Obama Inspiring a Tea Party of Mutual Understanding

Below is a video of Carl Rogers one of the greatest communicators that the United States has produced. The video speaks of international relations but it equally applies to groups learning mutual understanding. That it is not about right or wrong but to learn how to collaborate and cooperate.

The challenge with the US shutdown is to learn to heal not hurt people. People suffer the longer this goes on as the power struggle is centre stage rather than problem solving. The challenge is to solve the problem not hate the person.

Through the military industrial complex we have used force as a problem solver rather than the hard work of learning from conflict. We see conflict in the society where bullying is widespread and communication is often poor. The issue in the Whitehouse is no different to any workplace where there are power issues, control and objectives are to win rather than resolve in order to co-exist.

The time is now to find the inner wisdom and the desire for mutual understanding. Democracy is not about taking power it is about sharing power and understanding personal responsibility in conflict. The opportunity for the Republicans and the Democrats is to model to American society how they can resolve conflict amicably for the betterment of learning, sharing and society. The microcosm of conflict resolution between groups is the same as international relations. I will be interested to see how the conflict is managed.

Carl Rogers had a dream of getting people together of international influence and having them experience the reconciliation of differences within that group. He spoke of creating a facilitative climate so they could move towards better understanding and communication. Through this learning they can expand this to other arenas. Governments need to learn how to resolve conflict rather than divide. We see that in adversarial systems that reward division and objectivise others rather than understanding mutual humanity. Peace and collaborative education are keys to positive outcomes. A facilitative learning climate is the place to start, learning how to understand others rather than shut them out.