Session 20 – Resolving Conflict

November, 2008

Chalice:  One day it’s going to dawn on the human race that war is as barbaric a means of resolving conflict as cannibalism is as a means of coping with diet deficiencies.  

Bruce Kent

Check-in:

Reading:  Disagreement produces debate but dissent produces dissension.  Dissent (which comes from the Latin, dis and sentire) means originally to feel apart from others.  People who disagree have an argument, but people who dissent have a quarrel.  People may disagree and both may count themselves in the majority.  But a person who dissents is by definition in a minority.  A liberal society thrives on disagreement but is killed by dissention.  Disagreement is the life blood of democracy, dissension is its cancer.

Daniel Boorstein

Quotes from the Common Bowl

Life Questions:

1.  Do you believe that conflict is a healthy part of every relationship?

2.  What are the ways you handle conflict in your own life?

3.  How do you interpret conflict in an organization you are part of?

4.  What are your personal guidelines for fair disagreement?  Do you always stick to them?  If not, what happens to get you off track?

5.  Has conflict ever provided a path to greater spiritual knowledge or wisdom?

Closing ritual:

We extinguish this flame but not the light of truth,

The warmth of community

Or the fire of commitment

These we carry in our hearts until we are together again.

Check-out

QUOTATIONS FOR SESSION 20 – RESOLVING CONFLICT

NOVEMBER, 2008

It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in arguments.

William G. McAdoo

My parents only had one argument in forty-five years.  It lasted forty-three years.

Cathy Ladman

The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.

G.K. Chesterton

Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.

Oscar Wilde

Why prove to a man he is wrong?  Is that going to make him like you?  He didn’t ask for your opinion.  He didn’t want it.  Why argue with him?  You can’t win an argument, because if you lose, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it.  Why?  You will feel fine.  But what about him?  You have made him feel inferior, you hurt his pride, insult his intelligence, his judgment, and his self-respect, and he’ll resent your triumph.  That will make him strike back, but it will never make him want to change his mind.  

Dale Carnegie

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.

Leonardo DaVinci

Men are apt to mistake the strength of their feeling for the strength of their argument.  The heated mind resents the chill touch and relentless scrutiny of logic.

William Ewart Gladstone

The person that agrees with everything you say is either a fool or is getting ready to skin you.

Kin Hubbard

It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.

Joseph Joubert

You have not converted a man because you have silenced him

John Morley