What is the Goal of Mediation: Reasoning, Rational Discourse and Civilized Negotiations.

One man-made object was considered intrinsically holy. The Ark of the Covenant. Many legends but no evidence of it. I opine that the work of a mediator is "Ark of the Covenant" work to save mankind from himself. However, with any profession comes a process of membership. A professional laity. Whether we like it, or not all professions must have safeguards of its' secrets. But few skills sets in the mediation profession, really qualify as secrets. Because our common quest is one of existence through peace accords. These accords allow for peaceful households, communities, neighborhoods, towns, workplaces and cities in which we all live. More than likely, these particular venues are all extremely populated and heavily conflicted with many variable causations. It also shouldn't require a rocket science degree to know that peace is more beneficial than war. In fact, human beings would have ceased to exist a long time ago, if it were not for the peace accords.

In particular, we are much more healthier and wealthier individuals without the event of wars at our neighbors' doorsteps. Those who never enter the justice' courtrooms are also much more happier than those who have entered it. Many disputants would also agree, after having experienced a recently high conflict situation, that they'd prefer the issues between them be resolved quickly rather than to continue for years, months, and, or days in a courtroom fight. I also imagine many people haven't experienced cut soles walking through rumbled streets, with children unclothed, and where there is violence everywhere with the sounds of machine guns in the air. These are extreme examples of conflict, in the absence of peace, but the places and people are real.

How do conflicts happen? I believe conflict occurs when someone is inconvenienced, suffers a personal lost, or injury and, or their property is damaged and there is a monetary lost. If someone doesn't admit to fault soon, and pay some form of restitution this leads to a conflict and sometimes an all out war. Call it a misunderstanding, or pure negligence. Maybe the other driver wasn't really paying attention to the road at all and driving too fast. The causation really doesn't matter, but what does is how the accident could've been prevented? What about a civilized conversation about what the needs are for both participants in the accident. Shouldn't both drivers be returned back to the way they were, before the incident ever took place. Evidently what is missed in conflict is mediation. A few civilized conversations in the practice of blameless acceptable speech.

Why do conflicts happen? They happen for matters mostly relating to money, matters relating to children, conflicts also arise for everything, even for the most ridiculous irrelevant little things. For example, kids innocently bump into each other and fall down every day on the school playgrounds. These little incidents never lead to wars, unless the adult parents are somewhere observing and witnessing the incident. The two kids would have ignored the minor bump which caused them to fall, and got back up and continued playing. But the child notices the parents massive ego noise to the incident and begins crying, then most parents escalate the situation into a high conflict and sometimes a parent brawl. Someone gives a harsh scolding to one child assumed to be the culprit, when the two of them were at play. Little do the conflicting parents know, that these minor bumps and falls between their children and other children are normal occurrences during school recess.

Let's get back to wars! Wars or conflict? Wars are conflict. I think both have the same results and the same defined meaning. Why do conflicts occur and recur, especially in cases when the decisions involved are made by careful and rational humans? There are many answers to this question, as the before mentioned example given of kids bumping and falling on school playgrounds. In this case, for a conflict to occur with humans, at least one of the sides involved has to be motivated by some type of valued gains from the conflict which will outweigh the cost incurred. Some may also worry about the thoughts of other bystanders, and feel encouraged to act without rationalizing before acting out episodes of anger. In addition, being compensated can hurt or damage the other human actor(s) involved in the conflict. The assumed victim feels being rewarded a large sum of the other sides money will be justified punishment. Court compensation sounds marvelous. It's the right price to pay for my inconvenience, remarks the assumed victim(or could it be both of them assuming victimization!) but he or she never assumes there is a lost for the opposing side as well. It is this greed that alters our minds, hearts and our natural human nature to love one another. Thus, the reason for war.

Looking back at this reason for conflict or war. It appears to be a benefit, or something that can be gained only by one participant to the conflict. What if there was absolutely no money awarded in courtrooms to any party ever. Would courtrooms even exist today? How about the conflict itself, and would it exists? What I have just discovered here, is that without gains, there could be no conflict. Disputants go to court because they expect the benefits from the conflict will outweigh the costs for the prevailing party in the courtroom. With this prerequisite for conflict there can be no lasting peace.

So, do not engage in conflicts over money ever. If five hundred dollars get spent even then do not start conflicts, because the value of conflicts is worth one thousand dollars or more with lawyer fees. If five hundred dollars get spent the conflict results in spending double that amount; and to create a thousand dollars or more, worth of conflicts just isn't smart money management anyway. It is just a lot smarter to let that five hundred dollars go bye-bye.

The goal of mediation is peace and tranquility. How we come about peace is through an accord. We also know that there will always be something to be gained by one party to a conflict, or a war. The long history of human life on this planet and, or wars have proven for certain that conflicts will continue to occur and cannot be prevented. Because there is always something to be gained by the actors. But most times the cost of conflicts supersede the gains, as before mentioned.

To end conflict we must bring about mutually advantageous and enforceable agreements. The inability to reason with the other side carries on the acts of conflict. Which can cause further hemorrhage to both parties to the conflict. It is also a further cost in expenses to parties being represented by lawyers, and a cost to the courts to hear these high conflict cases.

Without thinking about the issues in a logical sensible way, there is absolutely no enforceable agreement. The ability to reason is the most difficult part of the goal for peace. Usually, disputants are just too upset and emotionally charged to do any kind of successful reasoning on their own. There is reasonable doubt that an accord could be reached. There is also lay reasoning and legal reasoning that can keep the public from ever choosing mediation opposed to going to trial. In addition to ignorance, people miss assume that jury trials lead to truth instead of conflict resolution (Wrightsman, 1987).

In principle, the whole reason that conflict exists is that there is something to be gained. Both sides must be willing to give up something to end the conflict. Rational discourse is the catalyst for transformation, as it induced the various world-views, and articulate those ideas that are different. It is rational discourse that changes the perspective of the parties to a conflict. It can be effective but the problem is that it requires discussing the actual facts, which in turn requires acknowledging the actual harmful things that took place leading up to or during the conflict. For example, a son, daughter, father, and or mother may have been injured or died in a car accident or war that was caused by the other party, therefore, discourse may not work well as a catalyst for transformation. Thus, giving up a family member is now put on the table for discussion.

So make the deal fast and take the money for your loss? A big settlement of 20 million dollars might sound good but it doesn't bring a parent back to life or give your child legs to walk again. Therefore, mediation is not just about signing a settlement agreement. There is no way around discussing sensitive issues and facts. Mediation urges people to engage in critical reflection on their experiences, so as to experience a perspective transformation. It promotes mindfulness, clarity of mind, and wisdom. The transformative learning' theory says that the process of "perspective transformation" has three dimensions psychological (changes in understanding of the self), convictional (revision of belief systems), and behavioral (changes in life style). It is also not natural for humans to want to stay in conflict either. In fact, mediation takes place from the moment we get in our cars to drive to work. It is ignorant to think we do anything in life without compromising. Settlement agreements do not get signed without an offer-to compromise. Every single driver on the road had to participant for a motorcycle rider to arrive at his or her travel destination. Lane changes just don't happen by themselves, someone let's you get over into their lane. Again, there is no way around bypassing the process of mediating. "I have sat down in over a thousand different chairs in my life time but never made one them." We are dependent upon each other, whether we like each other or not, to compromise and go about our existing lives.

I once sat down with a party to a dispute who stated, I am only interested in hearing the facts and that's it! This puts mediators in a very tough situation. "Just the facts, ma'am," as Jack Webb's character, police detective Joe Friday, used to say in the U.S. television series, Dragnet. But the facts may be culturally contingent, temporary, or long past their expiration date. In fact, some facts may not be facts at all, much like Joe Friday's catchphrase, imbedded in our cultural memory but never in fact uttered.

Subsequently, a court judgment is not thought to be the absolute best option either, because it doesn't end the conflict. The judge presiding over the case job is to just focus on the facts. Through the use of mediation parties can look at a conflict between them, as a civil approach to addressing many societal problems, and go beyond the facts directly to the underlining issues of the dispute. The court judgment is just a legalese take away and disempowerment to both sides engaged in the conflict. It gives only one person from the conflict the victory of a judgment. A piece of paper that says you win, a judgment' that also needs to be enforced. Both parties still do not have to agree, to do anything. They don't have a mediated written agreement either. This is also why some parties seek mediation directly after the trial hearing, but this has a tendency to interfere with the due process of the law.

A mediation agreement can be creative. You could reach a solution that might not be available as an option from a court of law. For example, if you owe a creditor or someone money but don't have the cash, rather than be sued and getting a judgment against you that will adversely affect your credit, settlement options could include a payment plan extending for years, months, weeks, or days or trading something you have for something the other wants. If an agreement is reached, it will generally be reduced to writing. Most people uphold a mediated agreement because they were part of making it. It can become a contract and be enforceable in any court of law, as long as the proper parties to the case have signed-off on it, and it also states in the written document that whatever was agreed upon is intended to be binding by the parties.

Keys for Mediation Success

1. Conduct interspace negotiations, which advance your own interests in conjunction with the interests of those on whom your business depends. You must understand your own interests behind your positions. You must understand the other person's interests. You must create a solution that meets both sides' interests as best as possible.
2. Ask the right question. Mediation isn't an arena for sports metaphors. It is not about wining or making the last three-pointer. So don't ask questions about who's winning or who's giving in. The thought of giving in just makes everyone feel like a real loser. There are no losers in mediation. The losers are usually in the courtroom awaiting a judgment. The goal is to advance the interests of all parties involved in the conflict. And, to determine the wants vs needs of all parties. Additionally, defining all the parties needs will usually lead to case settlement.
3. Don't negotiate by email. Through my own experience I have learned that Electronic' forms of communication is just great for exchanging information efficiently but a poor tool for communicating emotions. And, computer interface takes much more time for human mediating and clarifying the messages turned into artificial intelligence between two human disputants. The internet interface also creates a much bigger barrier to human transformation. For example, an online profile will always be different than the living person you meet. Jokingly, "bad or good breath" can't be emulated over the internet either. How about sincerity? This is also why we still take business trips around the world to meet face-to-face to close business deals. Therefore, the internet is a great tool for beginning the process of mediation but it doesn't provide the human element of touch, smell, sight, and sound or the human emotions behind them. The internet can mediate very good between two separate components of a computer system, and exchange information between computers in lightning speed but it cannot mediate human emotions very well. Mediation can never be thought of as just simply a task by the participants. It is much more complex and dynamic. A non-borg like production. We are not the Borg, so "resistance isn't futile." This exchange must be done face-to-face in person by two living humans to close the deal. Computers should also just stick to task oriented things. They can manage us and our money matters much better than we humans have ever managed ourselves in the history of the world. Computers get us to where we need to be on time and notify us of disrepair in vital infrastructure systems and start conflicts too. But computers are terrible at being neutral from the conflicts themselves and restoring balance to society.
4. Listen. Humans were given one mouth and two ears for a good reason. We must listen with our whole hearts, minds, two ears and eyes. Negotiation itself, is much more about listening than a talking contest. We can't listen with our mouths open. You also can't expect to influence someone yourself, if you haven't listened to a word the other side has said. We can save the rhetoric for the courtrooms.

Mediations do usually start with an unusual wild deck of cards. The Mediator himself or herself may be assumed to be the dealer of the deck. The devils advocate. But a mediator's role is in line with the common goal of mediation and not to argue for or against a cause or a parties positional interests, either for the sake of an argument or to help determine either parties case validity. However, mediations cannot start the same way as a card game, opponents must be prepared to show their entire hand of cards. Wining is never the objective here. It's sort of an inventory of the entire deck and it's value to the participants. If the facilitators have correctly performed the process, it will end the conflict, in a mutual understanding, between two or more far apart human beings.

Is mediation God sent "Ark of the Covenant" work? Considering that there is 278 births a minute and 109 deaths (www.prb.org). Let's just agree that mediation is an amazingly complex process to facilitate with tremendously good, or devastating outcomes for all mankind. Mediation is the secret key to continued life on this conflicted planet. "Love and Marriage" and families and friendships. This I assume, should be much more important, than any expected gains from a conflict. What does it profit the world anyway, for one person to gain everything from another, and loose his or her human spirit in the courtroom.

Lastly, the ultimate goal of mediation is for our human survival. This means the work of a mediator is really sacred. Bringing momentarily unconscious humans together who are squabbling over materiality. Thus, mediation requires disputants to come to the table with open minds, hands and arms. Literally laying out their material possessions on the table for the opponent to view them. Mediation is an exchange of information and heartfelt conversations about the expected gain. It is having faith that two opposing humans will do the right thing on their own accord outside of a judges rule.

Without gains there is absolutely no conflict. As I mentioned before, the prerequisite for any war or conflict, is the expected gain. Whether it is material, or immaterial. If there is any value to be found here, outside of the obvious, bringing three or more people together in hope of change is a gift in itself. It is essentially collaboration and the sharing of information. The ultimate goal of mediation is a mutual agreement by all participants for serenity, tranquility and to wash away massive noisy distractions to help you focus on a more peaceful living world.

Undray Veranda Moore, The Mediator