I believe the previous comment is referencing the book Getting to Yes, which I think is fairly standard curriculum in business school. I have not read it, but it's on my list:
So if there was a reference there was totally unintentional, haha. Haven't read the book.
Like I said in a small aside, this actually has a weird parallel in Christian theology, which is one of my geeky interests. In particular the panreligious mystic Gurdjieff has a “Law of Three” where instead of creating an opposition, a dualism, a zero-sum “good vs evil, right vs wrong” scenario, you understand a Third Force as reconciling the other two.
So, the wind wants to push a boat in one direction, the waves want to push it in a different direction: but it is the operation of the sail and keel and captain/helm who has a destination in mind, which takes these opposing forces and creates a new reality, a Course or Journey. In this new reality both of the forces which would have opposed each other are actually satisfied, they come to a negotiated equilibrium where they each succeed. The wind did not quiet the waves and get it's way; the waves did not stop the wind. But because they are blowing freely in opposite directions, the mediation takes place and a larger space is realized.
So then it is fun to read Christian theology in this light. The idea is that the Trinity is actually viewable as precisely this sort of triad, and so in this sense of reality is negotiated reality, the Christian message is that God is a negotiation. And this sounds like New Age poppycock until you realize that it's basically the view of St Thomas Aquinas. Like all of the scholastics very much viewed the Trinity as an interdependence, you literally cannot speak of the Son without talking about the Father in a parent-child dynamic: that's what it means to be a son. And that dynamic you can't talk about without the spirit of familial love that pervades it, but that Spirit of love cannot be talked about independently of the parties involved either. And so the medieval view is kind of that God is sort of Unity at the core of existence, rather than Opposition.
So that's the stuff that I geek out about that informed my view on what negotiation is and how it works in the ideal case.
Like I said in a small aside, this actually has a weird parallel in Christian theology, which is one of my geeky interests. In particular the panreligious mystic Gurdjieff has a “Law of Three” where instead of creating an opposition, a dualism, a zero-sum “good vs evil, right vs wrong” scenario, you understand a Third Force as reconciling the other two.
So, the wind wants to push a boat in one direction, the waves want to push it in a different direction: but it is the operation of the sail and keel and captain/helm who has a destination in mind, which takes these opposing forces and creates a new reality, a Course or Journey. In this new reality both of the forces which would have opposed each other are actually satisfied, they come to a negotiated equilibrium where they each succeed. The wind did not quiet the waves and get it's way; the waves did not stop the wind. But because they are blowing freely in opposite directions, the mediation takes place and a larger space is realized.
So then it is fun to read Christian theology in this light. The idea is that the Trinity is actually viewable as precisely this sort of triad, and so in this sense of reality is negotiated reality, the Christian message is that God is a negotiation. And this sounds like New Age poppycock until you realize that it's basically the view of St Thomas Aquinas. Like all of the scholastics very much viewed the Trinity as an interdependence, you literally cannot speak of the Son without talking about the Father in a parent-child dynamic: that's what it means to be a son. And that dynamic you can't talk about without the spirit of familial love that pervades it, but that Spirit of love cannot be talked about independently of the parties involved either. And so the medieval view is kind of that God is sort of Unity at the core of existence, rather than Opposition.
So that's the stuff that I geek out about that informed my view on what negotiation is and how it works in the ideal case.