The Way of Conflict

Book Review

Combs, D., (2004) The Way of Conflict: Elemental Wisdom for Resolving Disputes and Transcending Differences, California: New World Library

This excellent book combines insights from ancient wisdom and spiritual disciplines with the mediation approach. It takes the stance that conflict is as natural an element of our nature as the elements of earth, water, fire and air that are used to symbolise the cycle of conflict and illuminate the processes of resolution and transformation. In some ways the book promises more than it delivers and potentially confuses the transactional mediation model with the transformative approach. The book is framed within the win-win resolution approach but the book goes beyond this approach and is, I believe constrained by the framing; and so does not go the whole way to the transformational while incorporating elements of it. Nonetheless it is a rich repertoire of stories, quotations and metaphor that will be of benefit to practitioners of both approaches.

Building on Arrien’s “Four-fold Way” and Sun Tzu’s “Art of War”, Combs illuminates the way of conflict with a rich multicultural tapestry of ancient wisdom and spiritual practice and illustrates how it can be applied in the modern contexts to resolve conflict constructively. The elements are used to illuminate different personality and team types as well as the strengths and weaknesses of each type. The elements are also used to illustrate the evolutionary cycle of conflict and the trials, demands and potential contribution of each phase though the potency of the metaphor might have been greater had it been liberated from the mediation framing. The book is full of interesting quotes such as the following from Anais Nin, which for me points to how art and creativity and transformation can emerge from one's ability to sit in the midst of conflict - “I am always between two worlds, always in conflict. I would sometimes like to rest, to be at peace, to choose a nook, make a final choice, but I can’t”.