On this website and in the video below, you’ll find our responses, in poetry and prose, to the problems of adversarial trade and war. The 4 Cross-Points are the near-crisis positions where adversaries can meet to talk.
“War is failure to imagine mutual victory.”
~Frederick Livingston, Trees Are Bridges to the Sky
For two adversaries to imagine mutual victory, they must find ways to get what they both want without going to war. Each side must learn how to accommodate the needs of the other. On both sides, the leaders must be willing to have give-and-take conversations with the opposing side. In this way, they can imagine the humanity of the other.
A failure to reach mutual understanding between adversaries leaves a need that can easily be filled by war. War results in loss and horrific suffering.
“If culture is unable to offer a meaning to the notion of sacrifice and loss, it does not put man in a position to face the tragedy of his condition.”
~Alistair Crooke
We offer a process whereby two adversaries can come to mutual understandings. The adversaries make internal changes together that tell a story, which responds to the losses and sorrows of the human condition. Mutual understanding can lead to harmonious agreement. If put into action, this agreement avoids war and its resulting sacrifice, loss, and suffering. A new foundational myth can emerge from the human spirit through the sacrament of conversation.
By reaching harmonious agreement, the adversaries create a story of mutual victory…. The nature of this process emerged from our study of The West and the story of empire. We hope the story of empire will be replaced by the myth of building collaborative communities.
This video presents a live reading of Poems Toward Peaceful Trade and Ending War, Mendocino Art Center, February 28, 2026.