thinking, and things people are doing to try to make things better. (Formerly, Beyond Intractability in Context.)
Authoritarianism
The New Rasputins — An update on the insidious new ways that established and aspiring autocrats are using 21st-century information technologies to advance and solidify their positions.Left / Right Conflict
Left and Right Alike Are Blind to Trade-Offs — A call for both the left and the right to rediscover the the need to wisely and equitably balance costs and benefits -- something that neither side does very well.Climate / Environment
The Unstoppable Rise of Energy Realism — An explanation of the importance of recognizing the harsh realities of the global energy market and adjusting climate policies according.Superpower Conflict
The looming Eurasian menace — An exploration of the most dangerous form of hyper-polarization -- the one that is uniting the world's big authoritarian regimes in common opposition to Western liberal democracies.Developing a Unifying Vision
The Debasement of Tolerance — A provocative and controversial argument that widespread calls for tolerance in the face of differing beliefs have gone too far.Progressive Left
What Can Replace Social Justice Fundamentalism? — A perceptive argument that the key to combating the extremes of social justice fundamentalism is to find some better way of genuinely advancing the cause of justice.Saving Democracy
Liberal Democracy Faces Doubts. But Collapse? Not Likely. — A hopeful essay highlighting the factors that are allowing democracy to retain its resilience in the face of its ongoing challenges.Psychological Complexity
The Anti-Social Century — An article exploring the causes and effects of the long-term erosion of interpersonal social relationships.Family / Gender / LBGTQ+
Men and women are different — An argument that women and racial minorities require different strategies for protecting their civil rights (based on the fact that there are significant biological differences between men and women and no such differences between racial groups.Class Inequity
Why Poor American Kids Are So Likely to Become Poor Adults — For those committed to finding ways of ending poverty and material deprivation, an example of the kind of multifaceted thinking that will be required to find solutions.Interstate War
The Future of Warfare is Remote Controlled — The description of how cheap drones are radically altering the nature of war and the global military balance in ways that are extremely dangerous and hard to predict.Progressive Left
The crisis of democracy is really a crisis for the left — An appeal for those on the left to take an honest look at the adverse impacts of the policies that they have put in place in states like New York and California where they dominate state government.Developing a Unifying Vision
How to get from the me to the we society — Thoughts on how the cultivation of social capital can be woven into the full range of public policies.Developing a Unifying Vision
Something Important Is Unfolding in America That Hasn’t Happened in a While — A thought-provoking essay that starts by recognizing that those on both the left and the right are united in believing that society's major institutions are badly in need of reform.Superpower Conflict
China’s Economy Is Burdened by Years of Excess. Here’s How Bad It Really Is. — Rather than talking about the threat posed by China, this article addresses a different topic -- the weaknesses of the Chinese economic model.The Scale and Complexity Problem
The Certainty of Uncertainty — For a world in which risk is everywhere and uncertainty is omnipresent, a retrospective look at the work of Frank Knight and his pioneering work on strategies for dealing with uncertainty.Progressive Left
Common Sense Manifesto #4: Identity politics won't save us — An in-depth and sensible analysis of the ways in which the identity politics of the left has become counterproductive -- contributing to, rather than helping, us solve our many problems.Israel / Hamas War
A Visual Guide to the Tangled Alliances and Rivalries in Syria — From a major news publication, a rare conflict map that offers a visual guide to the astonishing complexity surrounding the Syrian revolution.Civic Education
The Character-Building Tool Kit — An argument that the cultivation of "character "is a big (and much neglected) aspect of building a society and a democracy that truly works.Family / Gender / LBGTQ+
The cruelty of gentle parenting: It neglects the dark corners of children's souls — A thought-provoking article, especially for parents, critiquing the increasingly popular practice of "gentle parenting."
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Two or three times a week, Guy and Heidi Burgess, the BI Directors, share some of our thoughts on political hyper-polarization and related topics. We also share essays from our colleagues and other contributors, and every week or so, we devote one newsletter to annotated links to outside readings that we found particularly useful relating to U.S. hyper-polarization, threats to peace (and actual violence) in other countries, and related topics of interest. Each Newsletter is posted on BI, and sent out by email through Substack to subscribers. You can sign up to receive your copy here and find the latest newsletter here or on our BI Newsletter page, which also provides access to all the past newsletters, going back to 2017.
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