Ken Cloke is a world-recognized mediator, dialogue facilitator, conflict resolution systems designer, peace activist, teacher, public speaker, and the author of many books including "Mediating Dangerously" and "Politics, Dialogue and the Evolution of Democracy." He has been a pioneer and leader in the field of mediation and conflict resolution for the last 40 years.

"Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they can not communicate; they can not communicate because they are separated." — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Learn more about Ken's’s work: https://www.kencloke.com/

Music is "Pole Stars” by Aaron Ximm https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

About the podcast: https://www.astemperaturesrise.com/

Support the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/m/astemperaturesrise

Show notes:

* Einstein after the bombing of Hiroshima “Everything has changed except the way we think."

* Today’s political situation is illuminating what we already know: that it’s not working

* The fundamental human project requires 1) recognition of the inevitably of diversity and 2) the overwhelming need for commonality/unity and this is what has made the species successful on a planetary scale

* individuation and integration

* crisis of power and crisis of rights

* we need to get together and find ways to turn our diversity into a foundation for unity

* one of the things that prompts our learning is contradiction, things that don’t match

* The Buddhist middle way is a higher middle ground that is the basis of emergence

* Isiah Berlin — politics is inherently unscientific, unphilosophical https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah_Berlin

* power-based vs. rights-based vs. interest-based approaches to problem solving and conflict resolution

* power-based is inherently win-lose; domination and subordinate

* rights-based is voting; adversarial; still win-lose and power trumps rights

* interest-based is not what you want but WHY you want it and nobody has to lose

* these map onto forms of democracy

* interest-based democracy requires dialogue and is non-adversarial

* this will require us to develop the skills for such social problem solving without domination and subordination

* the job is to come up with consensus and agreement

* the problems facing the planet require this higher order skill

* neurophysiology of conflict, generally speaking there are two responses:

* neurotransmitter for fight or flight is adrenalin

* neurotransmitter for tend and befriend is oxytocin

* globally we are feeling the pressures of change that scares people and we don’t have the skills yet to solve these bigger problems

* we are hitting the wall of functional rights-based democracy and we don’t yet have the skills for an interest-based democracy and that’s why we’re stuck

* need to ask this third category of interest-based questions

* mediation butterfly effect