Conflict Competence

It’s discouraging, after devoting decades to helping people develop conflict competence, to wander into the realm of SideTaker.com, Whoiswrong.com, and other ‘blog war’ sites. These are unmediated, democratic cyberspace, where everyone is entitled to be conflict incompetent for an audience.Except, it isn’t a democracy that builds capacity, or creates social capital. These sites substitute attack opinions, sarcasm, and bullying for true democratic dialogue.

i teach the Theory and Practice of Dialogue, and Deliberative Democracy. Public forum debate is a healthy way for everyone to learn, expand their skills, create community, and change their mind if persuaded by something they hear. 

Blog warfare has ramifications for the ongoing societal conversations about the kinds of community we want to build and the value of public trust. 

1, if we are expressing a desire to revitalize a dialogue process that has become dysfunctional, then “I’m right, you’re wrong” is unlikely to do it. What in blog warfare will lift more people to a better quality of life? There wasn’t much in the websites I read that speaks word of inclusion, representation, embracing diversity, or community comprehensiveness.  We should be noticing the disconnect between the kinds of communities we find meaning in and what we create in blaming and accusations. 

2, the model of side taking debate that is being used is an impoverished example of what public onilne dialogue could be. Dialogue has a well founded theoretical basis of transformational learning, that is, we hear and learn and understand. Attacks on one side in short sarcastic witticisms isn’t enhancing anyone’s skills or lives. 

3, public dialogue introduces new information that can create better outcomes by illuminating what others are thinking. Reducing the comments to simplicity reduces our skills in complex thinking. When the topic is ‘yes’ or ‘no’ that a man is ungrateful because he does not like the taste of the toast his girlfriend made when he was ill, we miss the opportunity to inquire into whether his illness may be affecting his taste buds. That’s a simple example, but the whole point of blog warfare is simplification, in a world that needs complexity in thinking skills.

The ‘remedy’ for a jaded cynical community is to transform a jaded cynical debate process into a true dialogue of learning from each other, which can be just as much fun as calling someone names and telling them they are wrong.