Conflict Resolution

At work the other day I noticed a document on a desk. At the top of the document in bold and underlining read: Ten Strategies for Conflict Resolution. Following that were ten bullet points, each one a tool or technique for "resolving conflict." At the bottom of the page on the right hand side in subscript read: Developed by Wholistic Stress Control Institute, Inc. Distributed by the State Wellness Program, a program of the Employee's Benefit Council. (I have never heard of any of these entities) As I looked over the document something bothered me. It wasn't so much what the document communicated as what it failed to communicate - ethics. No where in the document are the words "right" or "wrong" used. It did use the words - "situation", "compliment", "feelings", "issue", "opinions", "compliance", "agreement", "competition", "opposition", "conclusions", "assumptions", "understanding", "needs", "past", "present", and "power". The last bullet point reads: "Thank the person for listening." (!) No where in the document identifies when the resolution of the conflict has been achieved and how to identify this achievement. The whole document goes wrong by erroneously presuming subjective metaphysics: If reality doesn't exist then nothing can be known with certainty and if nothing can be known with certainty then there are no universal rights and wrongs and if there are no universal rights and wrongs then the best that one can hope for is to be thanked for listening. The reality is that "reality is" and we can know things with certainty and therefore there are universal rights and wrongs. We can argue about how best to describe reality, knowledge, and morals but we cannot pretend that they do not exist. The leaflet described above doesn't tell you how to resolve conflict. It merely, and weakly, suggests "strategies". Every one of the bullet points is psychological in nature. Not one is intellectual. The negation of objectivity is the ultimate aim of the idealistic. If reality is "up for a vote" then anything goes.