When we are baffled by the insanity of the âother sideââin our politics, at work, or at homeâitâs because we arenât seeing how the conflict itself has taken over.
Thatâs what âhigh conflictâ does. Itâs the invisible hand of our time. And itâs different from the useful friction of healthy conflict. Thatâs good conflict, and itâs a necessary force that pushes us to be better people.
High conflict is what happens when discord distills into a good-versus-evil kind of feud, the kind with an us and a them. In this state, the brain behaves differently. We feel increasingly certain of our own superiority, and everything we do to try to end the conflict, usually makes it worse. Eventually, we can start to mimic the behavior of our adversaries, harming what we hold most dear.
In this âcompulsively readableâ (Evan Osnos, National Book Award-winning author) book, New York Times bestselling author and award-winning journalist Amanda Ripley investigates how good people get captured by high conflictâand how they break free.
Our journey begins in California, where a world-renowned conflict expert struggles to extract himself from a political feud. Then we meet a Chicago gang leader who dedicates his life to a vendettaâonly to realize, years later, that the story heâd told himself about the conflict was not quite true. Next, we travel to Colombia, to find out whether thousands of people can be nudged out of high conflict at scale. Finally, we return to America to see what happens when a group of liberal Manhattan Jews and conservative Michigan corrections officers choose to stay in each otherâs homes in order to understand one another better, even as they continue to disagree.
All these people, in dramatically different situations, were drawn into high conflict by similar forces, including conflict entrepreneurs, humiliation, and false binaries. But ultimately, all of them found ways to transform high conflict into good conflict, the kind that made them better people. They rehumanized and recategorized their opponents, and they revived curiosity and wonder, even as they continued to fight for what they knew was right.
People do escape high conflict. Individualsâeven entire communitiesâcan short-circuit the feedback loops of outrage and blame, if they want to. This is an âinsightful and enthrallingâ (The New York Times Book Review) bookâand a mind-opening new way to think about conflict that will transform how we move through the world.
Featuring audio highlights from actual interviews, town hall meetings, and podcasts.