Featured Article

An Introduction to Power and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change

by Adam Kahane

Beyond War and Peace

Our two most common ways of trying to address our toughest social challenges are the extreme ones: aggressive war and submissive peace. Neither of these ways works. We can try, using our guns or money or votes, to push through what we want, regardless of what others want—but inevitably the others push back. Or we can try not to push anything on anyone—but that leaves our situation just as it is.

These extreme ways are extremely common, on all scales. One on one, we can be pushy or conflict averse. At work, we can be bossy or “go along to get along.” In our communities, we can set things up so that they are the way we want them to be, or we can abdicate. In national affairs, we can make deals to get our way, or we can let others have their way. In international relations—whether the challenge is climate change or trade rules or peace in the Middle East—we can try to impose our solutions on everyone else, or we can negotiate endlessly. These extreme, common ways of trying to address our toughest social challenges usually fail, leaving us stuck and in pain. There are many exceptions to these generalizations about the prevalence of these extreme ways, but the fact that these are exceptions proves the general rule. We need—and many people are working on developing—different, uncommon ways of addressing social challenges: ways beyond these degenerative forms of war and peace.

A character in Rent, Jonathan Larson’s Broadway musical about struggling artists and musicians in New York City, says, “The opposite of war isn’t peace, it’s creation!” To address our toughest social challenges, we need a way that is neither war nor peace, but collective creation. How can we co-create new social realities?

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From Our Toolkit

Cynics and Believers

How many times do we walk into a workshop and find ourselves wondering whether or not we really want to be there, questioning whether the session will be a good use of our time and/or money, or thinking about how much we’ve been looking forward to it and waiting for it to finally start? Then once it begins, we trudge through the standard introductions and go through an overview of the course material. What a slow way to start a session.

“Cynics and Believers” is an active and invigorating way to engage participants in a programme by having them assume different roles. Using this module at the beginning of a workshop or project quickly accomplishes several things. It gives group members the opportunity to:

• share their “true feelings”—positive and negative—about the workshop, in a low risk way
• hear their collective hopes and concerns
• get their voices into the room early
• viscerally experience different types of talking and listening
• energize themselves

By assuming the roles of cynics and believers, participants find it easy to share what is really on their minds—and even express the most extreme versions of those thoughts. Engaging in a fast-paced debate gets attendees on their feet, “mano a mano”, talking with each other, but doing very little listening. In a short time, the exercise generates rich material for a content and process debrief.

To try this exercise at the start of your next workshop, download the Complete Facilitator’s Notes for Cynics and Believers.

In the Next Issue

Laboratories for Social Change

by Zaid Hassan

In order to cope with the challenges of liquid modernity, new spaces are required, new containers, peopled by diverse communities, within which the capacities for addressing challenges can be learnt and new cultures emerge. The Change Lab is one such space and one such attempt. It is not a project or a plan, but a space within which emergent processes can unfold and flow, where learning can take place and conflict is invited as an opportunity.