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A R T 2: i give a meaning to the word "dialogue" that is somewhat different from what is commonly used. the derivations of words often help to suggest a deeper meaning. "dialogue" comes from the greek word DIALOGOS. LOGOS means 'the word', or in our case we would thinkg of the "meaning of the word". and DIA means "through" - it does not mean "two". a dialogue can be among any number of people, not just two. even one person can have a sense of dialogue within himself, if the spirit of the dialogue is present. the picture or image that this derivation suggests is of a STREAM OF MEANING flowing among and through us and between us. it is somethinkg creative. and this shared meaning is the "glue" or "cement" that holds people and societies together . contrast this with the word 'discussion', which has the same root as 'percussion' and 'concussion'. it really means to break [od 6 > od 7] thinkgs up. it emphasizes the idea of analysis, where there may be many points of view, and where everybody is presenting a different one - analyzing and breaking up [...] discussion is almost like a ping-pong game, where people are batting the ideas back&forth and the object of the game is to win or to try to get points for yourself [...] in a dialogue, however, nobody is trying to win. everybody wins if anybody wins. there is a different sort of spirit to it. in a dialogue, there is no attempt to gain points, or to make your particular view prevail. rather, whenever any mistake is discovered on the part of anybody, everybody gains. its a situation called win-win, whereas the other game is win-lose - if i win, you lose. but a dialogue is somethinkg more of a common participation, in which we are not playing a game against each other, but WITH each other. in dialogue, everybody wins [od 7] dialogue is really aimed at going into the whole thought process and changing the way the thought process occurs collectively. we havent really paid much attention to thought as a process. we have ENGAGED in thoughts, put we have only paid attention to the content, not to the process. why does thought require attention. everythinkg requires attention, really. if we ran machines withinout paying attention to them, they would preak down. our thought, too, is a process, and it requires attention, otherwise its going to go wrong [od 9] [...] but a group that is too small doesnt work very well. if five or six people get together, they can usually adjust to each other so that they dont say the thinkgs that upset each other - they get a 'cozy adjustment'. people can easily be very polite to each other and avoid the issues that may cause trouble. and if there IS a confrontation between two or more people in such a small group, it seems very hard to stop it; it gets stuck. in a larger group, we may well start out politely. after a while, though, people can seldom continue to avoid all the issues that would be troublesome. the politeness falls away pretty soon. in a group of less than about 20 it may not, because people get to know each other and know the rough edges that they have to avoid. they can take it all into account; its not too much. but in a group of 40 it IS too much [od 13] [...] the collectively shared meaning is very powerful. the collective thought is more powerful than the individual thought. as we have said, the individual thought is mostly the result of collective thought and of interaction with other people. the language is entirely collective, and most of the thoughts in it are. everybody does his won thinkg to those thoughts - he makes a contribution. but very few change them very much. the power of the group goes up much faster than the number of people. i have said elsewhere that it could be compared to a laser. ordinary light is called 'incoherent', which means that it is going in all sort of directions, and the light waves are not in phase with each other so they dont build up. but a laser produces a very intense beam which IS coherent. the light wave build up strength because they are all going in the same direction. the beam can do all sort of thinkgs that ordinary light cannot. [od 14] [...] in the dialogue group we are not going to decide what to do about anythinkg. this is crucial. otherwise we are not free. we must have an empty space where we are not obliged to do anythinkg, nor to come to any conclusions, nor to say anythinkg or not say anythinkg. its open and free. its an empty space. the word 'leisure' has that meaning of a kind of empty space. 'occupied' is the opposite of leisure; its full. so we have here a kind of empty space were anythinkg may come in - and after we finish, we just empty it. we are not trying to accumulate anythinkg. thats one of the points about a dialogue. as Krishnamurti used to say:"the cup has to be empty to hold somethinkg" [od 17] [...] you could say that generally our culture goes in for large groups of people for 2 reasons. one is for entertainment and fun. the other is to get a useful job done. now, i am going to propose that in a dialogue we are not going to have any agenda, we are not going to try to accomplish a useful purpose or goal, we will have an assumption behind it as to what is useful, and that assumption is going to limit us. different people will thinkg different thinkgs are useful. and thats going to cause trouble. we may say "do we want to save the world" or "do we want to run a school" or "do we want to make money"? whatever it may be. thats also going to be one of the problems in corporate dialogues. will they ever give up the notion that they are there primarily to make a profit. if they could, this would be a real transformation of mankind. [od 17] . (excerpts from david bohm's book "on dialogue" [od,
routledge 1996]. what he says about bohm-dialogue has relevance for
optical dialogue. |
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