Diversity and Conflict

Stephanie Zvan

We don’t like conflict. We try to avoid it instead of learning how to engage in it appropriately and productively, and the end result of our incompetence is horrendous enough to fully reinforce our avoidance.

This is a problem.

It’s particularly a problem for those of us who value cultural diversity and recognition of human equality. The easiest recipe for avoiding conflict is to allow one person or homogeneous group to define the “right side” of any disagreement. Obviously, that’s not an option for us.

It’s Friday, which means I’m blogging at Quiche Moraine. Today’s post takes a look at some of the roots of poor conflict management in, oh, a number of the communities I’m part of.

Diversity and Conflict
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Goliath’s Rules

Stephanie Zvan3 Comments

One of the fun parts of WisCon is always getting to meet people I should have met long ago. This year, I finally got to spend a little time talking to Lynne and Michael Thomas. Amusingly, I found a link to the following article on Lynne’s blog while checking out how productive she’d been at WisCon.

David’s victory over Goliath, in the Biblical account, is held to be an anomaly. It was not. Davids win all the time. The political scientist Ivan Arreguín-Toft recently looked at every war fought in the past two hundred years between strong and weak combatants. The Goliaths, he found, won in 71.5 per cent of the cases. That is a remarkable fact. Arreguín-Toft was analyzing conflicts in which one side was at least ten times as powerful—in terms of armed might and population—as its opponent, and even in those lopsided contests the underdog won almost a third of the time.

In the Biblical story of David and Goliath, David initially put on a coat of mail and a brass helmet and girded himself with a sword: he prepared to wage a conventional battle of swords against Goliath. But then he stopped. “I cannot walk in these, for I am unused to it,” he said (in Robert Alter’s translation), and picked up those five smooth stones. What happened, Arreguín-Toft wondered, when the underdogs likewise acknowledged their weakness and chose an unconventional strategy? He went back and re-analyzed his data. In those cases, David’s winning percentage went from 28.5 to 63.6. When underdogs choose not to play by Goliath’s rules, they win, Arreguín-Toft concluded, “even when everything we think we know about power says they shouldn’t.”

It’s a fascinating New Yorker article on how effective throwing away the rules–particularly the unacknowledged ones–can be and on the consequences of breaking them. Keep reading past the chunk in the middle that’s padded with a business profile. Some of the best parts are at the end.

Goliath’s Rules

MythOS

Stephanie Zvan6 Comments

I did something odd this weekend. I saw a friend’s book for sale, and I didn’t buy it. Not because I didn’t want it. Not because I didn’t want to port it home 250+ miles. Certainly not because I couldn’t afford it.

I was being nice.

It wasn’t officially out yet, and there were only a few copies. Besides, I can get a copy signed any time I want, more or less, and most of the people at WisCon only had access to Kelly for the weekend.

Today, however, MythOS by Kelly McCullough is officially out, and everyone can grab a copy of their own. I highly recommend it and not just because Kelly’s one of my best friends or because I had some tiny little influence on the final product. I recommend it because Kelly is one of the few writers I’ve read who can write a romp with serious thematic elements. I have to point them out to him sometimes, but they’re there, and neither they nor the wild ride of a story are compromised by fitting both in.

Don’t let yourself be put off by the “Book 4 of 5” in the promotions. MythOS takes Ravirn and Melchior out of their normal Greek milleiu and drops them somewhere rather different. There’s plenty of time to get your bearings as they get theirs. In fact, you may find Loki and Fenris more familiar than they do…sort of. The hand of Tyr, however, will surprise you, no matter how well you know your Norse myths.

You can check out the first chapter on Kelly’s site, and there’s an interview of sorts with him at SFNovelists, where you can find out what kind of character he is. Or you can just go pick up the book. It’s worth it, I promise.

MythOS

Fallen Warriors

Stephanie Zvan2 Comments

It’s tempting to pretend that “culture war” is just a colorful turn of phrase. It isn’t. People have died every time our country has been persuaded to recognize the right of another group to be considered full human beings.

I’m doing something a little different for Memorial Day over at Quiche Moraine. That is to say, it’s not a standard Memorial Day post. Those who have been reading me for a while (or even just very lately), may recognize a theme.

Fallen Warriors

Non-Gender-Based Thoughts on Rules

Stephanie Zvan13 Comments

Because, you know, I’m not writing enough about them myself. Actually, though, these are great to see, since they’re getting that my topic wasn’t just the discussion of gender roles.

Phil got something out of the post that I never intended to suggest. It’s no less intriguing for that (and maybe more so).

Having read it, I think I am beginning to see the torture debate in much sharper, and perhaps more sinister focus. If, as Stephanie suggests, this debate about the “legality” of the torture actions by that Administration is really a mask for a cultural debate, it makes more sense why the “Law & Order” Republicans are so hung up on excusing law breaking by their highest elective officials. It would also explain why so many former Bush Administration folks are so prominently attacking Mr. Obama these days.

And William posted a link to this TED talk about rules, punishment, ideology and conflict.

I have a few nits to pick with it, like the fact that liberals do not reject punishment and rules out of hand. Just ask any of us how we feel about the financial industry. Also, the Dalai Lama wields moral clout in the West largely because people don’t know that a system of serfs was required to sustain all those Tibetan monasteries in their quest to disconnect from the world. That’s kind of important to know. On the other hand, the nits don’t mean there isn’t plenty to think about in the talk.

Non-Gender-Based Thoughts on Rules

Why I Care About Rules

Stephanie Zvan10 Comments

Laden, the hilarious thing is that you think anyone other than you and Zvan gives a flying fuck about your “rules” gibberish. And it appears that it is your approach to “rules” has been soundly smacked in the face by the nature of objective fucking reality, no? You do know what it means when you look around you, and you perceive everyone as an idiot and an asshole and a participant in a conspiracy, right?

—Comrade PhysioProf

Leaving aside the factual errors and the ad hominem and the appeal to the bandwagon (I think that’s everything), I’d like to thank CPP for this comment. It reminds me that there’s something I left out of my original post on this topic–the why.

Why do I care about rules? That one’s easy. I spent the first too many years of my life in a house with far too many rules.

We’re talking rules like “Kids don’t say, ‘No,'” and we’re talking about applying those rules to two-year-olds. If you haven’t spent much time around small children, you may not know this, but “No” is more than just a word. It’s a stage of development in toddlers. But that apparently doesn’t matter much when it’s against the rules.

When I say too many rules, well, my mother used to tell an illustrative story. She’d say that if someone told me to jump, I’d freeze. It didn’t matter that not jumping was defiance and against the rules, because no matter how I jumped–how high, how far, which direction–it was going to be wrong. I’d still be breaking the rules. So I did nothing.

So, yes, I’m fairly sensitive to arbitrary rules and to rules that ignore the needs and capacities of human beings and to rules that hinder development and to systems of rules that make it impossible for someone to both act and be in compliance. Not to mention to rules with disproportionate consequences for breakage. They’ve been there all my life, and it’s taken a hell of a lot of work to see them clearly enough to set them aside.

Even if Greg and I were the only people who cared about abusive rules and abuse of rules (and one of the things I love about him is that he got this without me ever having to explain it), I’d still be talking about this. CPP can call it an obsession or gibberish or whatever other words make him happy. It doesn’t matter. He can’t shut me up by telling me we don’t talk about these things. He doesn’t make my rules.

I do.

Why I Care About Rules

May I Just Say…Arrgh!

Stephanie Zvan7 Comments

Thankfully, though, there’s a company out there brave enough to tackle the differences between girls and boys—more specifically, the difference between the way boys play Ouija and the way girls play Ouija. Because when men are pretending to contact the dead, they’re all like, “Is there a ghost here?” while women are all like, “Who in this room is jealous of me?” Am I right?

According to Hasbro, yes. Behold Ouija For Girls:

And it gets worse. Seriously.

Thanks (sort of) to Ben.

May I Just Say…Arrgh!