Good conflict does not collapse into caricature. We remain open to the reality that none of us has all the answers to everything all the time, and that we are all connected. We need healthy conflict in order to defend ourselves, to understand each other and to improve. These days, we need much more of it, not less. High conflict, by contrast, is what happens when conflict clarifies into a good-versus-evil kind of feud, the kind with an us and a them. (Location 123)

Most of us try to avoid high conflict whenever possible. This avoidance brings its own problems, as we’ll see. (Location 134)

Us-versus-them conflict is rarely about what it seems to be about. It has an understory, which is the most interesting part. (Location 144)

People do escape high conflict. Individuals—even entire communities—find ways to short-circuit the feedback loops of conflict. They don’t suddenly agree, and this is important: they don’t surrender their beliefs. Nor do they defect, switching from one position to the opposite extreme. Instead, they do something much more interesting: they become capable of comprehending that with which they still disagree. (Location 149)

As he shifted out of high conflict, he became more effective, not less. He was no longer wasting so much time, fighting battles against people who wanted many of the same things he did. (Location 343)

Wishing your opponent will finally see the light is a fool’s errand. It will only lead to heartbreak. Counting up the other side’s wrongs is a hobby that can last a lifetime. Obsessing over the next election is a delay tactic. Telling people to reject hate and choose love will not work. Because people swept up in high conflict do not think of themselves as full of hate, even if they are. They think of themselves as right. Hate is an important emotion. But it’s a symptom; conflict is the cause. And high conflict is a system, not a feeling. (Location 348)

In his mediation work, Gary refers to conflict as a “trap.” That’s a good description. Because conflict, once it escalates past a certain point, operates just like the La Brea Tar Pits. It draws us in, appealing to all kinds of normal and understandable needs and desires. But once we enter, we find we can’t get out. (Location 419)

That’s the main difference between high conflict and good conflict. It’s not usually a function of the subject of the conflict. Nor is it about the yelling or the emotion. It’s about the stagnation. In healthy conflict, there is movement. Questions get asked. Curiosity exists. There can be yelling, too. But healthy conflict leads somewhere. It feels more interesting to get to the other side than to stay in it. In high conflict, the conflict is the destination. There’s nowhere else to go. (Location 423)

It is impossible to feel curious while also feeling outraged, for example. We lose access to that part of our brain, the part that generates wonder. (Location 427)

In high conflict, cortisol injections can become recurring, impairing the immune system, degrading memory and concentration, weakening muscle tissue and bones, and accelerating the onset of disease. (Location 430)

Then there are all the people who do not actively participate in the high conflict, the bystanders. They are so distressed by the fight that they tune out altogether. And this category includes most people. About two thirds of Americans are fed up with political polarization and wish people would spend more time listening to one another, according to the nonpartisan organization More in Common, which labeled this group the “exhausted majority.” (Location 432)

This detachment is understandable, but it leaves high conflict untreated. The extremists take over. (Location 436)

Overnight, high conflict can shape shift into violence, as history keeps showing us. (Location 437)

This felt familiar to Cassidy, in a bad way. He’d seen his father let his ambition get away from him before. Despite his usual humility, despite his deep knowledge of the human psyche, his dad could suffer from visions of grandeur. He was doing it again, Cassidy saw, even now, a man in his seventies letting his ego run wild. It bothered him, to see this contradiction in his father and not be able to make him see it, too. (Location 491)

When you’ve finished your story, Gary will check to see if he has understood it. His questions might sound a little odd to someone trying to end a marriage. “What is one thing you understand about your husband’s view?” or “What would change in your life if you got what you wanted?” Gary tends to ask his questions with his head cocked to the side, eyes bright, as if he’s hearing something he’s never heard before. This posture communicates curiosity, which is contagious. (Location 507)

To get beyond conflict, you have to go through it; there’s no other way. (Location 513)

He could guess but he tries not to. He asks this question in a quiet voice, to show that he really wants to know the answer. (Location 516)

Humans tend to interpret new information so that it fits into their existing beliefs, a well-studied phenomenon known as confirmation bias. The worse a conflict gets, the harder it is to disrupt. (Location 521)

Eventually, both people feel more understood. Even as they continue to disagree about many things. (Location 532)

Gary’s approach remains unusual. He insists on keeping everyone in the same room and, together, digging up what lies underneath the conflict. (Location 537)

That surface-level work seems safer, and it is—in the short term. (Location 539)

Gary trains mediators to ask specific questions and to check to make sure they understand each answer, a process he calls “going down the Why trail.” If a couple is fighting over who gets the crock pot, he investigates why that crock pot matters so much. These questions help people lower their guard. Importantly, Gary trains his clients to do this for each other, in the same room. So the people with the problem also own the problem, not him. (Location 540)

“There is nothing more important to a person who is undergoing a life crisis than to be understood,” (Location 545)

Most of the time, people trapped in conflict don’t know the understory. They get so focused on false flags like the crock pot or the Legos that they get stuck. High conflict is like a trance in this way. (Location 560)

Because once people feel understood, they can relax their defenses. (Location 563)

Note: Lower

Show them you’re listening; don’t tell them you are. (Location 644)

On average, doctors interrupt patients after only eleven seconds of listening to them explain what ails them. When doctors don’t interrupt, patients stop talking on their own just six seconds later. That’s all the time they need to explain themselves: just seventeen seconds. But almost none of them get it. (Location 646)

And there are real consequences to our bad listening, the kind you can measure. When people don’t feel heard, they get slightly anxious and defensive. They say less, and whatever they do say tends to be oversimplified. The walls go up. (Location 649)

To grasp what someone really means, the musicians learned, requires both curiosity and double-checking. (Location 666)

When people feel understood, they trust the other person to go a little deeper and keep trying to get it right. (Location 669)

Once we feel understood, we see options we couldn’t see before. (Location 680)

Any system that pits groups of people against each other can lead to high conflict. (Location 757)

“Overcategorization is perhaps the commonest trick of the human mind.” —Gordon Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (Location 764)

Categories save us time and energy, by allowing us to treat individuals the same way, so we don’t have to look too closely or think too much. (Location 771)

categories blur out important details. (Location 775)

Once we have a them to contrast with us, we change. (Location 775)

It takes shockingly little for groups to become tribes, for favoritism to emerge. It doesn’t require competition, ritual, pep rallies, or financial incentives; it only requires a belief that you are in one group and others are in another. (Location 780)

humans have survived by being aware of status differences, and we learn which categories matter in our society in all kinds of quiet, insidious ways. This is why it is so dangerous to set up binary choices in our communities, on purpose, as Jefferson and Adams understood when they railed against the idea of political parties. There are much better ways to do politics, as we’ll see, but we rarely question our binary traditions. (Location 798)

referendums collapse complicated issues into two categories: (Location 802)

In real life, most people have complex, ambivalent feelings about things like immigration, globalization, democracy, corruption, drug trafficking, and reparations for victims. (Location 807)

But the referendums forced them to choose a side, (Location 808)

My own profession of journalism seemed to be making everything worse. No news story changed anyone’s mind; it just left people feeling angry, disgusted, or hopeless. (Location 825)

From then on, I looped people whenever I interviewed them. I started looping my family, my friends, even strangers sitting next to me on an airplane. I didn’t always do it well—or at all. But when I did loop, I felt a little more present, a bit more useful. (Location 861)

I sometimes interview people with whom I profoundly disagree. Then, looping turns out to be particularly critical. It helps me listen, even when I don’t want to. (Location 863)

“What would it be like if you got what you wanted here?” “What do you want your opponent to understand about you? What do you want to understand about them?” (Location 867)

He felt, with each victory, like he’d lost something, something he couldn’t quite put a name to. (Location 937)

The problem is that the usefulness of labels begins to decay the moment the election results come in—that is, when the governing needs to begin. (Location 945)

This is the illusion of communication. We consistently overestimate our ability to communicate. We lack empathy for what it is like to be outside our own heads. (Location 977)

“The biggest problem in communication,” as the saying goes, “is the illusion that it has taken place.” This illusion comes from two profoundly human mistakes: First, we think we have conveyed our intentions and desires clearly when we haven’t. And second, we don’t really know what our intentions and desires are. In many conflicts, we have only the flimsiest grasp of the understory, both our own understory and the one belonging to the other side. (Location 979)

Note: Understory

When we consider other people’s behavior, by contrast, we reflexively blame their inherent moral failings. (Location 990)

The exclusion triggered an almost primal sense of distress in anyone who witnessed it. (Location 1060)

Williams began referring to the effects of rejection and ostracism as “social pain.” (Location 1066)

Humans have certain fundamental emotional needs, including the need for a sense of belonging, for self-esteem, for control, and for a meaningful existence. These needs are nearly as important to our survival as food and water. Social rejection threatens these needs. (Location 1069)

Rejection is especially debilitating when it blindsides us, (Location 1075)

“There is a high premium on being able to avoid really toxic conflicts.” (Location 1174)

Candidates undergo extensive psychological interviews, among other tests. Anyone who makes it through tends to be highly adaptable, socially agreeable, mentally stable, physically fit, and exceptionally good at working with other people under stress. Then, after they get accepted, astronauts get training on conflict management and communicating under duress. Their training, which includes simulations for managing conflict with other crewmembers, can give them an actual chemical advantage. They are less likely than the rest of us to experience dramatic spikes in stress hormones, the kind that degrade our ability to think clearly when we are frightened or angry. (Location 1175)

Conflict. It’s inevitable. “You can’t pick a crew without conflict,” said Kim Binsted, the principal investigator for NASA-funded long-duration space exploration simulations in Hawaii. “You can pick a low-drama crew. But not a no-drama crew.” (Location 1181)

Stripped of the nuance that comes from voice tones and body language, text communication is almost guaranteed to lead to misunderstandings. (Location 1201)

Note: Text

We want to feel like we belong in our group, like we are understood. One way to instantly build that connection is at the expense of the other group, (Location 1220)

Blame, like shame, makes our opponents dig in. (Location 1256)

The conflict trap makes it incredibly hard for us to dig ourselves out once we get stuck. We know we want peace. We figure out what we’re willing to compromise to get there. The other side does, too. We’re so close—but then we find we can’t budge. The invisible forces that pulled us into the Tar Pits, including binary choices, social pain, the illusion of communication, and the idiot-driver reflex, all become stronger. (Location 1304)

We don’t want to be the first to make a peace offering, even one we’re willing to make, because we worry this will be seen as a sign of weakness and then we’ll be asked to give up more. (Location 1307)

People have lost their peripheral vision to the conflict. They have blinders on, the psychological kind. “If you believe that the other side will never change, that they will always try to trick us, that we are the ultimate victims, there is no reason for you to even bother looking for this opportunity,” Halperin said. (Location 1321)

If you feel threatened, you cannot feel curious. (Location 1328)

Democrats with a postgraduate degree are three times as inaccurate in their perceptions of Republicans as Democrats who dropped out of high school. (Location 1334)

When people get sorted into oppositional categories, high conflict becomes more likely—by design. (Location 1353)

The Bahá’ís try to select people who do not crave attention and power. “Being elected is not a status symbol,” said James Samimi Farr, a Bahá’í spokesperson. “It’s a call to further humility.” (Location 1381)

Who else but a narcissist would have the motivation to endure the expense, the exhaustion, and the scrutiny of a long, contentious election? (Location 1385)

If, after some deliberation, her Bahá’í group votes to pursue an idea, everyone commits to trying it wholeheartedly, even those who originally disagreed. If it fails, the group holds another consultation and reevaluates. “ ‘I told you so’ is never permitted,” Lawson said laughing. (Location 1396)

“The aim is not to get kudos for yourself or show off as the one who yells the most. The aim is to solve the problem.” In those early days, she was surprised at how much her elected assembly could get done in one meeting, despite the need for consensus. (Location 1405)

Once people were actively trying to set their egos aside and work together, things got a lot easier. (Location 1407)

No, the big lesson is that humans can be nudged to demonize—or to cooperate. (Location 1412)

Most democracies use proportional representation and have more than two parties. The United States is the exception. Its reliance on winner-take-all systems and binary parties is, from a psychological perspective, designed to create high conflict. (Location 1435)

Binary thinking washes out all the details and contradictions so we can draw a crystalline partition between good and evil, right and wrong. (Location 1442)

The winner-take-all participants also behaved less generously toward others after losing. They held a little bit of a grudge. That’s how binary systems work. They cultivate grudges. (Location 1446)

Under proportional representation, the dominant parties still need to work with the less powerful parties to get anything done. (Location 1447)

There are different ways to get to less binary politics, but the larger lesson is clear. “We need a politics that scrambles our innate tendency to see the world in binary terms,” Lee Drutman wrote in Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop, “by keeping political coalitions fluid and flexible, allowing enemies and allies to change.” (Location 1450)

In any situation where cooperation matters, keep the groups flexible. (Location 1453)

Avoid referendums. (Location 1457)

And for God’s sake, don’t communicate by Slack, Twitter, Facebook, email, chat, or text if you have something remotely sensitive to say. Unless you’re on a Mars mission, there is always a better way. (Location 1457)

Just as we are wired to group people into categories and discriminate accordingly, we are wired to cooperate. The difference is in the design. “Good institutions elevate our inner angels; bad institutions feed our inner devils,” Drutman wrote. (Location 1458)

The job swap confused the categories. It would have been a brilliant management (Location 1470)

I notice when my friends or family talk about us, referring to their fellow Republicans or Democrats (something that did not happen ten years ago but now happens often). I ask them who they mean, a small attempt to slow down the binary. (Location 1473)

But I’ll be honest. I fail all the time. The temptation to feel righteous, to claw back a sense of agency, to deflect blame, and seize the moral high ground, is hard to resist. (Location 1478)

That is why group identities are such potent fire starters: it only takes one or two rogue cousins to create mayhem. (Location 1618)

In laboratory studies, when people watch a loved one receive a mild electric shock, the part of their own brain that assesses the meaning of pain gets activated. Their brain responds as if the shock were happening to them, in other words. For those neurons, there is no apparent difference between literal, first-person pain and collective, group pain. (Location 1621)

We viscerally feel each other’s pain. And each other’s pride and joy. Basketball fans act differently after they watch their team win. They feel better about themselves, compared to fans who have just watched their team lose. They even predict they will perform better on puzzles and games. This is, in this context, a charming quirk of the human condition. We live by proxy. We overestimate our own abilities, riding high on a victory we had nothing to do with. (Location 1623)

Note: Live by proxy

Here’s the tricky thing about groups: they can ignite conflict, but they can also extinguish it. This is the second paradox of conflict. Groups bring obligations, including the duty to do harm—or, in other groups at other times, the obligation to do no harm, to make peace. When people find a way in and out of violent conflicts, there is almost always a group at work, in the background. Everything depends on the group’s norms and traditions. What is the right way to deal with conflict? What constitutes an affront? When is it time to turn the other cheek? The way the brain evaluates the meaning of pain or threats depends, in part, on the group’s leaders. (Location 1647)

In fact, the loving ideal that we think of when we talk about brothers and sisters turns out to be relatively rare. Only about a third of American adults report having a close, supportive relationship with a sibling. Another third have either a hostile or a competitive relationship. The rest are generally apathetic about their sibling—or have fond feelings but rarely speak. (Location 1664)

All sibling relationships start in conflict, as children competing for our parents’ attention, and the crock pots accumulate. It’s like a political campaign that lasts a lifetime. (Location 1668)

One way to prevent high conflict is to learn to recognize the conflict entrepreneurs in your orbit. Notice who delights in each new plot twist of a feud. Who is quick to validate every lament and to articulate wrongs no one else has even thought of? We all know people like this, and it’s important to keep them at a safe distance. In practice, this can be hard to do, especially for people trapped in the conflict themselves. Because conflict entrepreneurs are often very important in people’s lives. They can be loving, persuasive, and charismatic. The best ones make themselves essential. They become central to a group’s identity, and without them, it’s harder to feel like there’s an us. (Location 1686)

In the beginning, groups get created in order to solve a problem for someone. That means they can be based on ethnicity, religion, shared kin, or whatever works as a glue to bring people together. The nature of the group can change as the nature of the problem changes. Decades can go by in relative peace, and then something happens, usually a dispute over land, money, or politics, and new life is injected into old grievances. Groups are part real, part lies. And the worse the conflict gets, the bigger the lies get. (Location 1714)

In this spasm of violence, people began to retreat to groups for safety, awakening old, latent identities. It was a way to survive, physically and mentally. People needed a compass with which to navigate the carnage, and many grabbed the one most readily available to them. (Location 1725)

The old religious and ethnic cinders, quiet for many generations, roared to life, fueled by conflict entrepreneurs. “Ethnic wars do not just happen,” political scientist Gary Bass wrote, “they are made.” (Location 1737)

Fire starter leaders seize the opportunities embedded in conflict and turn them to their advantage. Assad’s regime needed Syrians and other global leaders to feel even more terrified of his opposition than of him, and so the regime intentionally helped the more radical elements among his opponents. They released extremist prisoners and even funneled weapons to protesters. It sounds crazy. Why would a dictator like Assad help the people trying to overthrow him? Because he understood fear. He knew that fear hardens group identities. He needed to make the conflict about fighting terrorists, rather than about his own crimes against his own people. (Location 1739)

Identity manipulation is very hard to resist, given our basic wiring as humans. But not impossible. To begin, it is important to be vigilant. To notice when one of our identities feels newly electrified, and to ask the question: Who does this serve? (Location 1747)

Note: Newly

Just as leaders can exploit our worst instincts, they can call us to our best selves. We each contain many versions of ourselves, which can be summoned or suppressed, depending on the moment. (Location 1750)

Note: Summoned

Conflict can explode when social pain becomes unbearable. When it becomes something worse than exclusion, when it becomes humiliation. (Location 1806)

Humiliation poses an existential threat that jeopardizes the deepest part of ourselves, our sense that we matter, that we are worth something. (Location 1809)

In his travels around the world, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman noticed this omission. “If I’ve learned one thing covering world affairs, it’s this: The single most underappreciated force in international relations is humiliation,” he wrote. Most journalists pay far more attention to battle strategy or the pursuit of land, oil, or power. But to ignore humiliation is to miss a powerful understory, driving all manner of conflict. (Location 1819)

But what constitutes humiliation? This is a slippery question. During World War II, guards in concentration camps would order prisoners to make and remake their beds until they were perfect, Holocaust survivors told psychologist Nico Frijda. Male Holocaust survivors said they felt humiliated by this experience. But the female survivors did not feel humiliated. They interpreted it differently, another indignity among many. Either way, the guards were harassing the inmates. But whether it felt humiliating depended on a person’s identity and concept of the world. What it means to be a man. To matter and not matter. (Location 1830)

This is not to say that humiliation is imaginary; the pain is real and excruciating. But one of the most startling revelations of modern science is that emotions and thoughts cannot be separated. They are intertwined. (Location 1835)

When we feel humiliated, it’s because our brains have conducted a rapid-fire evaluation of events and fit it into our understanding of the world. (Location 1837)

If humiliation is the nuclear bomb of conflict, and humiliation is subjective, then it can be manipulated. It can be incited on purpose. This is a radical idea. Today, more than ever perhaps, many people think about emotions as being reflexes, triggered by events. That’s where the concept of safe spaces comes from on many college campuses: the idea that people need to be protected from triggers that can set off emotions. And yet, a century of research has not been able to identify a universal physical pathway for emotion. There is no identifiable, consistent, and objective measure of anger, for example. Emotional experiences vary wildly from culture to culture—in how and when they are understood and expressed. Emotions, in other words, are socially informed. We help create them. (Location 1845)

Anything that reminds our brain of previous trauma is interpreted as a threat, even when it is not a threat. (Location 1867)

“It was embedded in our minds that we were better than the Folks,” Curtis said. “There was always this thought of supremacy, that we’re better than. And I think that whenever that’s in there—a better-than, a less-than—there’s always room for war.” (Location 1892)

The group rivalry provided purpose and order, a coherence where there was none. (Location 1911)

We all have this tendency, to look for a narrative that makes sense of the world. This is why conspiracy theories take hold. (Location 1912)

There is a perverse comfort in these falsehoods. Conspiracy theories reassure us that life is not, after all, fragile and chaotic. No, in fact, powerful people are pulling the strings, on purpose. And they must be stopped. (Location 1914)

“The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living.” —Chris Hedges, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (Location 1919)

Emotions are more contagious than any virus. You can catch them through stories, without any human contact. And of all the emotions people experience in conflict, hatred is one of the hardest to work with. If humiliation is the nuclear bomb of emotions, hatred is the radioactive fallout. That’s because hatred assumes the enemy is immutable. If the enemy will always be evil, there is no reason to ever consider any creative solutions to the conflict. (Location 1928)

Over time, humiliation and hatred accumulate, making it feel impossible to abandon the conflict. The more people invest in a conflict, the harder it is to withdraw, even if it’s in their interest. Anyone who defects from the turmoil would also have to betray the group. So group conflicts go on and on because of all the cheerleaders and reinforcements. (Location 1938)

As with gang conflicts and most other feuds, political preferences are more arbitrary than we think. The vast majority of Americans did not “choose” their political persuasion. They followed the political persuasion of their parents. They are not making rational choices about politics based on years of study of all their options—no more than they’ve studied all religions before choosing one (or none). It’s often a matter of chance, but it doesn’t feel that way. (Location 1970)

But something significant happens when groups assign meaning to superficial cues. The enemy is caricatured. It is easier to dismiss and demean a cartoon villain. In conflict, you feel some contempt for a caricature, and, in peacetime, you might just avoid discussing politics with them. (Location 1974)

Revenge is a way to escape the pain of humiliation. It is rational, at least in the short term. It may lead to more loss eventually, but for a brief period, revenge works. It can rebalance the equation. (Location 1990)

Violent conflict gives people a sense of meaning that they don’t want to lose. The hotter it gets, the more essential it feels. (Location 1993)

Conflict entrepreneurs encourage people to find the meaning in conflict, and it’s not hard to do. (Location 1994)

Conflict entrepreneurs draw on absolutist rhetoric, sweeping language that tends to make people more attached to conflict and less flexible. (Location 2004)

But I’ve learned to pause when someone uses the language of war (absent an actual, honest-to-God war, of course) and ask myself that question again: Who does this serve? Grandiose language is one way conflict entrepreneurs manipulate our emotions. It clarifies everything, washing away important details, energizing us to fight, to sacrifice, to ignore the costs. (Location 2023)

Revenge can stanch the pain of humiliation, but it exacts a punishing cost. It requires total devotion, the kind that eventually becomes a sort of prison. (Location 2033)

“Violence helps the individual to escape the irrelevance of his existence, fills the emptiness of his life and provides him with the heady experience of power over himself and over others.” —Alison Jamieson, The Heart Attacked: Terrorism and Conflict in the Italian State (Location 2099)

The conflict with the Disciples became a war by proxy, or what psychologists call displacement. (Location 2133)

designate one winner and one loser, one group that’s on the inside and one that’s on the outs. Mix up the identities as often as possible. Want to decide if your church should allow interfaith marriages? Don’t put it up for a yes-no vote, whatever you do. Want to open (Location 1453)

four conditions that can act as fire starters. These are the accelerants to watch out for, in any conflict: Group identities Conflict entrepreneurs Humiliation Corruption (Location 1515)

This is what’s known as a saturation point—the point where the losses of a conflict finally seem heavier than the gains. (Location 2239)

Like in Chicago, these feuds guarantee a baseline level of misery for everyone involved. That misery is the great weakness of high conflict, a vulnerability that can be exploited. (Location 2256)

Misery creates a saturation point. And a saturation point is a golden hour of opportunity. (Location 2260)

One problem with withdrawing from a high conflict is that nothing else changes. Your enemies still think of you as an enemy. Your friends still think of you as who you were, not who you want to be. (Location 2280)

Her reaction confirmed his greatest fear, the fear of most people who try to exit high conflict: that his only value was his old self, his conflict self, and that without it, he was worthless. (Location 2295)

It’s hard to believe anything Beck says, given his history of exploiting conflict for his own ends. And yet, Beck’s behavior didn’t make sense if it was disingenuous. It was against his interests in so many ways. (Location 2312)

These were uncomfortable statements for Beck to make. He was a founding father of America’s modern conflict-industrial complex. His media empire was built on demonization and fear, which made it extremely hard for him to pivot. He actually admitted as much in a podcast interview with Krista Tippett: “And it’s not reasonable to ask people just—‘Well, then throw away your career and just stop doing that.’ But that’s not reasonable. I have three hundred employees that count on me getting up every single day,” he said. “Now, how do I change? How do I make this work so I don’t flush the jobs of three hundred people?” (Location 2322)

Whatever else was going on in Beck’s mind, it was pretty clear that he was wrestling with his identity, his group, and his business model. He wanted to get his audience passionate about new causes, other than hating Obama. He was interested in fighting human trafficking and the exploitation of children, for example. But he could not figure out how. “My audience—I can’t find a way to make that palpable or not even—safe enough for people to watch it.” Like Gary in his community board meetings, Beck was trying to play a new game—while trapped in the old one. (Location 2330)

Age changes people, and it is one of the most predictable ways that people abandon crime and violence. People get older and wiser. But Curtis knew it was more than that. It was also because he had created some distance between himself and the conflict. (Location 2355)

Time and space turn out to be key to shifting out of high conflict, for all kinds of people in all manner of disputes. (Location 2359)

What he needed, he realized, was a new identity. “You have to replace something with something else,” he said. For years, he’d filled any emptiness in his life with his vendetta against the Disciples. But that satisfaction was always replaced by a new loss, a new quest for revenge. Now, he had more stories to tell beyond just that one. Father. Husband. Muslim. And those identities competed for attention. This, too, is a common story among people who leave high conflict. It’s not enough just to reach a saturation point; they must also find new purpose, in a new role, to fill the void left by the conflict. Otherwise, they return to the Tar Pits, eventually. (Location 2373)

He read The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson, a book that had come out in 1933 but felt timely to Curtis. A teacher, Woodson chronicled the ways that Black Americans had been utterly failed by schools, taught that their race was unclean and unworthy. He revealed the indoctrination that kept Black people oppressed with or without force. “If you can control a man’s thinking, you do not have to worry about his action,” Woodson wrote. “If you make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an inferior status, for he will seek it himself.” (Location 2405)

There’s a word for this in psychology. It’s called “recategorization,” and it means swapping out a narrow identity for a broader one. This recategorization widened the lens on Curtis’s enemy—and on Curtis himself. He started to question the voice in his head that had been telling him, for years, that he was fundamentally flawed. (Location 2418)

Note: Recategorization

One day, Pfleger told Curtis he wanted to start a “peace league” for gang members to play basketball. And he wanted Curtis to coach a Stones team, to play against a Disciples team, naturally, in a “peace tournament” featuring four of the most active gangs at the time. It was a way to help neighborhood kids. But Pfleger was also helping Curtis. He was welcoming Curtis home, recognizing his new role in the neighborhood. It was a philosophy that Pfleger preached about in his sermons and on street corners. “We cannot wait for law enforcement or for government,” he said at peace marches. “We must reach out to our brothers in the community. Stop demonizing them! Stop telling them they are nothing but gang bangers. Let them know you’re our sons, you’re our daughters, we love you and respect you.” (Location 2432)

It’s hard to resist high conflict. But there are ways to boost our ability to hold on to complexity, even in us-versus-them conflict. The most well-studied strategy is through something known as contact theory, which is a way to help people recategorize one another by spending time together, under certain conditions. These encounters can interrupt the cascading assumptions we make about each other, essentially slowing down conflict and making space. (Location 2575)

It sounds obvious, but why does it actually work? On one level, relationships seem to complicate the stories we tell ourselves. When we get to know people, we can’t reduce them to just one thing. (Location 2583)

If we try to caricature people we have come to know, it feels not only inaccurate but vaguely disloyal. We are social creatures, allied with all kinds of groups, and disloyalty is intensely uncomfortable. (Location 2586)

Soon he adopted their standards in his own writing. He worked to understand and incorporate rigorous scientific research, taking great care to footnote all of his arguments. (Location 2596)

Contact theory seems to require a few conditions. First, everyone involved in an encounter should ideally have roughly equal status, if not in the world then at least in the room and subculture in which an encounter takes place. (Location 2623)

Third, it’s ideal if people don’t just talk but actually work together on some kind of common problem. This triggers our instincts for cooperation, rather than competition. (Location 2628)

Motivation matters. If people want to stay in high conflict, if they want to dominate the other side or revel in contempt or righteousness, they will. (Location 2633)

Contact theory works best when everyone has enough motivation, stability, and power to take risks and withstand discomfort. (Location 2637)

Many people do not want a solution if it offends their other ideas of what is safe and pure—or if it means they will have to let go of an apocalyptic narrative that has become part of their identity. (Location 2642)

“Many people don’t seem to want to just solve climate change,” Mark told me. “They want to use climate change to turn the world into something they’d like to see.” (Location 2647)

Usually, people want to leave high conflict when they have reached a saturation point—or when they’ve developed other, competing identities. (Location 2650)

contact theory is grassroots by definition. It cannot, on its own, transform institutions. (Location 2651)

Real change requires putting sustained pressure on people and institutions that benefit from the current system. People with power don’t generally give it up just because they become less prejudiced. They need to feel pressure, the kind that comes from organized political, legal, economic, and social action. (Location 2653)

Note: Pressure

The conflict burns on underground, where you can’t see it. (Location 2659)

members of their gang. “Who is your why?” Curtis liked to ask these young men. What, in other words, do you care about that is bigger than this? (Location 2676)

“If you’re just waiting for people to just be tired, that can be decades,” Arthur said. “No, you gotta intentionally look for those entry points, and even if it’s met with resistance, you don’t stop there. You look for another ripe moment to bring it back up.” (Location 2683)

Relationships, like these nonaggression pacts or any kind of peace treaty, create a tripwire. They establish a channel of communication, a mechanism that gets triggered when a violation happens. The more I’ve learned about peace agreements, the more I think they’re misnomers. They don’t make peace; they buy time, slowing down the conflict, which makes peace possible. (Location 2716)

The first conflict hack is simple: avoid the fire starters. (Location 2722)

For everyone, in any high-emotion situation, the most tried and tested method is to practice rhythmic breathing. Taking slow, deep breaths is one of the few actions that influence both our somatic nervous system (which we can intentionally control) and our autonomic system (which includes our heartbeat and other actions we cannot consciously access). The breath is a bridge between the two. (Location 2729)

When all else fails, breathing slows down conflict, so you can think again. (Location 2737)

The most long-lasting tactic may be reappraisal. This one is more like a Jedi mind trick. It means reframing the situation, changing how you think about it internally. (Location 2741)

But symbolic concessions matter a lot in conflict. They disrupt the feedback loops and lower everyone’s guard, creating space where there was none, at least for a moment. (Location 2835)

“The kinds of changes that are significant don’t really come about by coercion. They come about through understanding, and understanding is hard won, and it requires patience.” (Location 2865)

This ritual of making light, positive connections, outside of conflict, sounds obvious, but we neglect it all the time in our regular lives. These fleeting, pleasant encounters help expand the definition of us. (Location 2881)

Psychologists Julie and John Gottman have studied conflict in some three thousand married couples over the years, and they’ve found that the couples most capable of keeping conflict healthy were the ones whose everyday positive interactions exceeded the negative by a ratio of 5 to 1. This is the “magic ratio,” as they put it. (Location 2885)

You know what this means, right? It means those after-work happy hours or birthday cakes for a colleague are not just awkward ordeals, forced upon us by corporate overlords. They are investments in our future sanity, a way to build up the ratio of positive exchanges to manage the negative ones sure to come. (Location 2896)

This all took longer than he would have liked. As with every path out of conflict, it was nonlinear. To hold on to what mattered most, Gary had to let go of a lot. And letting go is intensely uncomfortable. (Location 2909)

In his head, he’d ask himself three questions: Does it need to be said? If the answer was yes, then he’d ask himself: Does it need to be said by me? And if still yes: Does it need to be said by me right now? It was surprising how often the answer was No. (Location 2912)

What is “hearable”? It depends on the audience—and what they care most about. This is where Gary had to understand his neighbors’ understories. Looping was key. It helped him slow down time so that he could learn what mattered most to them—and understand it, even if he didn’t agree. (Location 2917)

Generally speaking, there are six moral foundations that shape how we feel about politics, as social psychologist Jonathan Haidt described in his enlightening book The Righteous Mind. Those six foundations are care, fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority, and sanctity. These are the keys that unlock most political behavior. (Location 2919)

If you understand the moral understory, you can make what you say hearable. (Location 2924)

Like everyone, they automatically default to their own moral language, rendering much of what they say unhearable to large swaths of the country. (Location 2927)

It’s very hard to get outside of our own heads and speak the other side’s moral language. It is counterintuitive. (Location 2928)

One of the burdens of high conflict is that it doesn’t allow for delight, for these little moments of joy. Curiosity is a prerequisite for delight. And it’s impossible to feel curious in the Tar Pits. (Location 2951)

After all, a person can be likable and untrustworthy. We all know people like that. (Location 2955)

Adversarialism depends on total, complete, and permanent separation. In the real world, no such thing exists, most of the time. (Location 2979)

There is a time to fight—to protest, to organize, to knock on doors. In a lot of ways, we need more conflict, not less. But conflict without understanding is a half measure at best. (Location 2988)

“Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.” —Preamble to the constitution of UNESCO (Location 3002)

We all live in two worlds: the external and the internal. They interact constantly. Formal peace treaties get signed by elites in the external world, when they get signed at all. And they are important. But this book is about something else—about what happens (or fails to happen) at the individual level when regular people attempt to make that internal shift out of high conflict. (Location 3024)

Note: Intern

No one really knows why the soccer ads seemed to have worked. Many forces must have interacted to spur those desertions. And counterpropaganda does not always work. Other Colombian ads have failed, even ones that seemed much more compelling, as we’ll see. But Juan Pablo has come to respect the power of creative messaging. “We can get people out of conflict without killing them,” he told me, “and propaganda is a very good way to get people out.” Over the course of the nine years that these ads aired, the soccer campaign demobilized more people than the formal peace deal signed with the FARC in 2016, according to his results. (Location 3167)

This is the first lesson from Colombia: to help people out of conflict at scale, you must clear a path. And the path must be safe, legitimate, and easy to find. (Location 3200)

Escorts are critical on the path out of conflict, it turns out. If we want people to take a perilous road, it’s unreasonable to expect them to go alone. (Location 3210)

She was what researchers call an “invisible citizen.” This is a solitary life. You put on a mask every day. It’s hard to belong when you have to hide. (Location 3245)

Despite all the violence Sandra had witnessed in her life, she received no trauma counseling. This was the biggest weakness of the process, she told me. And it’s a failure of most reintegration processes (Location 3246)

This, too, is a common experience of people who leave high conflict. Just when they start to find their place in a new group, they get suddenly banished. (Location 3258)

As a general rule, no one wants to die. (Location 3272)

“It seems like the most effective campaigns are the ones that appeal to a family relationship,” Juan Pablo said. It was a theme I heard again and again, in all kinds of conflict. Reviving latent family identities can help propel people out of high conflict—in divorce court or gang feuds or civil wars. (Location 3287)

A saturation point, like a peace agreement, is only the first step in transforming high conflict—and maybe the simplest one. Everything depends on what happens next. (Location 3293)

The smartest way to help people stay out of high conflict is keep the new identity alive. (Location 3298)

Which means there’s a third critical group to address when trying to help people out of conflict, beyond the ex-combatants and their families. That third group is the public. (Location 3326)

Here’s the painful truth: communities have to welcome former combatants home, whether they are ex–gang members, ex-rebels, or even ex-pundits. Otherwise, they will go where they feel like they belong, which is usually back to the conflict. (Location 3333)

Looking back on it, the failure of Colombia’s peace referendum shows how important it is to work on conflict from the bottom up, not just the top down. Leaders can start the process by signing a peace treaty or reforming the justice system. But that’s the external world. What about the internal world of regular people? (Location 3347)

There are lots of ways to rehumanize people, but one way is through great storytelling. It can be more powerful than any peace treaty. (Location 3354)

Rehumanizing the enemy takes time. It’s hard to do well. But it is just as essential as the peace talks. (Location 3360)

People do break free from high conflict. We’ve seen it happen. In different ways, Gary, Curtis, and Sandra recognized their own saturation points and then interrupted the conflict cycles in which they were trapped. They investigated the understories, the deeper roots of their conflicts. They broke the binary of the groups to which they and their enemies belonged. And they distanced themselves from the fire starters in their lives, quite purposefully. (Location 3385)

Note: Break the binary

Sometimes estrangement is the only good option. Especially when there’s a history of abuse or when the other side has no desire to make the conflict healthier, which happens. But usually, estrangement freezes high conflict. The understory never gets investigated. Misunderstandings multiply. Story lines harden, like the asphalt in the Tar Pits. No one learns or grows as a result of the conflict. People suffer from the loss, especially children. (Location 3400)

The best way to escape the Tar Pits should be clear: never set foot in them at all. Once we get captured, it’s hard to get out. (Location 3410)

But none of those options felt right. Not leaving, fighting, or censoring himself. “I didn’t want to have a congregation where every opinion was the same,” he told me. “I want to be in a place where there is controversy.” Part of his job was to challenge his congregants’ thinking. Disagreement was necessary for any kind of growth. (Location 3454)

When people do not talk about their differences, they miss the opportunity to be stretched—intellectually and emotionally—and to come out the other side stronger and wiser. (Location 3470)

If we can’t resolve the differences in our own community, how are we going to resolve our differences with the Palestinian people? We have to be able to live together. I am not going to eliminate them, nor will they eliminate me. How are we going to be one community? (Location 3475)

We can’t avoid conflict. We need it in order to defend ourselves and to be challenged. In order to be better people. (Location 3493)

The secret, then, is to avoid those conditions. To build guardrails in our towns, our houses of worship, our families and schools, the kind that lead us into worthwhile conflict but protect us from slipping into high. This means setting up a conflict infrastructure, the kind that preempts high conflict before it starts by helping us investigate the understory, reduce the binary, and marginalize the fire starters in our world. It means cultivating curiosity in conflict, on purpose. Building this infrastructure creates conflict resilience, an ability to not just absorb conflict but get stronger from it. (Location 3495)

Note: Inffrastructure - resilience

“Many communities invite us in to lead a workshop and want everything to change,” Weintraub said. “BJ dedicated the staff time and resources to really do the work. This doesn’t happen from a single workshop or even seven.” (Location 3500)

learning to tolerate the tension was oddly liberating. It didn’t resolve the conflict but it made everyone smarter about what the conflict actually was. (Location 3503)

Two miles up Broadway from the synagogue, there is a hard-to-find, windowless space called the Difficult Conversations Lab. (Location 3510)

Afterward, the people still disagreed. And this is important. No one changes their mind about a deeply held belief based on a twenty-minute conversation with a stranger. That’s not how the human brain works. (Location 3520)

Note: No one

curiosity is a prerequisite to change. (Location 3523)

Like the gardening conversations that Gary had with his neighbors, or the birthday celebrations during the Mars simulations, these sparks of warmth create a buffer against unhealthy conflict. In real time, looping accomplishes this beautifully. Every time you attempt to show someone you’ve heard them (and ask if you got it right), you boost the magic ratio. (Location 3528)

Listening and checking for understanding is probably the single best way to keep conflict healthy, (Location 3534)

It turned out that the different articles mattered. In the difficult conversations that followed, people who had read the more simplistic, adversarial article tended to get entrenched in negativity. They asked fewer questions and left less satisfied. But those who had read the more complex articles asked more questions, came up with higher quality ideas, and left more satisfied. Complexity is contagious, in other words. This is a big deal. People can be primed to see the world as a less binary place. When that happens, they become more curious and more open to new information. They listen, in other words. (Location 3547)

One fundamental lesson for anyone who wants to cultivate healthy conflict is to complicate the narrative early and often. (Location 3552)

No one, ever in history, has changed their mind because some reporter they don’t know called them out. That’s not how humans work. Shame rarely has the desired effect, even with people we know. (Location 3562)

Note: Never

Listening doesn’t mean agreeing. (Location 3564)

Whenever there’s blame, there’s usually some kind of vulnerability lurking underneath, (Location 3568)

Understanding people doesn’t change them. It’s not nearly enough. But almost no one changes until they feel heard. That’s the third paradox of conflict. People need to believe you understand them, even as they realize you disagree, before they will hear you. (Location 3570)

Who is going to dare to listen first? (Location 3572)

In my own work, complicating the narrative has also meant finding space for the quotes and details that don’t fit the story I originally thought I was telling. (Location 3573)

There are, in real life, many kinds of tension, including the internal kind. Often, the better story comes from looking for a complication, not a conflict. (Location 3577)

Complexity should not be used to obfuscate, to reject accountability. Not all conflicts are complicated. But all people are complicated. And in high conflict, there is almost always false simplicity lingering somewhere in the narrative. And in that simplicity, no one hears what they don’t want to hear. In those cases, complicating the narrative can spark curiosity, where there was none. And curiosity leads to growth. The idea is not to mask the truth. It’s to tell the truth, in full. (Location 3580)

Many people were startled by the range of views within the congregation—and even within themselves. (Location 3609)

Just as Gary proved in Muir Beach, people didn’t have to agree to make progress, but they had to feel heard. That is the key to conflict resilience, I am convinced. (Location 3621)

“The search for truth lies in controversy, not agreement.” (Location 3675)

Note: Truth

Simon Greer, the organizer who had brought them together, laid down three ground rules. “We’re going to take seriously the things everyone holds dear,” he said. “We’re not going to try to convince each other we’re wrong.” And finally, “We’re going to be curious.” I wonder, looking at this list, what a political debate might look like with these same ground rules. It’s inconceivable, really. But then again, so was this whole scene. (Location 3742)

When all else fails, he told them, just say this: “Tell me more!” (Location 3748)

Essentially what occurred, I think, is that our voice was being heard, and we knew it and felt it.” (Location 3798)

Don’t allow a narrative to be the grounds on which you made a decision about people,” Andy said. “Allow yourself the vulnerability it takes to really get to know someone.” (Location 3835)

Separation can lead to prejudice, just as it does with racial or religious segregation. “Separation triggers a series of interlocking processes that inflame group conflict,” the social psychologist Thomas Pettigrew wrote. “Negative stereotypes are magnified; distrust cumulates; and awkwardness typifies the limited intergroup interaction that does take place.” (Location 3845)

The diversity of families, in the very same household, has a huge impact on polarization nationwide. (Location 3854)

All over the world, knowing people who think—or look—differently seems to deradicalize humans. (Location 3854)

“There was a critical mass of curiosity.” (Location 3918)

Conflict infrastructure has to be made of steel, built for the long term. Otherwise, the effects erode with time, as everyone returns to their adversarial echo chambers. (Location 3944)

how to recognize high conflict in the world language to listen for… Do people use sweeping, grandiose, or violent language to describe this conflict? Are rumors, myths, or conspiracy theories present? (Location 4018)

It’s not that these people are exaggerating. The emotion is real, just as it was for Gary. At a deeper level, the wolf conflict has to do with people’s sense of the world and their role in it, the Norwegian scientist Olve Krange told me. For some, the wolves (and the rules against killing them) undermine not just their income stream but their sense of self. These are people who think of themselves as self-sufficient, who protect their land, livestock, and family from all manner of natural forces. In their minds, nature is to be controlled by humans, not the other way around. The wolves’ protections, in this view, represent yet another example of elites telling them what to do, with complete disregard for the realities of their lives. “The wolf is a sort of a symbol of café lattes and all of that, an urban intruder into rural life,” Krange said. In this way, some people see the wolves the way others saw mask mandates during the pandemic—as an affront to their freedom. And even their masculinity. “Real men shoot wolves,” one Norwegian bumper sticker declared. For other people, the wolves represent the purity of nature, of a lost utopia. The animals’ return to Europe offers a glimmer of hope, in this view, a sign that Mother Nature may yet recover from human harm. Any attempt to hurt the wolves represents yet another manifestation of human arrogance and destruction, much like genetically modified crops. It’s an affront to the sanctity of nature. This, too, resonates with a much deeper narrative. Notice these groups are responding to totally separate story lines. That is a sign of a high conflict. (Location 4044)

High conflicts tend to erupt in places with low trust. When there is low trust, it is very hard to create a consensus about the facts. People become so suspicious of one another that they can believe anything. (Location 4059)

actions to watch for Do other people withdraw from the conflict, leading to the appearance of just two binary extremes? (Location 4062)

The conflict is about many things including identity, resources, respect, and fear. But just like on Twitter, the most extreme people are the most vocal ones, and so the complexity collapses, leading the most helpful people to flee the scene. (Location 4065)

The original dispute faded into the background. The us-versus-them dynamic took over, as we’ve seen happen so many times in other conflicts. (Location 4070)

how to recognize high conflict in yourself (Location 4078)

Do you lose sleep thinking about this conflict? Do you feel good when something bad happens to the other person or side, even if it doesn’t directly benefit you? If the other side were to do something you actually agreed with, some small act, would it feel very uncomfortable to acknowledge this out loud? Does it feel like the other side is brainwashed, like a cult member, beyond the reach of moral reasoning? Do you ever feel stuck? Like your brain keeps spinning, ruminating over the same grievances, over and over again, without ever uncovering any new insights? When you talk about the conflict with people who agree with you, do you say the same things over and over—and leave the conversation feeling slightly worse than when you started talking? Has someone who knows you very well told you they don’t recognize you anymore? Do you ever find yourself defending your own side by pointing out that the other side does the same thing—or worse? Do you see different people on the other side as essentially interchangeable? If your conflict is with just one other person, is it hard to conjure a visual of that person as the small child they once were, even if you try? Do you use words like “always,” “good,” “bad,” “us” and “them,” or “war” when you talk about the conflict? Do you find it hard to remember the last time you felt genuine curiosity about the other side’s thoughts, intentions, or actions? (Location 4103)

If it’s not already, there’s a chance this conflict could become good conflict, which makes us better people. It can be more valuable than no conflict at all. Try to stay in that space. Take every opportunity to make deposits of goodwill, upping the magic ratio, as the astronauts did. Go to the balcony, as Ury does. Breathe. Resist binary categories and keep fire starters at a distance. (Location 4123)

Here are some of the ways that the people in this book have found to build that infrastructure in homes, neighborhoods, synagogues, and space stations. 1. investigate the understory What is the crock pot really about? It’s hard to get anywhere until you start talking about the understory of any conflict. (Location 4129)

In western Denmark, in a rural town near the home territory of the wolf pack, Hans Peter Hansen and a couple other social scientists invited everyone in the community to come to a meeting about the wolves in 2017. Fifty-one people showed up, including farmers, students, and hunters. There was a mix of ages, backgrounds, and opinions. Then, all together, they started to dig deeper into their understories. What bothered people about the wolf situation, Hansen asked? People called out every complaint they had. The wolves were destroying people’s livelihoods. The politicians didn’t understand the hunters. The farmers were exaggerating the danger. Hansen and his team wrote each lament in big letters on posted sheets of paper. “Instead of avoiding the conflict, we confronted it,” he said, sounding just like Rabbi Roly in New York. Slowly, people started to feel heard, so they could listen. Importantly, no experts or politicians were invited to that first meeting. Those people were not trusted, not yet. (Location 4136)

Regular people are the experts in their own lives, and so they were asked to tell personal stories, not intellectual or political ones. No one other than the facilitators were allowed to interrupt anyone else. (Location 4143)

2. reduce the binary Try not to form unnecessary groups. If groups are necesary, have more than two. And create traditions and routines that automatically scramble the groups, however many there are. (Location 4155)

Don’t let complexity collapse into competition. (Location 4161)

In Denmark, Hansen and his colleagues started the wolf workshop by reminding everyone of their shared identities, alongside their differences. “We have two things in common,” he said. Everyone listened, wondering what these things could possibly be. “First, we have nature in common. We all breathe the same air.” No one disagreed. “And the future. The future is something we have in common.” (Location 4164)

Try to rely instead on people (and news sources) who are unafraid of complexity, ones who are more curious than righteous, most of the time. (Location 4176)

4. buy time and make space When I was in high school, I read the novel Lord of the Flies, and maybe you did, too. The book describes how a group of schoolboys survived a plane crash only to devolve into violence and cruelty on a remote island. It’s quite convincing. In real life, a group of boys actually were shipwrecked on a remote Polynesian island in 1965, as Rutger Bregman described in his book Humankind. What happened in this true story? The kids hollowed out tree trunks to catch rain water. They worked in pairs, drawing up a schedule of chores to ensure that gardening, cooking, and guard duty all got taken care of. They started a fire and kept it going for 15 months, until they were rescued. How did they manage such remarkable cooperation? Whenever they got into conflicts, they had a ritual. Each boy would go to opposite ends of the island to calm down. They created time and space, in other words. Then, after about four hours apart, they’d come back together and apologize. (Location 4178)

Remember the magic ratio for conflict resilience. People need to have five positive interactions for every negative one in a marriage, as we’ve seen. Outside of marriage, the same principle applies. The positives must outweigh the negatives. (Location 4188)

It’s why humans like to break bread together. Before each meeting of the wolf project in Denmark, over the course of several years, the group ate dinner together. On purpose. Food is something we all enjoy, like air. It’s an easy way to create a shock absorber. Then, when conflict arises, it doesn’t escalate as quickly. (Location 4190)

Getting better at listening means getting more curious—and making people around you more curious. It is more than a skill; it’s a skeleton key. “As soon as you articulate the other side’s point of view, they are a little surprised,” Chris Voss, a former FBI hostage negotiator, said. “You’ve made them really curious to hear what you are going to say next.” (Location 4194)

People did not have to like each other, Hansen kept reminding the wolf project participants. The goal was understanding, not friendship. They are not the same thing. (Location 4207)

Want to convince other people that you are right and they are wrong? Stop trying to do it on social media. Or through shame, in any medium. It will backfire. Persuasion requires understanding, and understanding requires listening. (Location 4208)

5. complicate the narrative “Be suspicious of simple stories,” as the economist Tyler Cowen has said. In difficult conflict, simplicity can blind us. And the cure is curiosity, in my experience. It is contagious. If you can get curious, really curious, about people who disagree with you, it can make conflict healthier, almost immediately, depending on the situation. (Location 4215)

perceived. It’s impossible to feel curious when you feel threatened. But curiosity also requires humility, which is especially rare right now. (Location 4218)

One way to spark curiosity is to notice and amplify contradictions that you see in real life (something journalists covering controversy should do far more often). (Location 4219)

Note: Amplify contradictions

Questions, asked with genuine curiosity, can make conflict suddenly interesting again. (Location 4227)

Note: Make conflict interesting

Here is a list of some of my favorite questions to ask when I interview people in all kinds of conflict, drawn from the wisdom of many people, including the ones in this book: What is oversimplified about this conflict? What do you want to understand about the other side? What do you want the other side to understand about you? What would it feel like if you woke up and this problem was solved? What’s the question nobody’s asking? What do you want to know about this controversy that you don’t already know? Where do you feel torn? Tell me more. (Location 4228)

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