PositiveThe Wall Street JournalMs. Ripley pleads less for kindness than for intelligence. It’s one thing to have reasons for resenting one’s spouse, another to utter the words one knows will make everything worse ... In high conflict, Ms. Ripley argues, we often think that we’re being smart and furthering our ambitions. But we sometimes feel high conflict seize us, as if from the outside, and make us stupid and self-destructive ... Our culture and values, Ms. Ripley argues, can also draw us into high conflict ... She considers our adversarial legal system and our two-party political system so obviously wrongheaded that there must be a \'conflict-industrial complex\' that explains their persistence ... The most important insight of this part of the book is that you can’t beat high conflict with scolding it, however high-mindedly.
