Let’s remind ourselves: Dialogue is different from mere conversation, topic discussion, or competitive debate in the way it involves partners in the co-construction of meaning. Dialogue is about working together; its back-and-forth exchanges are conducted in the interest of respecting differences, building rapport, finding common ground, and cooperating toward a satisfying and meaningful resolution. TheContinue reading “A Method of Dialogue, Step Two: Consideration”
Tag Archives: dialogue
A Method of Dialogue, Step One: Preparation
A method is not like a machine, where once you get it going you can step back and leave it alone. This is particularly true when we’re talking about a method of dialogue and community formation. To step back from dialogue is to abort the process and abandon community. Furthermore, dialogue and community simply doContinue reading “A Method of Dialogue, Step One: Preparation”
A Method of Dialogue (Introduction)
For our future to be long and prosperous, our species needs to learn better ways of getting along. Our growing population, along with the steady increase in the pluralization of global culture, is making it impossible to stay inside our provincial bubbles of meaning. More and more, we are confronted with the differences that characterizeContinue reading “A Method of Dialogue (Introduction)”
The Underground to Community
Today more than ever our planet needs us in community. Our species is so careless and disorderly, so thoughtless and destructive, so self-involved and unconcerned over the catastrophic impact our behavior is having on the larger web of life – upon which our own viability and well-being depend, it seems necessary to point out –Continue reading “The Underground to Community”
The Way of Dialogue
One sure mark of maturity is our ability as individuals to engage others in constructive dialogue. This term is not meant as a synonym for mere conversation, argumentative debate, or the pursuit of agreement in how we see things. To communicate with others of a different perspective means at least that we are able toContinue reading “The Way of Dialogue”
Pushing on Belief
A human being creates a world like a spider spins a web. As an innate impulse of the mind, this need to construct meaning is irresistible, and the prospect of living without meaning – of living a meaningless existence – is widely regarded as a fate worse than death. We are ready to give upContinue reading “Pushing on Belief”
Post-Theism and the Great Work of Religion
The progress of religion towards post-theism has its critics on either side, with devoted theists decrying it as just another form of atheism, and atheists voicing their suspicion that it’s taking us backwards into superstition and tribalism when we need to be moving forward into the enlightenment of science and technology. Theists are sure thatContinue reading “Post-Theism and the Great Work of Religion”
The Time We Have Left
The moment-to-moment phenomenon of experience is difficult to pin down and is probably impossible for us to fully understand, for the paradoxically simple reason that we are always in it. We can’t get the detachment and observational distance to see it objectively. There is no perspective on experience itself since experience is the place whereContinue reading “The Time We Have Left”
The Two Eyes
Robinson: “By drawing the insights of another center into as it were the gravitational field of one’s own, so that they come to form part of that ‘universe’ revolving round its single center, one is deliberately seeking escape from the tension of living with both poles at once. But truth may come from refusing thisContinue reading “The Two Eyes”
Inner Dialogue
Robinson: “Each of us, if we are in any way integrated, has a center from which our lives are lived, and our ‘world’ is what is enclosed within the circumference of that circle. Yet often we are more conscious of the edges than the centers, corresponding to the bounds of an animal’s territory which itContinue reading “Inner Dialogue”
Tracts of Revolution 