Another chance meeting. I love chance meetings.

Conflict prevention has been very much on my mind for the past year or so, as it has been for many of us around the globe concerned about violence near and far.

I have appreciated the writing of Herbert Kelman and studied some of his work for a conflict resolution course I recently undertook.

Then low and behold, he walked into a small gathering of psycholgists for social responsibility I was attending.

There he was stanidng next to me, a chief global mediator who stands for peace. Read his answers to ten questions on peace.

Here is an excerpt:

‘I would describe myself as a strategic optimist, and I am distinguishing it from being a naïve optimist, who would say that everything and the world is good. I see optimism rather as a strategy; and if you maintain this sense of possibility, then you keep looking for where the points of entry are, where there are things you can do in order to move forward. And while doing it, you create positive self-fulfilling prophecies.’

Kelman on Peace Mediation