Imprint: Triarchy Press
Edition: Second, revised Published: March 2024 List Price: £15 Format: Paperback Extent: 62pp. Size: 14 x 21.6 cm (8.5x5.5") ISBN: 978-1-911193-48-7 Tags: Systems Thinking, Power and Love, Society, Genocide, Migration, Immigration, Purity, Tolerance Buy the paperback (£15)
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Encounters with the Other
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Read reviews of the bookAbout the bookBarry Oshry has a lifetime’s experience of working with social and organizational systems.
Here he explains how we can understand – and avoid – the “catastrophes” that continue to occur when one culture meets another – when demagogues sell us messages of superiority or purity in the face of cultural difference. Algeria ~ Armenia ~ Bosnia ~ Cambodia ~ Congo ~ Darfur ~ East Timor ~ The Holdomor ~ The Holocaust ~ Myanmar ~ Palestine ~ Rwanda... He explains how the two conventional solutions to encountering the “other” – Purity and Tolerance – both exact a terrible cost on the oppressed while diminishing the humanity of the oppressors. And he offers us a third possibility, one that requires a fundamental transformation in how we see and experience one another. This transformation requires us to understand that the interaction patterns we fall into shape the way we see and experience one another. Change the pattern of interaction and our experiences of one another will change... The possibility of “Power and Love”, working together and tempering one another, will emerge. |
"Deceptively slim book worth its weight in platinum. Required reading for all policy makers.
When I first got this book in the door, I felt ripped off, because it is so slim--only about 60 pages of writing--and so sparse. Boy was I wrong.
The Ten Commandments were distilled into two tablets. Oshry's work is about half as important and 30x as long, which is to say, it's a grandmasterpiece. An 80 [90]-something guy who's devoted his whole life to figuring out why conflict happens and how to solve it, distills the important parts of what he knows into what turns out to basically be one long poem. You would pay $5,000 for one hour of a top consultant's time, and you wouldn't get stuff as vital as this. This tiny book should be $200, but then no one would buy it, and everyone needs to read it.
Goes over the instincts of why, and how, people treat the Other. What causes wars. What causes prejudice. Why it progresses. How it works out. What can be done to help channel it in the right direction. Turns on the light, so that YOU can understand it--no longer flail in the dark--and get a handle on what needs to be done to stop the dance towards off the edge.
If you are a politician, or a policy maker, or a peace activist, or even just a labor leader or in upper management--you NEED to read this book. Just buy it."
J. Myers (on amazon.com)
When I first got this book in the door, I felt ripped off, because it is so slim--only about 60 pages of writing--and so sparse. Boy was I wrong.
The Ten Commandments were distilled into two tablets. Oshry's work is about half as important and 30x as long, which is to say, it's a grandmasterpiece. An 80 [90]-something guy who's devoted his whole life to figuring out why conflict happens and how to solve it, distills the important parts of what he knows into what turns out to basically be one long poem. You would pay $5,000 for one hour of a top consultant's time, and you wouldn't get stuff as vital as this. This tiny book should be $200, but then no one would buy it, and everyone needs to read it.
Goes over the instincts of why, and how, people treat the Other. What causes wars. What causes prejudice. Why it progresses. How it works out. What can be done to help channel it in the right direction. Turns on the light, so that YOU can understand it--no longer flail in the dark--and get a handle on what needs to be done to stop the dance towards off the edge.
If you are a politician, or a policy maker, or a peace activist, or even just a labor leader or in upper management--you NEED to read this book. Just buy it."
J. Myers (on amazon.com)