Part One: Connection and Disconnection

Readings:

• Clinchy, B. M. (1994). On Critical Thinking and Connected Knowing. In Walters, K. (ed.). Re-Thinking Reason: New Perspectives in Critical Thinking (Teacher empowerment and school reform). Albany: State University of New York Press
• Buber, M. (1970). I and Thou (W. Kaufman, Trans.). New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Introduction:

Why should conflict facilitators think about the experiences of connection and disconnection? Many conflict workers are trained to hold and enforce the process, and let the disputants work through the differences that they have with each other. Often, the disputants are encouraged to find common ground amongst their contrasting or conflicting interests. Once this common ground is found, then a resolution or strategy can be developed that helps them work productively together, whether in the workplace, neighborhood, interest group, or home. In all of this work, why is it necessary to examine, or worry about, the connection or disconnection that is occurring within the disputants or the process facilitator?

This objection to thinking about our experiences of connection and disconnection, within the techniques of conflict facilitation, is reasonable. Consequently, many conflict-process trainings focus on just those techniques, with no need to go deeper. However, I suggest that we can improve our ability to positively facilitate conflicts, if we examine the different ways to think connection and disconnection. In the following, I examine the ways that we can experience connection and disconnection, while navigating difference and engaging in conflict. I believe that our knowledge of these ways of experiencing connection and disconnection can help us improve our ability to facilitate conflict processes.

Key Dilemma of Part One: Can connection between people be, paradoxically, both real and an illusion?

The placebo effect is when non-medicinal pills are given to patients by a physician who tells them that the pills will help them with their symptoms; and it does exactly that. This shows that a patient’s hopeful and positive attitude toward the pill gives it the power to do something that it cannot chemically do. Therefore, if a connection between people is an illusion, and not real, it may still create the experience of connection. We may have a great difficulty showing that connections are real or illusion, depending on what we count as “real.” So, regardless whether connections are real or illusion or both, we can find comfort and importance in the experience of connection.

Review of List of Navigation Strategies for Seemingly Intractable Conflicts, Differences, and Dilemmas:

The Notions of Connection and Disconnection are Vague and Confusing:

When do we really connect with another person? Our connection may be illusory or fleeting. We may feel physically, emotionally, culturally, and experientially separate from others, so how close must we be to others to really be connected. One could argue that in a diverse world, such as ours, we may always be disconnected to varying degrees. On this view, one could argue that true connection with others is a comforting impossibility. I agree that even identical twins may feel, to a certain degree, alienated from each other—perhaps because their genetic connection feels a bit claustrophobic. So, too much connection may be as bad as too little.

The Importance of Positive Connection:

It seems that we can easily make the case that in conflict processes, we should find ways to authentically connect with different others, and to help disputants positively connect with each other. There are myriad reasons why people in mainstream cultures, or in cultures dominated by mainstream beliefs and practices, feel disconnected and have trouble authentically connecting.

The Challenge of a Mainstream Competitive and Individualist Culture and Economy:

To make matters worse, the mainstream competitive and individualistic culture and economy motivates people to pretend to connect with each other. We try to “sell” ourselves to each other, and let others “sell” themselves to us. The goal of this mutual “promotion” is to favorably position the “sellers” in whatever marketplace is being engaged at the moment—the workplace, as well as in social circles. In many cases, socializing outside of work is meant to positively leverage one’s business life—and vice versa. With all of these considerations, conflict workers have an uphill climb, or an upstream swim, to authentically connect, or to help others authentically connect.

Navigating Connection and Disconnection:

Reminding the reader that this text is based on the metaphor of navigation, we might—as before—construct a continuum with too much connection at one end, and too little connection on the other end, where we try to navigate between these polarities to get some of our needs met, while trying to meet others’ needs, as well. On this view, conflicts and differences emerge in clumps and spasms, so our navigation is needed, along this continuum, in somewhat contradictory ways: providing space between the differing parties, to let them consider the conflict with more resources, and coming together to engage empathetically to understand each other’s’ experiences, perspectives, values, and ideas.

Finding Authenticity in a Culture of Personas:

Furthermore, conflict workers need to authentically connect with themselves. Often, we have carefully created a persona that we feel will be successful in our social and work interfaces, just as we craft a social media persona that we feel will generate social and career opportunities. To complicate this further, the broader culture has generated personas that are deemed to be attractive socially and in the workplace. So, society generates personas; and we generate personas, that are supposedly geared for success. In this persona marketplace, where is our own unique identity? How do we find it? Who helps us find it? If we cannot find our own unique identity, how can we be authentic conflict workers. Too often conflict workers feel that they have to have a conflict worker persona! We say, “act like a professional!” Should conflict workers wear masks? I think not. Even if it is an equanimity mask or a loving-kindness mask, it is still a mask.

I strongly believe and feel that conflict workers should be authentic people first, and “professionals” last. With that said, I struggle daily to not be a “professor,” to not be a “conflict resolver,” but to just be someone positively working on my own and other people’s conflicts.

Are We Connected or Disconnected—or Both?

Buber, in the Jewish tradition, and Trudell, in the Native American tradition, write about the experience of being connected to others (Buber) and to the earth (Trudell). However, mainstream Western thinking supposes that humans are radically disconnected from others and the earth. On this latter view, our selves are neurological constructions centered in our brains. These isolated selves receive sensory input as nerve stimulations. These stimulations are interpreted as “others” and “earth.” In other words, we do not experience others and the world directly, but indirectly through our neuro-sensory system. This means that the self is radically removed from others and the earth because our experiences are indirect, not direct. Therefore, on the Western mainstream view, we are disconnected, not connected to others and the world.

Mystical Connection:

The evidence for connection is based on a different conception of self and experience. This alternate conception does not limit the self to brain processes, but understands the self and experience to be emergent in a world that is not disconnected from itself. The evidence for connection is in the power of the mystical experience. William James describes mystical experiences as having four similar characteristics, regardless of the context for those experiences. They could be religious, secular, or drug-induced.

Characteristics of Mystical Experience:

First, an experience of mystical connection is ineffable, or beyond one’s ability to describe in words. There is a sense of grandeur in these experiences that can only be communicated in paradox or symbolism. Second, these experiences are noetic, in the sense that they involve a profound insight, a revelatory awareness, an opening of consciousness, an illumination that is beyond the categories of the intellect. One feels unified with the Absolute, gains a sense of immortality, experiences so great a truth that it transcends imagination. Such a truth is beyond the limits of time and space. Third, such experiences are transitory; they are fleeting, though they speak of the eternal. Fourth, they place one in a state of passivity. One feels swept away by a power much larger than oneself. One feels in a trance of incredibly high awareness.

Shifting Sense of Self and Experience:

When one has a mystical experience, one’s notion of both self and experience is forever shifted from the idea that they are internal to the brain to something much larger: the self is a part of a larger Self, and experience is a part of a larger Experience. For Buber the larger Experience is the “I-Thou” relationship; for Trudell, the larger Experience is Oneness with Earth.

Real or Illusion?

If one has had a mystical experience, one believes in its power and is transformed by it. If one has not had a mystical experience, one sees it as an illusion, a psychological aberration. So who is right? One could argue that a mystical experience is simply a part of a spiritual belief, and that mainstream Western view is based on scientific fact: religious belief against secular knowledge. However, it seems to me that both are beliefs and neither are facts. The Western view that the self and experience is internal follows from the unprovable presupposition that organic beings are isolated by the inorganic spaces between them, and the unprovable presupposition that organic beings are alive with consciousness, and inorganic substances are lifeless, where no awareness can exist. We are isolated because our consciousness is immediately surrounded by unconsciousness. We are only conscious when our nerve endings are capable of sending neurotransmissions to our brains.

Unprovable Presuppositions:

The unprovable presuppositions of the Western view are different than the unprovable presuppositions of the mystical view, where awareness and consciousness are not merely a polarized on or off—rather awareness and consciousness is on a continuum from the hyperconsciousness of a mystical experience to the lower consciousness of what appears to be lifeless—the earth, air, and water around us.

When two unprovable presuppositions are confronted with each other, which one is right? If neither can be proved, then one must be assumed as a starting point for our thinking. Why do the mainstream Western starting points dominate? Why are Eastern views, and many indigenous views, marginalized or ridiculed? When many non-Western starting points lead to more harmonious relationships between people and with nature, why do conflict resolvers in the Western tradition tend to reject non-Western beliefs?

Why Mystical Experience is Important for Conflict Processes:

My conclusion is that people can experience both connection and disconnection. Conflict facilitators want to foster connection is whatever way they can. It seems to me that if conflict workers are committed to creating connections, then we ought to be curious about the most profound connection that people are capable of—the mystical experience.

Further Questions:

1. What does it mean to authentically connect across difference?
2. What is the distinction between connection and disconnection?
3. Is disconnection and alienation becoming a widespread cultural experience in the USA?
4. Do we feel stuck inside our brain and our bodies, unable to reach others?
5. Are individualism and a focus on self-interest at the root of disconnection and alienation?
6. Do we market ourselves to others?
7. Is self-promotion a way of life in the USA?
8. Have we created a persona for ourselves that will help us have friends and a career?
9. Do we have different personas for different interactions?
10. What does it mean to be a professional?
11. Do we have a conflict professional persona, and does that get in the way of conflict work?
12. What does it mean to listen for understanding?
13. What is the interplay of experience, emotions, and thoughts?
14. How do we distinguish between intuition, cognition, emotional intelligence, culture, and transcendence?
15. What does it mean to be working positively with conflict?