Thanks for picking up Ken’s power point presentation. Believe it or not, his talk (done sans power point) was even more inspiring and challenging. I don’t know why he’s not one of the TED (http://ted.com) speakers. We need the depth of his intelligence, the breadth of his study, the toughness of his analysis, and the urgency of his message more every single day.

As you know, I “feel your pain” on the troublesome issues you raise – why we don’t move more quickly into collaborative, interest-based processes to resolve disputes – from the neighbor’s barking dog to catastrophic species extinction.

I take heart that we have a President who stands on a national stage addressing the moral and intellectual poverty of zero-sum games; that law schools teach negotiation and mediation; that seasoned lawyers by the hundreds thousands take mediation courses every year that may not lead to careers as ADR professionals but will necessarily lead to a “tilt” toward collaborative problem solving; and, that peer mediation in elementary, middle and high school are thriving here in Los Angeles as well, I imagine, in many other cities around the country. And a look at today’s post on my blog about negotiating neighbor disputes in Iraq.

When I am about to throw my own hands up into the air in frustrated resignation, I remember that point in The Inconvenient Truth when Al Gore says, “this is the point at which most people go directly from denial to despair.” Our own government moved from denial to action on global warming in January of this year, ending eight-years of our leaders heads in the sand if not lodged firmly inside much darker places.

Remember our youth – how short a time ago it was – and how many of us were treated as second class citizens – more than half the population! For those of us who believe in transformational power of collaborative problem solving, change will always feel too slow. And yet every day someone else somewhere in the world “gets” it . . . . and . . . an angel gets his wings!