Start Where You Are
- The Conflict You Are Already In
- What Your Body Does First
- Contempt Is Information
- What Sitting Still Is Actually For
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.
Enroll for free
No payment. No account required.
10Modules
40Lessons
10 hrsTotal time
$0Now and later
The honest claim
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. Those are three real things. They are not the same as world peace, and this course will never pretend otherwise.
Stated in Lesson 2.4, before you have spent a minute on anything else.
What You Will Learn
Four things the course is built to leave you with.
Read Conflict Accurately
Why the monster theory of violence makes a person useless, and what to look at instead.
See The Machinery
Courts, contracts, elections, arbitration. The largest peace project in human history, and how it fails.
De-escalate In Person
What the research says actually works between two people, most of which is counterintuitive.
Tell Real From Theater
Awareness, condemnation, performance, and the meditation claim, all audited against the evidence.
The Scale Ladder
The course moves outward through five scales. Each runs on its own mechanisms, and skills do not automatically transfer upward.
Yourself
Another person
A group
A society
The world
Course Curriculum
10 modules, 40 lessons, all freeWhat Peace Actually Is
- Two Kinds Of Peace
- The Harm With No Attacker
- Five Rungs
- What This Course Will And Will Not Do
Why Ordinary People Do Violence
- The Monster Theory And Why It Fails
- Dehumanization And Its Vocabulary
- Humiliation, Grievance, And Honor
- Situations Beat Character
Why Structures Matter More Than Intentions
- Good People, Bad Arrangements
- The Security Dilemma
- Institutions As Peace Technology
- When The Machinery Fails
Two People
- What Actually De-escalates
- Listening That Is Not A Technique
- Being Wrong On Purpose
- Repair
Your Own Side
- Belonging Beats Reasoning
- Polarization Is Not A Disagreement
- Purity Spirals
- The Cost Of Saying So
What Actually Changes Things
- The Data On Nonviolent Campaigns
- Pillars Of Support
- Participation Thresholds And Defection
- The Boring Middle
What Feels Like It Works But Doesn't
- Awareness
- Condemnation
- The Meditation Claim, Examined
- Performance
Staying In It
- Moral Injury
- Why Anger Runs Out
- Equanimity Is Not Detachment
- A Practice You Will Actually Keep
Your Position
- Which Rung Are You On
- Your Actual Leverage
- The One Thing
- The Long View
The 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 answered forty questions correctly on a date, and nothing else.
No tiers, no honors, no streaks. Lesson 8.4 is the reason.
Questions
Is this a meditation course?
No. Module One uses contemplative practice as an instrument for accuracy and then moves on. The course says so plainly and tells you at the end of Module One that it will not stay there.
Do I need any background?
None. It is written for adults with no prior study, in plain sentences, with every term defined where it 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, and nothing is scheduled, so any other pace works too.
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.
Start With Module One
The first lesson asks you to name three conflicts you are already inside. It takes about twelve minutes.
Enroll for free