David Bohm, Donald Factor and Peter Garrett detail the ideas behind the method called Dialogue, where people can explore an issue without many of the dynamics common in discussions and debates.
Excerpt:
In Dialogue, a group of people can explore the individual and collective presuppositions, ideas, beliefs, and feelings that subtly control their interactions. It provides an opportunity to participate in a process that displays communication successes and failures. It can reveal the often puzzling patterns of incoherence that lead the group to avoid certain issues or, on the other hand, to insist, against all reason, on standing and defending opinions about particular issues.
Dialogue is a way of observing, collectively, how hidden values and intentions can control our behavior, and how unnoticed cultural differences can clash without our realizing what is occurring. It can therefore be seen as an arena in which collective learning takes place and out of which a sense of increased harmony, fellowship and creativity can arise.
Full Article: dialogue_proposal
A list of websites on Dialogue: Selected Websites on Dialogue
Posted on April 23, 2002 03:50 PM