APPENDIX L: 14 Models of Conflict Resolution For Use in Wider Institutional or Wider Area Stakeholder Process to Bring Resolution and Consensus

Communities often seem “at war” over just about everything, including stadiums, as if each entity in the community was competing against each other, when, in reality, the real battle isn’t over the team or the stadium but over who pays for it, and the competition is not within the city or twin city or tri-city, but between them and every other similar grouping outside their area throughout the USA and the world.  During the days of low salaries all around, it made sense for the public to pull together and provide funding.  Today, in the era of billionaire owners and millionaire players, the notion of  requesting tax payers to pay for a stadium to make them more money shows the tremendous change that has taken place.  However, there is good news.  This model shows how to finance the building of a new stadium without using tax payer dollars.  How is the gap to be bridged?  How are “fighting” or, at least, quarrelling groups to come to a common ground understanding to allow conflict resolution?  The answer we propose is to select aspects from our 16 page paper highlighting 7 macro models and 7 micro models of conflict resolution.  To give an idea of such a need, think of the current debate in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul in Minnesota over how to finance new stadiums for the pro-football Vikings, pro-baseball Twins, and University of Minnesota Gophers college football team. 

This model would work for all three:  the Twin Cities could build all three with this model, IF they could resolve their conflicts.

Red McCombs, Vikings owner is quoted as saying, “Show me how.”  Dave Jennings, CEO of the Greater Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce, stated in the Minn. Star Tribune on-line (8-10-01) that “someone other that the teams have to create a public discussion about the future of the Twins and the Vikings in Minnesota.  The teams are crying out for somebody to call the family meeting.”  The model we propose gives any who would provide leadership the means to resolve the conflicts in order to move forward with the stadiums.  This model is an example of what a leader or leadership group needs to best serve everyone involved on these teams, from owner to fan, from coach to player.  The 14 "models" presented below could be used, singly or combined, by all with a stake in keeping the Vikings and Twins in town, both private and public sectors, both professionals and non-professionals) by bringing them all together to effectively discuss ways to resolve the questions the stadium issue represents for all of Minnesota. 

The seven Macro Models (these being models between sovereign states or major social institutions) are (1) Masada (Romans vs. Zealots, a “how to fail” in conflict resolution, resulting in one side committing mass suicide rather than give in to the other, and the other side willing to kill them to make them give in), 1st century AD; (2) Germany after World War II, regarding how the successful evangelical academies in helping to rebuild West Germany and then helped with the process of integrating East German; by following the cardinal rule that all sides must sit at the same table; (3) the successful Helsinki Accords of 1975, which some see as the precursor of the downfall of the USSR, for it urged a moral framework and respect for people; (4) the successful “third track” diplomacy of the Roman Catholic Church, of which the most recent success was in Mozambique, and prior to that, their non-violent, moral based approach in Chile, the Philippines, and South Korea; (5) the Oslo Accords, another “how to fail” conflict resolution model, between the Palestinians and the Israelis, from the 1990s, in which the basic framework is hatred from one side and constant defense from the other, but never “all is negotiable” stances from either, as the one side wants the total elimination of the other, which is resolution through annihilation, and the other wants to expel the other in order to achieve what is impossible, a homogenous population;  (6) the successful joint (Black-White) mediation in South Africa to end apartheid in the 1990s, including Michael Cassidy’s “the politics of love,” also based within a moral framework, and (7) the generic model of “the politics of love” that came out of South Africa that can be used anywhere.

The seven Micro Models (the face to face aspects, regardless of who one represents) are (1) the Lose to Win spectrum for conflict mediation resolution; (2) the 2 x 2 probability of outcome matrix of Mary Pipher (author of Reviving Ophelia:  Rescuing the Selves of Adolescent Girls; (3) self talk, which is a part of overcoming “learned helplessness of Martin E.. Seligman, and part of the overcoming adversity formula of CO2RE/LEAD of Paul Stoltz; (4) the “managing conflict for individual and team success” of Sam Imperati; (5) the principles approach of the “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” of Stephen Covey and the positive approaches of Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” (6) the serve and love command for interpersonal relations shared by both Jesus and the Buddha; and (7) the use of Lists/Recipes for establishing goals and approaches for conflict resolution.

The various conflict resolution models, derives from five key, over arching concepts: 

FIRST:  the social fact that humans have no instincts for human interaction nor for keeping track of things, and that to survive, must create "instinct substitutes," which are call roles (hence, as Peter Berger points out, no one can live a role free existence),.  Every situation in which any person finds themselves, is like a theatrical stage, and each stage has its own called for role playing, behavior, costumes, etc.  No one can live a role free existence.  People who get into the “habit” of not cooperating or taking a wider vision have a harder time with conflict resolution.  SECONDLY, because of this, anyone can, individually and collectively, be a playwright and participate in creating the stages on which they play their roles, and the plays in which they play their roles.  Will the “playwrights of the community” write a play of further conflict and animosity or a play of cooperation and resolution?  THIRDLY, individuals  are capable of not only living in multiple realities but of being able to emigrate freely back and forth between them.  Nothing, therefore, is inevitable.  All can be negotiated, worked out.  FOURTH, This also means that role playing is more important than one's feelings that no matter how one feels, the old theatre adage that "the show must go on" is far more prevalent as a reflection of the hard knocks of life than "when I get energized and feel great I will get going”.  This must be the attitude of any who would overcome adversity and anyone who would engage in the "mediation marathon" sometimes required to resolve conflict.  FIFTH, Lists/recipes for action are key to organizing the thoughts and actions one needs to achieve goals.  Some of lists include those of Stephen Covey's "7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Families," Benjamin Franklin's list of 13 areas for achieving personal and professional success, the list of Dale Carnegie's success principles, the list of success principles of Napoleon Hill and W. Clement Stone, 6 lists for goal setting by Zig Ziglar, Tony Robbins, Robert Schuller, Peter Daniels, Paul Stoltz, and Napoleon Hill, as well as a list of books of lists by Sam Deep and Lyle Sussman.

Note that the 2 KEYS to all of these 14 models is their organization.  It is recommended that their organizational principles be that of (1)  L-I-S-T-S/R-E-C-I-P-E-S) (as part of goals, plans, contingencies, time lines), and (2) c-o-l-l-a-b-o-r-a-t-I-o-n (with all as negotiable).  

As Berger further points out, social scientists talk about the reality that "every society has its own corpus of officially accredited wisdom, the beliefs and values that most people take for granted as self-evidently true."  In terms of stadium concept/approval/building, there are multiple realities involved, each viewing the stadium and its benefits differently, from the unique position of its own prism of reality.  This is important to understand, for, as Berger writes:  "Every human society has institutions and functionaries whose task it is to represent this putative truth, to transmit it to each new generation, to engage in rituals that reaffirm it, and sometimes to deal (at least in words) with those who are benighted or wicked enough to deny it."  This used to be an easy task when there was a dominant set of beliefs and values that everyone took for granted.  But modern society is pluralistic, with multiple realities or worldviews that change, hence the saying of W.R. Inage, that "he who would marry the spirit of the age soon becomes a widower."  Hence the need for this model and for the various model sets within, including the ones regarding conflict resolution.

There are two other organizing principles which we recommend for consideration by both the macro models and the micro models, both also suggested by Peter Berger.  The FIRST is a "calculus of meaning" and a "calculus of pain," from his book Pyramids of Sacrifice:  Political Ethics and Social Change, in which he suggests that policies should be those which provide the most meaning and the least pain, and that each calculus include a list of outcomes that are not desirable, in order to avoid the mistake of believing that because the intent is pure, so will be the outcome. 

The SECOND, also from Berger, adapting from another of his analytical frameworks, is to have each of the stakeholders in the discussions that ensue review whether or not they are arguing from an ideological position or not, whether they are actually flexible with their thinking, and to ascertain whether or not they are being "historically specific conservatives" or "historically non-specific conservatives." 

This eliminates the argument over content labels (liberal vs. conservative, Democrat vs. Republican), and instead focuses on the process.  In this way, it can be stated that both the radical left and the radical right are, hopelessly and romantically, historically specific conservatives.  The radical left looks forward to a future putative utopia which, when reached, is to be frozen in place, never to changed because utopia has been achieved.  The radical right looks backward to a putative golden age which it wishes to resurrect, after which it too is to be frozen in place, as the golden age has been retrieved, never to be changed, because “the best of times” have been achieved.  The historically NON-specific conservative, on the hand, recognizes yet resists the impulse to fine a "perfect place" and to then rest and keep it that way, but also recognizes that it is better to make haste slowly, and that as most historical actions have unintended consequences, one needs to be slow in assuming that a proposed policy or action is the solution. 

The Spanish Civil War, which, like all wars, was a conflict "full of moral ambiguities, with unspeakable brutality on both sides," in which a monument has been erected to the million who died, a monument placed inside a mountain not far from "The Valley of the Fallen".  Berger's chilling words about this should give us all pause and inspire us to be "historically non-specific conservatives":   And the Spain that is now emerging has nothing to do with what either side fought and died for.   Or, as Cassidy put it in his book, "Apartheid and all its works will pass away.  So will every answer which replaces it, whether better and nobler or yet more sinful and worse." 

The same is true of many American cities that have had too narrow a vision to keep their professional teams only to either spend more money later to replace them or suffer the loss of revenues that resulted.

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