Nuanced. - 102. Michelle LeBaron: How to Resolve Conflicts & De-Escalate Political Conversations

Episode Date: April 6, 2023

In an interview with Aaron, Michelle Lebaron discussed her interest in conflict resolution, which stemmed from her background in law and mediation. She highlighted the challenges within family law, where people can become vicious towards one another. Michelle also shared her thoughts on how to de-escalate political and religious discussions, as well as how to approach negotiations.Michelle LeBaron is a highly acclaimed scholar specializing in conflict transformation, arts, and resilience. Her research focuses on two main areas: conflict across religious and worldview differences, and the role of arts in collective memory and reconciliation processes. As a recipient of a Wallenberg Fellowship, she worked with renowned visual artist Dr. Kim Berman and other artists to explore the role of arts in South African transitional justice. Michelle's books include Changing Our Worlds: Art as Transformative Practice and The Choreography of Resolution: Conflict, Movement and Neuroscience. Her work spans various disciplines and communities and includes initiatives like Dancing at the Crossroads and Enacting Resilience. Michelle is a sought-after keynote speaker and consultant on intercultural conflict resolution, the role of arts in fostering resilient leadership, and creative ways of engaging political and religious conflicts. With a background in law and mediation, Michelle has a wealth of experience in dispute resolution and multiculturalism.Send us a textThe "What's Going On?" PodcastThink casual, relatable discussions like you'd overhear in a barbershop....Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

It's the Bigger Than Me podcast with your host, Aaron Pete. It's not very often that we get to talk about peace, negotiation, conflict resolution, how to communicate with others who we may disagree with. And that's why I'm so proud today to sit down with Professor Michelle LeBaron. She was a past educator of mine from Peter A. Allard School of Law. And I found her to be incredibly insightful, incredibly thoughtful, and thought-provoking when we're talking about how to mediate between two people who have different perspectives. And so I hope you enjoy this episode or we're able to dive into how to connect when we may disagree.

Michelle, it's such a pleasure to sit down with you today. Would you mind introducing yourself briefly for those who might not be acquainted? Thank you, Erin. And it's a gift to be with you today. I'm a professor of law at the University of British Columbia at Allard School of Law. and a long-time mediator, mediator trainer, and negotiation teacher who really loves arts and the questions around what artists can teach mediators and negotiators. Probably a skill that we should learn about at an earlier age than we do is this idea of negotiated relationships and how to connect,

because as you described, we had a course together. As you describe, this is something we do every single. single day, we negotiate relationships with other people, yet perhaps not always consciously, and I think you did an elegant job of bringing that to the forefront of our mind, of making sure that we understand how we connect with other people, that this isn't something that you just get trained to do when you use in one specific circumstance. This is every day in traffic, when you're buying your food to the grocery store, when you're coming home to see your spouse. This is an everyday thing, and I think sometimes we forget that. I'd like you to start maybe

with how you got interested in this? When did this become a passion of yours? Well, thank you, Erin. And let me say, I agree with you wholeheartedly. And although we learned, of course, many things about relationship in our families of origin and our communities, they're not always perfect, nor are we. And so it really is helpful to step back and to be conscious about the way that we build relationship, build rapport, and then negotiate our differences. How did I get involved? Well,

I grew up in southern Alberta in a white, mostly white community that was incredibly racist. And I found it deeply dissonant, even as a child, I suppose, because I grew up during civil rights era in the U.S., and so I was hearing about racism and I was hearing about, I don't think I knew much about the Japanese internment, but my family had lived on farms where Japanese internies had been sent, and so I heard something about that. And I found it deeply, deeply quieting. So I felt that my career would need to in some way address injustice and address the way that we humans don't relate very constructively to each other. And that is what got me involved in mediation and negotiation. I went to law school because I could, but I found it

didn't fit me like a glove. You know, we say that we should find something to do that fits us like a glove. It did not. But luckily, mediation and negotiation helped me make sense of my law degree. Interesting. We hear this idea that children don't grow up

and they aren't inherently born with these biases, these dislikes, these emotions. Yet it's difficult once you're raised in that to kind of get away from it. And I'm just wondering from your perspective, what allowed you to have that sober second thought about the decisions, the perspectives going on around you, because to be honest, you can't fault a person too much for being raised in an environment and not knowing any better. And it sounds like

you did. And I'm just curious as to how that came about. Well, thank you. Again, that's a really fertile question, I would say. And I would say that it had to do with learning that both of my families who had come from farms in southern Alberta had had Japanese internees on the farms and I heard that they lived in the pickers shacks out back that the conditions were very dire for them and that just really it didn't make sense to me and I also saw that indigenous people whose communities and reserves were surrounding the city where I grew up, Lethbridge, were not talked about respectfully, and it bothered me. I think some of us are born. I would be one of those people with a kind of inherent sense of injustice or wanting to respect others.

And I will tell you that a couple of my family members would tell racist jokes at the dinner table. And this just incensed me. And so I think it's from that anger that I resolved to do something in the world that would address that. That's beautiful. Was this something that was clear during your law education? Was this something that was at the front of your mind that you were focused on? Or was there like a reinvigoration of this interest? You know, law school, you've also attended, Aaron.

So you would know, or perhaps you would agree with me, that law school doesn't necessarily focus on questions of racism or structural inequality. There may be some courses where that arises, but it's not the so-called meat and potatoes of lot school. So certainly when I went to law school, before. you did a couple of decades. It was not much talked about at all. And I finished law school because I didn't have another good plan, honestly, because it didn't feel to me like it really related to my deep interest. But just a few years, within five years of finishing law school, then mediation became very well-known and widely taught. And I became a family and commercial mediator.

And that helped enormously because then I could see that I could enact some of the values that I had held very closely. I'm really curious about that period of your life because working as a native co-worker, I assumed that criminal law would have been one of the most fraught, challenging areas of practice. It is not. Sheriffs that I talk to, court staff that I talk to, judges that I talk to, all concur that family law is the darkest, most twisted area of practice for anybody to go into. Because there's, when you commit a crime, say you steal candy bar, say if it's even a more serious offense, there's still like a sense of justice that you could find.

but there's a darkness to what family law brings about in people and it's an ability to hurt a person deeper than perhaps a punch in the face and a regular attack. There's an ability to really wound people at the center of their core. And when you have a significant other or an individual who's able to say, you've never been a good person, you'll never be a good person, and you're just an unlovable, hateful individual that I'll never care for. I've never cared for, that hits at the core of us because they've seen you when you're brushing

your teeth, when you're getting ready. They see you as a human being in a different way. And so the emotions that exist in family law are so different than anything else you'll see in any other area of practice. And that seems to have somehow inspired you or influenced you. And I'm just curious as to what you saw during that period. Oh, Aaron, I think that's so true. Of course, those with whom are intimate know us very well so they know where our vulnerabilities are. And if then they tied of a good relationship turns into the shadow, it can be some of the most devastating trauma that could ever be experienced. So I think you're exactly right. And I found working as a family law mediator that many people came in.

at their very lowest end. I know very few people, actually, who have had constructive experiences with separation and divorce. And that's a sad thing. And I think in part, it has to do with the way our system is structured. It has to do with the fact that although we have no fault divorce in British Columbia, still we have pleadings. We have ways that the law can be used to harass

the other, if you are willing to spend the time and the money and the energy. And that happens. And as we know, when you didn't mention this, but it's also the case that children are often a casualty. So children get used as pawns or as as power pieces that are the subject of negotiation. And I feel very, very... fortunate to have done this, and I also could not have worked as a family law mediator more than just a few years, because the challenges that arise and the states that people fall into and the shadow sides that surface are actually very difficult to hold. And I think one of the things we don't talk about enough is actually the referred trauma that happens for practitioners, for legal practitioners, not to mention family members. We become, our system somehow shapes us into becoming so harsh because these environments, the environment of legal separation and divorce and Canada is still incredibly adversarial. I definitely feel that I have a close friend right now who's going through, they're not married, but they're separating.

And I would say that it's also an experience where you can't say who you would be in this circumstance. And he is seeing his significant other, his past significant other, I guess, behave in a way that he doesn't recognize and you don't know who people are until you're in this moment because, and I tried to my best to explain this. and he actually took it really well, is that, in my opinion, in many of these regards, there are actually three people in the relationship. It's you, the other person, and then the person you create out of that. And that is a separate and distinct relationship, separate from the two individuals, and you make certain covenants to that agreement. You say, I'm going to behave this way.

This is what you can expect. And I think on both sides, we can start to see that fail. For men, I'm very critical of the individuals who start. doing date night after six months, who stopped treating their significant other well, because you made that covenant. That is the person you agreed to deliver on. And when you cut back on that and say the honeymoon period's over, that's what the person agreed to. If this was a contract, that's what the person signed up for. And so when you change, that has consequences. But through these relationships, you don't know who you are after 30 days of arguing and arguing and arguing and

disagreeing and not getting restful sleeps and disagreeing over the smallest of things of who put the spoon in the dishwasher and who didn't do this, that you don't know who you are in that dark moment. And so the worst of people is exposed during these periods. And so to your point, being in a room with people who behave this way, just like how we talk about police officers seeing the worst 20% of people when they're committing crimes and acting offensives, we also see this in the family law career, that you're seeing. people at their darkest, at their most insidious. And again, I would use the word insidious

because there's something darker to take that vulnerability and shine a light on it in court or to bring it up or point somebody's mistake out in front of everybody when you know that that was them at their weakest. I think that's right, Aaron. I find it really interesting you're talking about this third that gets constellated because the third is, you write it's kind of an entity by itself. It's the relationship. It's the coming together, the union, and it has certain values. It has its own life. It has its own character.

And then when you find that third being distorted, being the home or the seat of incredible disruption and what seems to be very bad faith behavior, it's. incredibly disheartening. I think we humans, we go into relationship with optimism. We go into relationship with a sense that this is the best thing that ever happened to us. And so what a long fall down it is to then come to see that person as enemy, as darkness, as sabotaging. And yet so often those are the reciprocal receptions of people who are separating and forcing. I think it's really important when we're having this conversation. You're an expert in conflict resolution and negotiation,

and I think it's really valuable for us to go through some of the techniques, some of the tools you think it would be useful for people to know when we're having this conversation about healthy dialogues. What are some of the tactics you think would be useful to put on people's mind as we are trying to navigate new times. Thank you for that question, Aaron. You know, if you take a course, and I know you have from me and no doubt for many others, about conflict resolution or about negotiation,

you will be taught listening skills, framing skills, ways of trying to take statements that might have negativity in them and somehow massage them into being more positive. So there are a whole variety of communication skills and structuring skills and problem-solving skills that are taught. I have come, however, increasingly to believe that those skills are good and they are important, and certainly if a person has a deficit in those areas, it's good to work on it. And at the same time, I notice that when I talk to experienced mediators about what they do in their own conflicts,

what they do when they're in their own situation where it feels like all the pieces have been thrown up in the air and they feel disoriented and underappreciated and upset in the midst. of whatever the conflict context is, they tend to not necessarily draw on those skills. They tend to exceptionalize their conflict. Oh, this is much different because it's so much worse than, you know, than other situations or situations I've mediated. So that has led me more and more to think. It's not so much about teaching what to do, although knowing what to do in the midst of

conflict is useful. It's more in the realm of being. It's more in the realm of really asking ourselves the question, how can I be in the midst of this unsettled place? And that's a very difficult thing to do. I think in the world in which we live now, so much pulls us out. It draws us out. Social media draws us out. The pace of our lives. draws us out. And so we have these very full outer lives and perhaps not as many impetus to focus up our inner lives. And then we don't know how to be in the midst of crisis or conflict. And so I think I think the answer in part, at least, is befriending our inner terrains befriending our relationship with silence, withholding our selves intact in the midst

of upheaval. This is a challenging question, but I think that you can offer some light into this. We often look now at cell phones and social media and laptops as a challenge for us to be in the present moment. And when I think of my grandmother, she worked with horses, she would be outdoors, she would be on the farm, and perhaps more connected. And yet I feel like there's a dichotomy of remembering what that time might have been like. On the one hand, I hear, well, they didn't have a word for depression back then. So people who'd come back from war didn't know how to process those emotions and would just completely avoid it.

And then on the other hand, it feels like there would have been more space to go for a walk and listen to the birds and kind of sit with emotions in a different way. then right now you get cut off in traffic and it's react and you have somebody who says something rude to you and it's text them back and it seems more reactive but I'm curious do you think that we're better at negotiating worse at negotiating have things just changed how do we think about over the past maybe 100 years of that difference of not having access to this to now where we have access to constant communication oh yes these are thorny, thorny issues, I think. And so I'm thinking of your grandmother and that she worked with horses and that she spent time in nature. I'm thinking about my parents who spent time on farms and wanted nothing to do with the farm ever again in their lives because they found the work very hard. And they wanted to do jobs behind desks and with what were then typewriters. So I think you're right. We can't idealize the past. I also think as I look back at conflicts in my own family, I think about one part of my extended family where there's a kind of rupture, a cutoff where

various members are not speaking to other members. And I had occasion to speak with one of the younger people in that tableau recently, and I said to them, you know, our mothers had no psychological vocabulary. Our mothers didn't know how to talk about things that were difficult or things that were taboo or things that had been traumatic. And I think that is true in general that much more vocabularies available to us now to think about trauma, as you said, people came back from the war, and they had no place to put it, so it just became compartmentalized in their lives. So I think we have many, many more resources.

At the same time, I think that we live in a time. time when there's an ethos of progress and action and achievement, and that this again pulls us out and maybe doesn't help us contextualize how we use those psychological vocabularies or some of the resources that we now have that earlier generations didn't have. And I'm curious, actually, Aaron, in your community, whether elders in your community, your grandmother and others wouldn't say that the way things are talked about now is able to draw for more resources than in the past. I'd be curious about that. I would say that that is definitely the case.

My grandmother attended St. Mary's Indian Residential School here in Mission, and I often try and help my mother. understand this because she experiences it firsthand. She was taken in, she was, my mother was born with fetal alcohol syndrome disorder as a consequence of my grandmother, drinking alcohol in the womb. And then through that, she was malnourished and taken to Kokelita Indian Hospital and adopted by a Christian family, my non-biological grandmother, Dorothy Kennett, which meant she was part of the 60s scoop. And I would say that that was a huge benefit to her and myself.

and I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for that nurse. But my mother's taken the decision to not be a part of her own family and to be disconnected from that personally. And then even today, my grandmother is not an emotional person. She's not a well-connected person. She's not a thoughtful person in that way of trying to build bridges and look at how we can have dialogue and move past that trauma. She would still resort to something like alcohol to cope with those traumas.

She doesn't want to talk about it. And I would say, that's of no fault of her own. This was the tools that she was provided. And I'd be curious on your thoughts of, are some of these things just at a certain point unreasonable to ask a person to, she's in the hospital now, she only has so many years left? Is it fair for me to think she should go get a counselor, work through these issues while she still has maybe a year or two left,

and address all these issues so we can make peace? Or do we accept her and love her for the things that she endured and understand that her experience will forever be different than the experience I have and my mother has, and that that does in some way put her in a different category where there are certain asks that are, in fact, and reason. Well, first I want to say that this story that you've just shared, Erin, touches me deeply. It's a very personal story. Thank you for sharing it. It's a story which is not unique, unfortunately, but is the story, a variation of the story that many people tell. And I believe that as people living in this land, it's so important that we tell stories and that we give voice to what's actually happened, as opposed to trying to sweep it under the rug or gloss it over or get so.

absorbed in anger about it that we still don't really tell the story. So I hear you telling it with real compassion for your grandmother and for your mother and for yourself. And that brings tears to me. I find that really, really moving. I've had this same kind of question with a different history than yours in relation to my mother because my mother had experienced sexual abuse by her elder brother. And although she told me about it when I was in my 30s, she told me about it like you might tell someone about the weather. She told me about it as a fact of something that happened, but not in a way that the

emotions were even present in the telling. and this is how she had found to deal with it. My mother never went to therapy. It wasn't something that was a customary in her generation or with people that she knew. And it took me a long time to come to a place of peace with understanding that she really didn't. have that vocabulary and even if she were in the vicinity of a kind of psychological or trauma-informed vocabulary, it wouldn't be hers. It wouldn't be something that she could adopt or that she could kind of parachute into. I think that years before this damage had been done, it played out

in very painful ways through her entire life. And my job was to be compassionate in relation to that. I, for example, felt quite upset that she never confronted my uncle, her elder brother, and never brought to him what his action. had generated. And for her, it simply wasn't done. It simply wasn't spoken about. And I just wonder whether that isn't something that is simply to be acknowledged

and understood with compassion. I actually, this is a big leap. It's a different topic entirely, but I've been doing some work about unplanned pregnancies and especially given changes to the law about abortion in the United States. And what I see is that this topic too, this question of sexual and reproductive health and choices around families and births or abortions, it's an area that's really not talked about at all. You know, it's not talked about freely or comfortably.

It's talked about often in loud voices. It's talked about with rights discourses, but it's not often talked about in very soft and compassionate ways. And so circling back to where you started this exchange, And I hear you talking in soft and compassionate ways, and I think that is surely something that we need to include in our thinking about conflict. It's not always to be kind of grabbed by the horns and fought when. Perhaps it's also to be witnessed and held, and that in that witnessing and holding, there

can be a kind of shift that we hadn't even foreseen. I agree. I'm curious as we talk about intercultural relations, and I'm wondering if you would include some of the circumstances we're talking about with generations within this idea of culture and having different cultural norms, because I do see my generation looking back at past generations with a sense of arrogance that they would have done differently had they been in these shoes and that they because we are here now we know better and when we talk about the relationship between men and women in the home when we talk about what best practices might look like it seems like we're coming out of from a very different lens today without an appreciation

of maybe the complexities and the differences that existed then and without an appreciation of the potential benefits that did exist in the past and how we might balance the benefits of that today with how we operate today and how we can balance the two and get the best of both worlds. Instead, it seems like there's a bit of arrogance, a bit of smugness to people of the past. I think that's very true. I think we, you know, being in the university, I feel like I may sheer. the current discourses about law or about psychology, I feel fortunate to be in the midst of those. And at the same time, it's so important for me to remember everyone is not. And so

there are all sorts of arrogancees, aren't there, you know, generationally, but between those with a certain level of education and those with other kinds of experiences. And it does seem, if you look back, you earlier referred to a hundred years as a time frame. If we look back over 100 years and maybe five generations, we probably see in every generation that kind of arrogance looking backwards. And if you think about the past 100 years also, it's been a time of more rapid change than any other time in human history in many ways, depending how you measure it. So it perhaps accentuates that phenomenon of being arrogant in relation to a previous generation.

And certainly, I've been guilty of that with respect to my parents' generation. They didn't have the educational advantages that I've had. They didn't have the lenses that I can put on and take off. And they didn't know that you could take off lenses. In fact, you know, they didn't have the perspectives that now many would take for granted. And still, both of my parents are no longer on this plane. And I remember them with kindness. I remember my father being incredibly compassionate.

it to others. And my mother, who was quite a harsh person, as a result of some of her early experiences, I do my best to remember her with love because she suffered. She suffered a lot. And I think when we feel judgment toward arrogance toward others, whether generationally or educationally, then we don't necessarily make room for that loving gaze that we could have.

Do you think that there is a route to conflict typically? Do you think that there's a typical spot where we find it? I think of when a person's coming home from work and maybe they're dissatisfied with how they're greeted. And then there's a sense of, I deserve to be greeted in their head, not out loud, that I deserve to be greeted with this response and they're not doing that for me and so instead of saying anything about it I'm going to take back something

where maybe they're grateful for maybe I usually make dinner and I'm going to say I'm not going to make dinner tonight and instead of actually communicating and reflecting on these are the things that shape me this is what makes me feel seen, valued, heard, loved, connected and I don't feel like we're doing that So how could we proceed? And I'm just curious, do you think that there's a typical route where a majority of disagreements, of conflicts arise from?

And is it unmet expectations? I'm sure, Erin, that unmet expectations are a big part of it. I think that's very insightful. I think about the wonderful artist whose name was M.C. Richards. She passed away just a few years ago. And before she died, she'd live. She had lived in an intentional community on the east coast of the U.S. for a number of viewers. And she was asked if she would write a chapter about conflict in a book that was going to be put together about women's perspectives on different issues.

And she said she absolutely would write a chapter about conflict because she knew a lot about conflict having lived in this community for some time. And I think also having lived as an artist because we don't make the way easy for artists in many of our cultural contexts. And so she wrote a chapter about conflict and in it she said, in the midst of our mutual involvement, we befal each other constantly. And it's a bit of archaic wording, but I think it's wonderful. we befal each other all the time. You know, whether I'm not greeted the way I wish to be greeted when I come home or my partner doesn't answer my call when I have an urgent question to ask,

or, you know, fill in the blank, all these things. And why do they matter when we discuss them and they sound so trivial? They matter because they connect into those places where we each have a deep need to be acknowledged and seen and heard and witnessed, witnessed in our lives and welcomed in the world. Those of us who didn't feel very welcomed as children in the world, I think we're more likely to then see unwelcoming in other. aspects of our adult lives. So our patterns follow us. And then our work is about being aware of those patterns and being aware that even in the most congenial, well-adapted

family or relationship, we maybe follow each other constantly. At least that's my experience. and maybe it's because I've studied conflict for many years, so I see it everywhere, but I think it's pretty ubiquitous. I tend to agree with you, and I think how we resolve that is a sign of the cultural differences we might have and the style in which we resolve things, which is personally why I find the idea of taking indigenous values and trying to apply them to Western culture is really interesting to me, because in some circumstances, I tend not to agree with the move, and it's because indigenous communities don't scale the way Western culture has. And this is one of the challenges I see when we're talking about.

It's not to say that they're wrong or incorrect, but a sentencing circle in an indigenous community works because the 200 members all know each other, and so they're all starting from a reasonable place. Trying to take that same model and put it into a provincial court or Supreme Court doesn't work the same way because nobody knows each other And you have to, and during this time when we talk about decolonization, I do see a danger in not recognizing the brilliance of the system and exists. And that's not to say that the system is perfect, but that is to say that there are certain ways in which the system does function.

And when we talk about the ability for an accused individual of a crime to be able to go in and have unbiased individuals judging based on the facts and not being allowed to make free judgments about them to have to follow, beyond a reasonable doubt, to have to follow certain rules and functions. This is a system that works, even if you're from another country, you speak a different language, you don't have the same cultural values. The idea is this system is still supposed to function when you don't know the judge, the sheriff, the court staff, or any of the people in the room, and you're still supposed to find this idea of justice. And I'm just curious as to how you feel about how we weave in a system, because I think

there's opportunities for it, but we have to be careful when we're trying to take these steps and we have to be appreciative of the systems that work and how they work, rather than just saying we're going to supplant this system in this existing system and fix it. Erin again, I find myself agreeing with you. So I think you make an excellent point, and, you know, I hope that my work is part of the project of decolonization that's very important to me. And at the same time, I think appropriation or just translating something from one system into another has all sorts of difficulties associated with it. you've just illustrated one, that if you take a system from a very intact community where

everyone has a lot of bonds, a lot of threads that connect them, and you plant it in a system where that's not at all the case, then it doesn't work in the same way it can't. And, you know, I do think that it's important that we look at systems in context. And we look at how our justice system, in the example you've given, functions, where it can be improved, where it's systemically biased, and therefore, you know, for example, in sentencing, someone's life experience, particularly as an indigenous person in Canada, needs to be taken into account and should be taken into account so that sentencing, practices are not grossly unfair over and over. And so I think that's important. But I also think that it's important not to just discard an entire system in favor of something that looks more relational, that looks more relational and humans.

and compassionate. And I think sometimes that's what happens when people get excited about family group conferencing, which after all comes from Maori people in New Zealand or sentencing circles for the same reason. I also, I'm aware of a book. I don't know if you know of it. It was written some years ago by a law professor at the University of Alberta called Annalise Acorn. And what she argues, her books about practices like sentencing circles, and she argues that they enforce compulsory compassion, you know, that in fact, they may not always function well in terms of accountability or in terms of bringing a person face to face with the consequences of their actions in the way that sometimes they clearly do. tend to agree with you, which is actually one of my critiques of First Nations court, is that A, we don't have data on whether or not they're actually effective at addressing recidivism rates or any of those rates. But then on top of that, they feel incredibly meaningful to be in the

room and to hear somebody's story of abuse and childhood harm and you feel like you're connected to something. And so the people in the room go, oh, you've got to do this. This is incredible. You're experiencing a person's life and it's so raw and it's so real and that can feel so good and my counterpoint is that should be done in a counselor's office or with an elder not for the display this is not theatrics this is not for our entertainment and we do risk enjoying it the experience of compassion and emotion and feeling so much that we forget that this is a person's life that you were not registered counselors and that this isn't perhaps the right venue for this type of emotion?

I think that's really true, and it brings me to circle back to something, Aaron, that you raised earlier, which was about people who have survived Indian residential schools. And if we think about the various mechanisms and processes that were devised to address those harms in whatever inadequate way, then. And we see that many people who had perhaps never told their stories were somehow compelled to tell those stories in order to fit into certain categories for compensation. And that just, and to tell those stories in front of strangers, yes, perhaps with an elder or a support person, but in front of strangers, nonetheless, in front of a lawyer who would adjudicate. various claims. And it just struck me that it was mixing some reach for justice with something which is much more appropriately dealt with in the psychotherapeutic context. And so to be, that's been

one of my critiques of those processes. From about 13 years old to probably about 21 years old, I believed that politics shouldn't be a private conversation. And growing up during my childhood, politics was still very much, you keep your political opinions to yourself. And we've seen that relatively undone. For the most part, you're able to share your political perspectives with people. You're able to post about things on social media. It's not as private as perhaps it used to be.

And it's only more recently that I wonder if there wasn't some sage wisdom in keeping our political opinions more private, that perhaps the ability to voice all of our perspectives constantly is a danger when we aren't able to take the time to thoughtfully develop an opinion, when we see something we sort of agree with, we leap on it, and that's now our team were full force on it. And I felt like you, one of the things that I,

the reason that I wanted to sit down with you is because I felt like you handled the conversations around the COVID-19 pandemic, incredibly thoughtfully because in my opinion there is a range of perspectives on the issue and there was even during the height of it there was different perspectives and now we look at the truckers with a certain perspective but you navigated and you held space for individuals in our classroom really well there were individuals in our classroom who thought it was a porent of the university to consider reopening and have students come back to school and then there were other individuals who were like, there's no need for a mask, we're at an age in our life, we're going to be fine, the statistics show that people our age are going to be fine, there's not that much to worry about, we can go back to school, there was a range, and during that period, it didn't feel like the two sides were able to communicate effectively on social media, in the news, in any space, except your classroom.

And that's what I found really inspirational about you is because to think some courses, there's a person teaching the course that maybe isn't the best at it. But I do feel like you held space for both sides and for the people who had one strong opinion that we shouldn't be going to school, you'd not challenge them, but you'd open their eyes to a different perspective. And for the individuals who are like, it's silly that we're not coming back to school, you provided the lens of challenges that that might create, giving the two space to understand. things and I think it's a good illustration of the challenges we face when we're having political conversation that I know that this is an interest of yours. So I'd be curious as to how you think about those things behind the scenes. When you see things getting heated and political, how do you process that? Thank you. Again, there's a lot in what you've said, Aaron. So I want to start back with the social media piece and say that I'm actually not on social media because I find that it

fragments my attention. And I worry about privacy and I also worry about the quality of engagement that happens there. So I don't participate much at all. But I had an occasion to see a Twitter thread recently that had to do with a political issue. And I was shocked. I was quite floored at the vitriol and the kind of, not difference of opinion, but the nastiness of differences of opinion that there was kind of an unrestrained ethos around the way that people were participating in relation to this particular issue. So I have to say, I feel really worried about that because I think that it moves us as a collective away from, civility, away from respectful engagement. And so that's a concern generally. In relation to

your mind compliments in relation to the COVID-19 moment that we all lived through, and perhaps we're now living just through the tail end of it, I hope so. It is quite fascinating that it could be seen in very, very different ways, and a coherent story could be told from quite different perspectives about what should have been done from a policy perspective, how we collectively and how our leaders should have handled that time. I do some research during COVID around religion and religious leaders and how they were. responding to COVID-19. And I got very interested with the idea that civil authorities are just kind of low-level

and that actually we need to take our cues from divinity and then we would act quite differently. But again, that could mean that we would defer to civil authorities or absolutely defy them. So even within various religious perspectives, there was a deep and visceral disagreement. One of my long-term friends took a very strong position against vaccination and experienced being treated as an outcast in many ways. And I think that's a very strange thing that we did, we humans, to kind of sort people as anti-vaxxers or pro-vaxxers. But what I would say in general is this, that if studying and working with conflict for decades has given me many gifts, and I think it has, one of the chief gifts is the capacity to

do my best to stay connected across difference or to invite others to do that. I don't think in our primary education or our university education, we do much at all around that question, around asking, how can I deeply disagree with you? I'm certain that you're wrong and that if we follow your way of proceeding, we're going to end up in a disaster, you know, whatever the issue is, if I'm certain that you're wrong and I'm certain that I'm right, although I think always questioning that certainty is also helpful, then how can I stay connected with you and engage with you? And I'll go back actually to my research about abortion because way back in the 1990s, I had the occasion to interview many people, actually, hundreds of people who had been in dialogue groups that they call pro-life, pro-choice dialogue groups, people who were in favor of publicly funded abortion and people who are not.

and one of the most moving moments in those interviews was visiting a group in Colorado who had been meeting with each other for about 18 months and within that group there were people who were very stanchly pro-life and people who were very clearly committed to pro-choice and while While I was there observing their group in dialogue, one of the pro-life people said to one of the pro-choice people, we deeply disagree, and that's why I weren't to stay in relationship with you. And I think it struck me, Erin, because it was so unusual.

If I deeply disagree with you, I don't want to stay in relationship with you. And we can look at our kind of political fragmentation in Canada, if you just think of the federal parties for a moment. You know, people who would align with one party or another would see those who are not aligned as they are as somehow just deeply misguided and problematic, maybe even dangerous. And that, I think, is a huge problem. You know, we have so many macro problems in the world today, whether violent conflict or climate change or trying to find some way of creating justice around the harms of colonization and many other things. And if we can stay connected to each other in our disagreements, then we just have. kind of survival of the fittest dynamic going on, that person who has the most access to power at that moment imposes their solution. And that doesn't work very well over time.

I agree. One of the areas that I was, to be honest, the most disappointed in was that I never actually heard anybody else bring up the term steel manning, because I think it is probably one of the most useful terms that a student at law school could learn, and I actually didn't hear it said, and it's one of my biggest values, is to take a group, a perspective that I vehemently disagree with, and make the most coherent argument for how they're correct, to push my brain, to see their perspective, to increase my neuroplasticity, and to keep a balanced perspective in the long term. And I noticed that that was incredibly unpopular for certain periods, And it doesn't, again, mean that I agree with them.

But my ability to see, okay, this group, in this case, the truckers, are incredibly loud and they're being incredibly vocal. So instead of just simplifying them down to whatever terms have been used, that they're deplorable individuals, let's try and figure out what their point might be. And let's see if there's any merit to what they're saying, is there anything we could do differently based on that? And it gives me always admiration for our system again because we have a system where there's a group in power and then there's an adversarial group meant to hold them accountable. They're called the opposition party for a reason. And they're meant to poke holes and point out how they're not living up to expectations. And when I saw the opposition do this, they were accused of being abhorrent individuals that were condoning malevolence and evil.

And to me, that is their responsibility. And so I'm just curious as to your thoughts on, is conflict bad? Is it something to avoid or is it a tool in which we look at what some consider the pursuit of truth? Ah, well, I was with you until we got to truth. I don't know if I can go as far as truth. But I would say that conflict is ubiquitous and conflict is necessary. It's an agent of social change. So if we take the trucker's issue that you have used as an example,

if there could be that understanding, it's not about can we bring about agreement between the truckers and whoever was judging them or opposing them. It's about can we bring about understanding? Can we bring about some sense of seeing what the world looks like from over there. You know, in fancy terms, we call it contextual evaluation. Can I get inside your world enough to be able to see how it looks from in there?

You know, I can never be fully in your world. I can't feel what you felt. I can't, my cells of my body do not have the same sensations as yours. but in making the effort to actually come inside your context and to understand it enough to be able to do that and then ask the question, what does the world look like from there? That is so important, I think just vitally important going forward. And, you know, I haven't seen an example, maybe you have, I would love to know of anyone who has been judgmental and very, very critical, for example, of those who joined the

convoy, actually sitting down and giving themselves the challenge of articulating what does the world look like from inside the convoy. I would also say that conflict is an engine of social change, and we need it. You know, if you're concerned as I am of about some of the forestry practices in this province. Just sitting at home being concerned doesn't create much change. Unfortunately, we need to be in conflict in order to find ways of addressing those things that are much more complex than any one individual can fix. I'm curious as to how you think about judges in our society because they play an instrumental role, but often there's a challenge in maybe there isn't a 50-50 middle ground. What is, how do we think about resolving disputes? How do we think about the person tasked with hearing both perspectives and coming to some sort of conclusion?

Well, I. You have a lot of difficult questions. So, you know, some of the work that I've done, Aaron, for the National Judicial Institute and other groups, has been talking to judges about intercultural perspectives, about cultural fluency. Because many people become judges when they're fairly senior in their career. They may have a certain amount of socio-economic well-being. They certainly have many, many years of post-secondary education. And so they don't necessarily see a person who comes before them in ways that are accurate. They see them always through their own lenses. So I have a concern that judges work on cultural fluency, work on racism, work on sexism, work on abelism, you know, all those ways that we distort pictures of each other. And that said, when you talked about conflict resolution, it also brought to mind for me that, you know, many people in recent decades have argued for the term conflict transformation.

can we take a conflict and can we actually, by engaging in it, in a respectful way, transform it so that we change the ground that we're standing on, we change the issues, we change our way of being in the issues. And going back to judges, I'm not sure that judging is necessarily transformative in relation to conflict. It's dispositional. It finds some disposition, some completion in relation to, for example, a criminal offense or in relation to a civil matter. But many, many of the kinds of complex or multi-party matters that exist amongst us now actually don't have good legal remedies associated with them. And so I think that early thinking, early by which I mean maybe 50 years ago, when American colleagues started talking about multi-door courthouses and multiple avenues to pursue justice, I think those are important ideas that if you have, for example, a question about land use

where they're overlapping claims from indigenous groups in relation to that land use and then perhaps industries involved in labor and many other groups, our judicial system doesn't have good tools for addressing that. And so then I think we need to be building processes which integrate indigenous legal traditions and which integrate also

flexible problem-solving-oriented ways of addressing differences so that we can actually more fairly and more fittingly address complex kinds of issues that confront us. One of my favorite pieces in your course was this negotiation process, being given a hat to wear and think about what's in their best interest and then going into a negotiation. negotiation with a different person who has a different list of facts on what their best outcome is. And I'm going to pull Tim into this because he actually lives out. He just told me the story a little while ago. And it actually lives out exactly one of the lessons that you put for us. And it's, I think the, the overlying idea is that sometimes there isn't an outcome

that makes it a proper negotiation, like a fair outcome. Sometimes it's what's the best for both parties and it goes nowhere near what either party would expect. And so the example that Tim gave and perhaps he can tell it better than me is the story around his URL or his domain name being used. And Tim, you were willing to accept that for, I believe, $1,000, am I mistaken on that? And you thought you were getting a fairly good deal. But you found out sort of the backstory behind what the company's position was and realized that perhaps you could have negotiated for more, had you known their internal issues? Boy, that's putting me on the spot.

I'm just supposed to be getting a podcast here. For Michelle's point, I'll tell the story very quickly. Way back when we used to have a short, what would be deemed now as a podcast, I imagine a video podcast. It was in around the year in 1998, and we owned a few seconds.com and did these short little videos kind of ahead of our time in a way. But it got too expensive because YouTube wasn't around. You actually paid for hosting and when people viewed your video many, many times, it cost you money. So we ended up shutting it down. And so I had this great URL, a few seconds.com. And I kept renewing and thinking one day I'll do something with it. But I got a random email from

someone looking to acquire this domain. And I knew a little bit of searching. that it was an advertising agency in Philadelphia, and they were representing their client. And I'm sitting there going, oh, what's this worth? And I just, I randomly said $1,000 U.S. And immediately they responded, okay, where do we send the money? And I was kicking myself going, what was it worth? And so for the next few months,

I just was clicking refresh, refresh on that website. And it turns out, I believe it was the European introduction, of Viagra, and so it was Pfizer that was buying this domain to be the linchpin for their advertising campaign. And I said to myself, what was this ad agency, like, they must have been given a budget, because they had clearly built this entire campaign prior to, because it was quite short order that they had launched this. So it was critical that they had that or something very close to it as the URL.

So I think that's what you're referring to. Is it not? It is. And Michelle, we did this. We ran through this exact case study, the exact URL being purchased, the price of it, the value of it. Can you talk about that? How crazy is this? Isn't that such a coincidence?

Thanks for sharing that story, Tim. And that's exactly what I was thinking, Aaron, that we worked with a scenario which is called Live 8, which is a takeoff on Live 8. And this was a situation where the owner of a small art gallery had the URL that Live Aid needed. And Live Aid, of course, an organization with huge resources. And so what's been really fascinating in working with that scenario, which was developed by a wonderful colleague named Noam Ebner, is that there has been. in an enormous range of amounts paid for the URL. And so I would say it has ranged from everywhere from, say, $500 up to most recently when I was teaching a course in Toronto at York University, used a live aid.

someone paid $2 million for the URL. And that was really shocking. I'd never heard such a high number. But the whole question, what is it worth? As you've sent him, it depends. It depends on who needs it and for what. And it just strikes me that that's such a useful negotiation experience for many people to have because, you know, we talk about objectivity.

You even mentioned Aaron earlier the word truth. And, you know, what's the truth of what the URL is worth? The answer is it depends. And that's so true in so many things. That it's not about some sort of objective standard of value. It's a question of what matters to each of the parties and why and how can they come to an outcome that feels to both of them fair. So I hear you saying after the fact, oh, maybe that wasn't so fair if I had known more, I might have rethought fairness and fair enough. And at the same time, because students will often have terrible remorse when they see, well, I got a foul.

but my colleague over here in the same scenario got 300,000, and yet if the person who got a thousand is satisfied and feels like, yeah, that was a fair value at that time, then they go from there, right? So I think your example is one, a bit like the person who paid $2 million, but in reverse. And you look back and say, wow, how did we get there? And I guess one of the reasons I think it's so useful to do that kind of experience in class and I'm glad you remember it, Eric, is that it gives us this message that more in the of each other's interests is better than less. So if I get a random email offering to buy my URL to say, let's have a talk about that can be really useful. One of the aspects of that particular stimulation is it's done by email and often not that much information is exchanged.

So we think about which mediums are more information-rich to facilitate exchange amongst parties. I think there's a beauty and a piece that you can get from that story, which is that as long as you act to the best of your ability to achieve what you need in order to be successful, that that's achievable in a healthy negotiation and that there isn't a right answer because there's a sense when you go in with a lawyer or when you're working with somebody, it's get as much as you can at all costs. And that's how I think negotiation is often displayed or articulated by people, that that's the goal of a good negotiator, to go in for war, go in for blood,

and get everything you can and like nothing on the table at all costs. And that's just simply not how we operate when there's best practices being implemented. As long as you can take care of your circumstance, as long as you're getting what's fair and equitable, by your own definition, that's achievable. I think so, and I think it's a question of, was the process satisfactory, and was it relational? You know, in the case of these examples, there may not have been an ongoing relationship between the seller and the purchaser of the URL, but often there is some sort of ongoing relationship, or maybe there's a possibility of one that can benefit both parties. So I do think that this kind of win as much as you can mentality is often quite counterproductive. It inculcates, even in the negotiator of her himself, a kind of edge that is not necessarily conducive to harmony within or without.

In my opinion, you speak, and there are a few people I've had the pleasure of speaking with, that speak with a sense of peace. that isn't being sold, that isn't being marketed as an opportunity, but genuinely has a sense of peace within themselves, within the place that they're at. And I think that that's so valuable. You can hear it in your voice, that you have this sense of peace. And I think it does deliver in a classroom where we're talking about political issues, the opportunity for others to want to seek that out. And there is no place to go find peace.

But I know you practice yoga. I know you follow and research and listen to. very intelligent voices, I would say more wise than necessarily intelligent, that are more thoughtful. And so I'm just curious for listeners, is there any recommendations on the direction, the steps they can start to take to move in that direction of peace, in your opinion? Is there books? Is there practices that you follow to sort of move in that direction? Thank you, Erin. That's a question close to my heart. So we talked earlier about being as well as doing.

And to me, it's so vitally important to have practices that are about being, not doing. And so, yes, I practice yoga. I also practice meditation and contemplative, other contemplative practices. One of my favorite things to do is to go on long-distance walks, where every day I'm just walking, preferably on a path where people have walked for many hundreds or thousands of years. I think I can then listen in to some of the stories. It would depend on the lexicon and the tradition that would have resonance for listeners, of course. So I would recommend very highly M.C. Richards' writing on conflict that I quoted from earlier,

and I can make that chapter available, I think, as long as I can certainly make the reference to it available. Then I've been just deeply compelled and drawn to understanding about pre-crues. Christian traditions and practices, especially as they are anchored in the land in Ireland. So for me, that's another source of inspiration to imagine that there have been societies where mercy as an ethic, compassion as an ethic, have been practiced. and I don't know that we have too many such societies in our midst now. We have certainly those moments and those practices amongst us. And so I continue to follow the work of a wonderful Irish theologian named Mary Condren

and to do my best to understand how it is that we, gave ourselves over to a kind of patriarchal, materialist, competitive ethos when we actually have in our heritage, and I'm sure this is true for many indigenous peoples here in this land and also in Europe, we have in our histories and in our traditions models of doing things that are quieter and perhaps less integrating of greed and more integrating of heart. And my suggestion would be that it doesn't matter so much what the tradition is or the path is as it matters to choose one.

I think his holiness, the Dalai Lama once said when he was here in Vancouver back about 20 years ago, he said, just stand in your tradition and work from there, you know, and work those practices and inhabit them. He wasn't suggesting we all become Buddhists, as attractive as that may be to people who don't like theist. worldviews. He suggested that we find traditions that have resonance and history for us and then dig our wells deeply there. And I think that's really important. And I think it's very sustaining when we're able to do that. Michelle, I thank you so much for sitting down today. I think that this was beautiful to go through some of these ideas. I hope that it can bring people together, that we can Remember that we are more similar than we are different.

I think you're a very elegant, thoughtful speaker, and it's just such a pleasure to spend this time with you. Aaron, thank you. Thank you for so many thoughtful questions. Thank you for telling so much of your own story and sharing your own values and perspectives. I've enjoyed our dialogue thoroughly. Thank you so much.

Remember to rate the podcast on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts. It's a huge help from what I hear from the people who talk about how to grow your podcast. So that would really appreciate that and tune in again for another episode. I actually have one thing to add. Don't ever pull me in again to talk about Viagra. You didn't have to say the name of the company. But it added to the point of it. I don't think I was disappointed as much as just.

I was very happy to get a thought. thousand bucks until I've turned that this was a major multinational pharmaceutical launch. But when you told me that story, it literally jogged the memory of students being like, I only asked for like 300 bucks for that URL, and they had a budget of like a million dollars for it and feeling like they had failed when they didn't. And when you said, like, I felt like I made the wrong move, it was like exactly, that's a true case and what we learned in the class. and I thought it was just a brilliant opportunity to take your story, connect it with what I learned, and to be able to bring you on was just super cool.

No regrets. Yeah, I certainly appreciate being given the heads up that I would be brought on. It came to me in my head. I didn't even think of it. I don't have anything about it written down. It just came to me when we were interviewing. And I was like, oh, yeah, Tim's got that story. And then I was like, I want to do it sort of at the end so we can wrap up with it.

So it's like a Tim talk in kind of. context. Wow, now we're done. We're done.