A free ten week course
How Peace Works
An essentials course for people who are not peace professionals. Ten modules on why conflict turns violent, what actually stops it, and where a person like you has real leverage.
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No payment. No account required.
10Modules
40Lessons
10 hrsTotal time
$0Now and later
Who This Is For
Peace education already exists. It was built for other people.
- USIP
- Trains people working in conflict zones.
- Harvard
- Trains people who want to analyze religion.
- Coursera
- Sells workplace conflict management to managers.
- Degree programs
- Serve people willing to spend two years and a great deal of money.
Nobody serves the ordinary adult who has watched the world get louder and meaner, who suspects that the shouting is not actually accomplishing anything, and who wants to understand what is going on and whether there is anything a person like them can usefully do.
That person exists in enormous numbers. There is no course for them. Until now.
What You Will Learn
Four things you will be able to do at the end that most people cannot do now.
Read Conflict Accurately
The monster theory says violence comes from monsters. It is wrong, and holding it makes a person useless. Here is what to look at instead.
See The Machinery
Courts, contracts, elections, arbitration. The largest peace project in human history is dull, invisible, and mostly working. Also how it breaks.
De-escalate In Person
What the research says works in a real argument with a real person. Most of it is the opposite of what instinct tells you to do.
Tell Real From Theater
Awareness, condemnation, performance, and the meditation claim, each audited against the evidence, including the ones you happen to like.
The Scale Ladder
The course moves outward through five scales. Each one runs on different machinery, and being good at one does not make you good at the next. Almost everyone assumes it does. That assumption is where a great deal of sincere effort goes to die.
Yourself
Another person
A group
A society
The world
Course Curriculum
10 modules, 40 lessons published, all freeThe Certificate
Forty questions, four per module, marked in your browser. Pass mark is 32 of 40. Retakes are unlimited and no score is shown. What it certifies is deliberately narrow: that a named person passed a forty item exam on a date, and that the exam is difficult to pass without having read all ten modules closely. It is not a professional qualification and nobody should present it as one.
No tiers, no honors, no streaks. Lesson 8.4 is the reason.
Questions
Does working on yourself actually do anything about war?
Inner work will not end wars. It will make you a more accurate observer of conflict, a less reliable recruit for cruelty, and a person who can stay in difficult work long enough to matter.
Is this a meditation course?
No. Module One uses contemplative practice as an instrument for accuracy and then leaves it behind. The course tells you that at the end of Module One rather than letting you discover it on your own.
Do I need any background?
None. It is written for adults with no prior study, in plain sentences, and every term is defined where it first appears.
How long does each lesson take?
Ten to fifteen minutes including the exercise. One module a week for ten weeks is the intended pace. Nothing is scheduled and nothing expires, so any other pace works just as well.
Is anything held back for a paid tier?
Nothing. There is no paid tier, no workbook, and no certificate fee. Everything the course teaches is in the ten free modules.
Then why is it free?
Because the person this was written for is not going to spend two thousand dollars to find out whether the shouting is accomplishing anything. The running costs are small and paid out of pocket. If you want to help cover them you can, and it changes nothing about what you get.
Get In Touch
Corrections, disagreements, a source the course got wrong, or a question about a lesson. All of it is welcome. Messages go straight to a person, not to a list.
Support The Course
It is free and it stays free. Hosting is not. If the ten modules were worth something to you, a few dollars covers the next reader.
Give BackStart With Module One
The first lesson asks you to name three conflicts you are already inside. It takes about twelve minutes and it is harder than it sounds.
Start Lesson 1.1