High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out by Amanda RipleyMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I read this book because I'm going to be facilitating a conversation about it at work, and I found it far more interesting than I imagined. Ripley offers a variety of case studies: an attorney-turned-mediator, a gang member, a Colombian guerilla fighter, a rabbi and his congregation...and a lot more. Through excellent storytelling, Ripley weaves together these stories to both explain "high conflict" and offers great counsel for how to move out of it, and perhaps even avoid it. But the point that resonated the most for me is her discussion of "good conflict"--something that sometimes gets lost in a lot of conversations about peace and mediation. Curiosity is key. But we have to make the space to allow for curiosity. Also a key point about the conflict-industrial complex: "To keep conflict healthy in an adversarial world, the encounters can't end... But keeping the conversation going in a huge challenge in a country where people increasingly live, date, and marry in their own political tribes. As in any segregated society, encounters won't happen naturally." (273). I would have liked more about managing the sustainability of this process.
So, it takes work. The book offers many resources about how to do that work, but Ripley's main focus is how to identify high conflict in the first place. There are some major tips for preventing it as well: investigating the "understory", reducing binaries, marginalizing "firestarters", buying time and making space, and "complicating the narrative." It is this last one that I think is seldom talked about as part of reducing binaries. There is value in complexity, it turns out--sometimes we call it nuance--but actively seeking out the complexity can help us foster good conflict, instead of high conflict.
Ripley's writing is accessibly human, but backed up with research and journalistic insight. She seems to practice the humility necessary for good conflict, even in the way she approaches this topic. She shares the stories of people with care and consideration for multiple truths and lived experiences. This is an EXCELLENT book for a group read of folks who work together, but really most people could benefit from considering a thoughtful approach to conflict (rather than conflict avoidance, or firestarting, as polar extremes).
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