Dialogue as flow and transition

Learnings for the Future of Inter-Faith Dialogue (Part #10)

To facilitate dialogue, there may be a very strong case for avoiding the trap of imposing a pattern of definitively labelled conditions. Part of the process of dialogue is working with the stereotyped labels that one side needs to attempt to impose on the other. Indeed much of the manouevering for advantage in dialogue lies in the effort to 'corner' the other in some pattern of labels through which he or she may be conveniently handled. One can speculate on the nature of a board game reflecting this. Those struggling with each other in the dialogue might for example 'freeze' temporarily the significance of some board positions by consensus. More intriguingly in the absence of such consensus, other positions might be given double labels, reflecting both the positive connotations of the occupier as well as the negative connotations of the adversary experiencing that position as challenging his own.

Allusions have been made to the possible nature of such rule-shifting games in novels such as Herman Hesse's Glass Bead Game, or M A Foster's The Game Players of Zan. From such a perspective, each of the efforts to distinguish levels could be seen by dialogue partners as conceptual resources that could potentially be imposed on the board during the course of the dialogue. Such a dialogue then has the potential for being continually transformed between different kinds of game. The dialogue is refreshingly defined in terms of a set of transitional objects (32). Different 'light' filters or logics can be used to view the game or communication space, just as different keys (or even scales) can be used for musical expression (33).

Other clues to representing the forms and challenges of dialogue are suggested by frameworks like the periodic table of chemical elements. This is organized into columnar 'groups' and row 'levels' which effectively identify cellular 'elements' with particular qualities. It thus highlights the possibility of development from 'lighter' to 'heavier' elements, as well as the emergence of the electrochemically 'positive' and 'negative'. Such terms are of course used to distinguish different kinds of dialogue. Of special interest is the implication that suitably distant positions might 'strongly' or 'weakly' interact to form more or less stable configurations based on strong or weak 'bonds'. Physicists and chemists have long pursued the possibilities of very heavy elements, whilst appreciating the role of the lighterst in the sustenance of life. Some of the social implications of such an ordering have been explored by Ed Haskell (34). A framework based on this approach is used for the functional interrelationship of international organizations (35).

Such clues point to forms of dialogue that would not be dependent for their dynamic on any convergence towards consensus (or away from it). As suggested by the computer game of life, stable configurations could emerge for a time, but they might also slowly migrate and develop across a framework of significance. As in many inter-personal relationships, they would be significant for a duration. Some of the above pointers suggest possibilities of'collaborative' games through which richer and more complex patterns get built through the dialogue process. Research on team building, and the variety of skills required (36, 37), suggest that these could be fruitfully associated with columns or rows of the table. Much remains to be discoveredfrom the transition from a 2-dimensional table to a 3-dimensional map, as explored elsewhere (38, 39) and as suggested by the recent explosion of interest in fullerenes (40). The implications for management processes crossing cultural divides are especially relevant (41).

Many inter-personal relationships founder on obsession with togetherness, and its claustrophobic consequences for one or other partner. The challenge of relationships between kibbutz children is one example. It may well be that dialogue needs to free itself from the obsession with consensus as the holy grail of dialogue. Conflict is now being creatively explored by major corporations (42). In terms of Zen-style challenging paradoxes (43), it may well be that the art of fruitful dialogue lies in avoiding the stultifying consequences of agreement. The challenge of sustainable dialogue (as opposed to 'cash cropping' through consensual dialogue) may require understandings analogous to those for sustainable development as exemplified by permaculture (44). What does it take to sustain dialogue? Like the grail, pehraps sustainable consensus is far more mysterious than is naively assumed. Why does dialogue stop when it does? Are there more profound meanings to 'flow' in dialogue (45). Reframing dialogue as suggested above might also counter the tendency for certain dialogues to meander endlessly without constraint, as has been apparent in David Bohm's experiments.