Scaling up

William Ury writes about a protracted workplace conflict divisions growing over time into deeply divided camps with tensions at a boiling point one day when one of the workers, a young woman, arrived late carrying her little baby, explaining the impossible circumstances of her day and why she had no choice if she were to show up for this crucial meeting except to bring her baby. She took her seat and placed the sleeping baby on a blanket in front of her.

"Everyone looked at the baby, who had fallen asleep. I suddenly realized that the baby, lying there in the middle of our circle, was the third side, the symbol of the whole, the newest citizen standing for the future of the country. The baby was a silent witness who, without a word, had reframed the conversation, reminding people of the bigger picture. For a moment, it was no longer 'us against them.' It was 'all of us together'" (Ury, 2024, p. 240).

This is not to make a generic claim that babies will bring peace in from their third side. Ury saw it in that moment, but the third side is Out There or In Here in every conflict, he seems to be asserting, if we are conflict-alert, third-side-observational.

Babies were not the third side in the European Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, slavery in the Americas, the theft of the Americas from the Original People--other conflict work might have stopped those genocidal, extractive conflicts, we will never know. But when cases like the Liberian women discovering the third side in the middle of their godawful war, they stopped it and gained democracy for their beleaguered country. I would suggest the third side there was the unity that Muslim and Christian women perceived as possible, then doable, then the power the combative men and boys did not anticipate and which won for everyone. 

The third side, I posit, is what might be the key to winning for all. It may never be identical to the third side in any other conflict, thus requiring us to be open to what might be identifiable as that third side and then working to hold it up for all to consider.

References

Ury, William (2024). Possible: How we survive (and thrive) in an age of conflict. Harper Business.