Levels of Conflict workshop

Question 1:

In high school, I was quite involved in the theatre and drama department. Therefore, the final performance of my senior year was of incredible importance to me. The final show was a one-act festival, and everyone was able to chose their own scenes; I chose a Woody Allen sketch entitled, "Death Knocks". As the title suggests, it was a bit macabre, but there was little that was offensive about it- in fact, everyone at rehearsals thought it was hilarious. I thought that it was relatively innocuous. Until the first night of the show, that is. My mother, a staunch, fundamentalist Christian walked out during the middle of my scene (I found this out after the fact). She objected to the role, for at one point my character cried "Jesus", out of frustration. Of course, I was quite hurt by this, since I found nothing wrong with it (being of the agnostic inclination). If examined through Kaufer's levels of disagreement, it lies on a level 4- disagreement levels that usually require negotiations or complex solutions. I, fundamentally, had little value or opposition to 'using the Lord's name in vain', whereas my mother took strong offense, since she holds her faith very, very strongly. Her values were not able to come to terms with my own values; it was hard to persuade either one of us from our positions- mine, that words were simply words; hers, that names carry intense emotional meaning. We never particularly resolved the conflict; to satisfy her, I took the exclamation out of the second performance, but that was a concession on my part, not a solution.

Question 2:

In Robert Bullards's discussion on how race affected the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, he draws heavily on history; first alluding to the anthrax scare, wherein mostly white senators were notified the same day of the occurrence. He further speaks about the actions of the government response to Hurricanes Betsy and Alicia. In all of these cases the level of racism was astounding. However, he speaks about these things addressing the stasis of cause, not the stases of definition (speaking of the definition of what racism is), nor value (how much of an evil is this racist response). What is most interesting is that Bullard does not speak of this in terms of policy- what the government should-morally or legally- to eliminate such responses. He does this, because to argue in terms of policy or procedure would be delving into a level 5 conflict of morals and inequality. By arguing in a lower stases, he correspondingly keeps the discussion in a lower conflict level, where a solution might actually be negotiated.

Question 3:

In Mario Savio's "End of History" speech, he makes several allusions to other literature and popular culture things that his audience would likely be familiar. He compares what is happening-the sit in at Sprout Hall- to the protests occurring in Mississippi. Savio further makes an assertion of the fundamental assumption of the university as a world within a world. With the former assumption, he is countering the latter. By comparing the university students' actions to the nationwide actions, he is showing that the university is not an insular space. The latter analogy assumes that the university is a microcosm, involved in itself but not involved in the world as a whole. Savio is instead connecting the university to the global world.