thanksgiving conflict journal

Over the holiday break when keeping my conflict journal I was disappointed with the relatively limited material I got to work with. Generally speaking anytime that my family gets together to do anything there is some sort of conflict. In fact, I would say that every time my family gets together there is conflict. Perhaps not major, in fact, it rarely is major, but of course, it usually is the minor details that stirs up a big fight I've observed. That is not to say that major things have not stirred up controversy, it just comes up less often.

Thursday, the day of Thanksgiving, would be the day that my family went to my Aunt's house to enjoy the lovely Turkey Day.

The Gift Exchange

Every year, the adults in my family have a gift exchange so they don't have to buy gifts for every individual member of the family. We used to have a gift exchange among the children in our family as well, but it ended up just being the parents buying the gifts, so we disbanded that practice. Anyway, my mother's cousin is the one that leads up this exchange and forces it upon everywhere every year.

Well, some adults in my family don't particulary care for the gift exchange. One individual who would particurly adament against this forced insitution would be my father. It doesn't really actually matter if my dad "participates" or not, because in the end, my mother is the one that buys all of the presents, which is pretty safe to assume is the case for every woman in my family. Sometimes I think holidays would be a lot more enjoyable if there were no men. This year before going over to my aunt's, my dad specifically told my mother that he did not want to be a part of the gift exchange. There are several reasons for my father disliking the gift exchange. The first would be the crappy gifts that he's received in the past. One year my uncle bought my father a chia pet, which my father didn't like. Additionally one year he received a walkman, which he did not particularly care for considering walkmans are no longer in style. My mother has also received her fair share of bad gifts via the gift exchange. One year her brother purchased a particularly hideous brown vase for her enjoyment.

Anyway, the message apparently did not get across to the gift exchange planning commitee, so when it came to drawing names for the gift exchange, my father's name was still in the basket. The main reason would be the fact that my mother "forgot" to tell them to take his name out. So, when the basket came around to my father, he refused to draw a name. This created a rather awkward situation, although not as awkward considering my father is generally a very stubborn, somewhat anti-social person. The resolution was that my cousin, Samira, had to instead draw for him and gave the name to my mom so that she could buy the present for him that she was going to have to buy anyway. Then my father decided to leave and sit in the other room to pout for a while because he was mad at my mom.

Conclusion: Not so great.

The Dirty Politics

My family is fairly divided when it comes to politics;

public judgment

"public decision making that allows citizens to make choices they are willing to help implement"

When I first heard the term, "public judgment", the first thought that came to my mind was that it was where the public judged other people. Which, would obviously make sense since that would be the most natural conclusion to draw from the term "public judgment", would it not? So, when I did figure out what it meant according to the textbook and whatnot, it still confused me so I decided to do some further research on the idea. I found a somewhat interesting article by typing in "public judgment" into google and skimmed it to try and better understand the concept. The title of it was "A Call to Move Beyond Public Opinion to Public Judgment".

Just thinking about that title alone, it gave me a somewhat better idea of what it means. If public judgment is a step higher than public opinion that's better than not knowing what it meant at all. But, it went on to discuss the various ways that Americans have opinions about the matter of our government. But, they rarely move beyond these opinions since a general sentiment among the American public is that one person is too small to voice their opinion in a way that it can make any difference. But, in order for a democracy to be healthy and functioning, it is important that people do voice their opinions, otherwise we more or less become an elected republic. And in many ways we currently are only an elected republic since so few "normal" people do anything in politics to change issues.

The importance of public judgment is that it moves beyond individual people just having an opinion of what is going on in a far-away land known as Washington D.C.. It is about the realization of the power that each person has and in realizing this power, grabs it and makes a difference. This is the concept of public judgment -- where the public actively decides which direction our country is going to be going. Which is exactly what was said at the beginning of our nation's formation, that we were to be a government "for the people, of the people and by the people". Our government is for our citizens and is of our citizens as well since all elected officials are citizens of the United States. But, without public judgment, our country is not by the people.

The article had at the end a call to individual citizens about how they can become involved in a way that they will be a part of the public judgment. And there were some excellent ideas were things like citizen deliberative councils and to become involved in organizations advocating deliberative democracy based on citizen dialogues. Public opinion is where citizens find themselves complaining about the government; public judgment is where citizens change what they dislike about the government. It is that difference between passive participation in democracy and active participation in democracy.

public dialogue

"public talk on matters that concern us all"

One of the things that I consider to be most important for any democracy to be healthy and functioning is to have an open forum. And within this open forum to be able to freely discuss and debate whatever issues are at hand within the democracy. This element of democracy reaches back to one of history's strongest advocates of democracy, Socrates. In Socrates' honor we refer to small group discussions and debates as Socratic Dialogues. In my educational experience I have been exposed to many different examples of socratic dialogues, all of which were experiences that I thoroughly enjoyed. There is something immensely refreshing and exceptional within a socratic dialogue because it allows individuals to express their thoughts and opinions in a forum where diverse ideas are celebrated and welcomed.

Diversity, which is something that has been stressed in arts of democracy, as something that is imperative for strength, vitality and longevity in a society is certainly true when it comes to ideas. I read Plato's work on the Life and Trial of Socrates and was immensely impressed of the power that Socrates placed in ideas. But, most of all, Socrates placed a high value in questions.

Questions, I believe, are the root of public dialogue. The reason that we have public dialogue is so that individuals can discuss, debate and examine the different possibilities for our society. But, if no one questions the current norms, then there never will be any different solutions created or presented. Questioning is also essential to public dialogue because if we blindly accept what others tell us, then we will not question and think for ourselves what we actually truly believe. However, if we question and consider and reform ideas based off of our own personal research, we find that the public dialogue can be far more healthy and functioning in a democratic sense.

-- mediation --

"facilitating interaction to help people in conflict hear each other"

Since I was a kid I think that I've always had a negative impression of people who try to be peacemakers. The reason was because I knew them by a different name, "meddlers". I even still think of those who try to mediate conflicts as meddlers. And, I don't have a very good view of meddlers. And, while mediation has been presented as an important art of democracy, I still disagree with the idea that people should mediate other people's problems. That bad impression of "peacemakers" has always stuck with me and I don't think it's going to disappear very soon.

Granted, I'm sure that mediation has a place in the arts of democracy. That place would be also known as, "to be used as little as possible". I suppose I'm honestly not giving mediation enough credit though and you're probably thinking that I'm just shrugging this off altogether and I guess in a way, I am. But, I have such a bad impression of people who are meddlers that I can't look towards someone who is a mediator as not being a meddler.

I dislike people who stick their noses into other people's business. Everyone should just keep to themselves and solve their own problems without judging other people to the point where they think they can solve someone else's problem better than they can. Though a fresh perspective could be useful, I think that no one knows a problem as well as those involved, therefore no one could propose a solution better than those involved as well.

active listening

"encouraging the speaker and searching for meaning"

I've found that in most of the arguments that I have, the main part where they break down is where the other individual doesn't listen to what the other person says. While this is true on both sides of some of the arguments that I have, if I think about the person I argue with the most, they are an individual who never listens to me. I suppose it is probably because this individual is an authority figure over myself and therefore thinks that they have no obligation to listen to what I am saying.

But, how could a disagreement ever be solved properly if they are always one-sided? Otherwise, it's one person getting what they want and the other person never getting what they want, even if the other person may be right. Because without active listening, you're not paying attention to what the other individual is saying, you're simply preparing for your next amazing point to refute everything that they had said before.

But, in my experience that passive listening isn't even alive in the arguments that I have. It simply is an automatic shut-down of what the other person is saying and therefore nothing is ever heard. Or one person shouting over another person because they refuse to listen to anything that they are saying. Which is why the art of democracy of active listening is so imperative for a healthy debate that's going to get things done.

creative conflict?

"confronting others in ways that produce growth"

There is a particular episode of the "The Office" called "Conflict Resolution" which I think would be a perfect example of all of the things that you are not supposed to do when it comes to mediating conflicts between other people. The general background to the episode is that it is a typical office where employees will have complaints about their fellow co-workers that they will submit to their HR representative. When the boss, Michael Scott, who, although is a very caring person, is also very immature and injudicious individual, decides to solve his employee's conflicts, it ends up to be a negotiation nightmare.

One of the main conflicts that he "negotiates", while it would be an excellent example of creative conflict, it unfortunately satisfies neither of the two parties. The two fueding parties, both accountants, Oscar and Angela, are arguing over a poster Angela has on the wall that Oscar dislikes seeing. In order to achieve a perfect, "win-win-win" solution (a solution where both parties and the mediator win), Michael suggests that Angela make the poster into a t-shirt that Oscar wears. While this is a very creative solution to the problem, perhaps a better one than the secretary Pam's idea of a compromise of having it up Tuesdays and Thursdays, it really didn't satisfy either Oscar or Angela.

Continuing with his quest, the boss Michael, furthur stirs up controversy when he forces additional fueding parties to meet with each other to "resolve" their conflicts. The problem would this would be that neither party had come willing to meet with each other and therefore were not ready to meet, nor were they coming with a willing heart to compromise to find a solution. The end of the day resulted in several employees mad at each other because controversy had been stirred up without a proper plan of action for a resolution. So, basically, I think that this would all be an excellent example of what not to do when it comes to mediating a conflict between a group of other people.