Like illness, the best
method for dealing with conflict is having proactive ways of
preventing it. We've already discussed ways of
creating culture to
provide a means of keeping people happy with each other. In
addition, we could have threshing meetings where people talk
about what is going on for them and give other people feedback.
A set of behavioral norms could also be agreed upon and written
down (these should allow the maximum possible individual liberty
and should be alot less restrictive than what exists in
mainstream culture). Once conflict arises, we will have specific
conflict resolution agreements such as (from Creating a Life
Together by Diane Christian, p 213):
1. A commitment to
mutual respect
2. A commitment to solve
the problem
3. No put-downs
4. No intimidation,
implied or direct
5. No aggressive
physical contact
6. No interrupting
7. Agreement to use the
conflict resolution protocol, below.
Community members in
conflict will:
1. Make a good faith
effort to resolve the problem between/among themselves. If this
does not work, the members in conflict will:
2. Ask a mutually
agreed-upon member to help mediate and solve the problem with
them. If this does not work, the members in conflict will:
3. Formally request
assistance from the community in solving the problem.
4. If the community is
unable to assist in resolving the conflict, and all avenues of
conflict resolution have been exhausted, then the community may
choose to engage in outside mediation to solve the problem
These are just examples.
At some point we will finalize these. We will probably try to
include more positive things in there.
Although we don't
anticipate that there will be much community involvement in
tasks that generate stress, since the main communal tasks are
food production and buildings/grounds maintenance (distinguish
tasks which have to be done for utilitarian reasons from
activities which get done at people's discretion and usually
involve pleasure, like eating together or dancing), we do
anticipate some conflict will arise when people do not
participate in a community-assigned task, or when they don't
perform well. There are straight-forward ways of helping people
stay accountable, like agreeing to tasks at meetings and
reviewing tasks from old meeting, having buddies reminding each
other, and managers keeping track.
