Rock, Paper, Scissors Alternate Dispute Resolution

Recently a federal judge from Orlando, Florida, brought the children’s game of Rock, Paper, Scissors commonly known in Japan as Janken-pon じゃんけんぽんto national attention...

Norwegian Restorative Lessons from Cardamom Town

I was recently gifted a lovely copy of When the Robbers Came to Cardamom Town (1955) (orig. Norwegian Folk og røvere i Kardemomme by) written and illustrated by Thorbjørn Egner, which tells the crime spree in the peaceful town of Kardemomme (Cardamom Town).

Musashi 武蔵 a samurai warrior and mushin 無心 the state of "no-mindedness"

It is not uncommon for parties you are in a high state of anxiety and may pick a fight with any one - even you as a mediator - because of the high level of anxiety as a reult of the conflict they are involved in.

So does a mediator buy in to their conflict?

Aikido and the Mediator mindset

The parties control the content - but the mediator controls the process

You may recall hearing this phrase as part of the mediation training – or may have used this as part of the ‘welcome stage’ or in premeditation.

So let’s have a look at a Japanese martial art called Aikido and compare the philosophy to mediation process.

For those people not familiar with Aikido a useful starting point have a look at Alan Roberts Sensei from Auckland 

An Agreement that lasts 1000 years?

I had often thought about how long an Agreement could literally (well at least in a physical sence) last ...

One of the earliest recorded peace treaties was concluded between the Hittite and Egyptian empires after the ca.1274 BC Battle of Kadesh. Egypt and the Hittites with Ramesses II captured the city of Kadesh and Amurru in his 8th year as king.

The peace treaty was recorded in two versions, one in Egyptian hieroglyphs, the other in Akkadian, using cuneiform script; fortunately, both versions survive ... and actual longivity agreement? Well it crumbled away like the treaty....

Between Scylla and Charybdis

We are constantly faced parties at mediation having to take critical decisions. Not always can the parties have their cake and eat it, rather it

will be an either/or choice. Are all decisions are taken from the angle of benefit?

If the choice is between Scylla and Charybdis*, is it fair to assume parties generally tend to opt for the lesser evil? Alternatively, if there is a choice between several favourable options, subjectively, the more advantageous one is likely to be chosen.

*Scylla and Charybdis (where the term ‘between a rock and a hard place’ comes from) were mythical sea monsters. Scylla the six-headed sea monster on the Italian side of the strait and Charybdis was a whirlpool monster off the coast of Sicily. They were located close enough to each other that they posed an inescapable threat to the intrepid leader Odysseus and his sailors; avoiding Charybdis meant passing too close to Scylla and vice versa. According to the mythology, Odysseus was warned about the impending danger to him and his sailors by Zeus the ‘father of gods and men’ and that he had to choose which monster to confront while passing through the strait; he opted to pass by Scylla and lose only a few sailors, but decided not tell his sailors about the imminent peril rather than risk a mutiny or even worse, the loss of his entire ship in the whirlpool.