Human, not too human: Why is mediation a profound alternative to the legal proceedings?

This chapter presents an attempt to understand why mediation has gained so much popularity in the western world in the past three decades. I demonstrate how mediation, of all the processes that have sprung under the umbrella of the ADR movement, responds to some basic human needs and offers a way to thoroughly deal with authoritarian tendencies and patterns common, too common, in modern everyday life. A wider understanding of these needs can help emphasize the added values of the mediation process as a profound alternative to the legal proceedings as a mechanism for transforming disputes.