I will ramble on a bit longer here but it seems it is getting close to time to shut down Dialogue With RCS for lack of interest. The site has been up for over two years and is averaging only about 400 views a month and in that time I have only been contacted once. I incorrectly expected more exchanges with readers and perhaps some "How to" questions.
I will keep you informed about my intentions. It may be useful for me to move some of this site to the Governance With RCS site. The Dialogue is an important part of governance and taking care of ourselves together.
Another Ramble Into Dialogue Practice:
This piece seems to be mostly about what the dialogue is and a little about why I find it interesting and a bit about other stuff. I do not intend to say anything about how to practice the dialogue today. How is a big topic in which it seems few are interested.
The what of the dialogue is that it can be a good way to meaning and understanding, shared meaning and understanding. It can be about kinds of peace, basketball, relationships, or whatever we like. These days I am interested in dialogue about taking care of ourselves together. I call that governance.
However, The Dialogue is about effective dialogue. It is not complicated, but it does take practice. There are skills to practice, rules to integrate, and good practices to practice.
In the practice you can find humor, fun, smiles, some laughter. You can also find satisfaction and new skills. You can find empowering meaning and understanding. Perhaps you can find companionship and co-operation. You may find yourself maintaining culture or even creating culture. You will get to know your practice companions better.
It can be a supporting and strengthening process, and you do most of it with just the support of your group. I see it something like an adult primary and secondary school with no kindergarten. I can be much faster, but we find that we often have to learn one thing before we learn another.
The practice includes the development of listening skills that helps us to a more useful understanding of our practice companions, ourselves, and the human world. Our developing listening skills bring more and more meaning and understanding into our lives. We begin to find satisfaction and joy by partaking of this kind of democratic talk. The practice may even let more peace and abundance into one's life.
The dialogue includes being listened to. I the dialogue we can be heard. Speaking of being heard, the dialogue is communion among a group of individuals. It is not a monologue. For me to advance understanding of the dialogue I need a lot of ongoing feedback. I need to know you better to write to you better. I want to write about the dialogue in more detail, more systematically, in ways more appropriate to your wants, needs, and interests. The topic is broad and and can be deep.
I often see the dialogue as a democratic stream of meaning flowing among us and through us. Still the dialogue can be much like a parlor game that most of can enjoy and still be a meaningful practice. Even as a parlor game there can be stream of growing meaning and understanding flowing among us which might not notice or give a conscious thought to. Still that flow of meaning and understanding created by us energizes new and meaningful understanding among us.
The shared meaning we create with our dialogue is a force which helps us to more peaceful and meaningful families and relationships, helps us to co-operate locally more effectively, and helps us to more healthy societies nations. and to a more useful, resistant, and meaningful culture.
The Dialogue is Not:
~ the analysis found in discussion nor is it an effort to persuade anyone
~ an attempt to gain points.
~ an attempt to make any particular point prevail.
This dialogue practice is a safer, more useful way to honestly share meaning, experience, 0pinion, assumption, and understanding. And this little essay is headed for more ramble. I hope it will turn out to be useful ramble through some valuable orientation and information.
I hope that you have begun to suspect that the dialogue is likely to hold benefits for you. I believe that it has a variety of benefits for a variety of individuals. One can be surprised to find that a single minute they have to express an opinion of theirs to an attentive groups has real value for them. They are please to know that there can be many such minutes. Others feel there is important benefit in having the words they express are listen to heard with the intention of understanding. Others feel that the knowledge that each will have and equitable opportunity to be heard and that all will have equal opportunity to be heard. All of this can happen in the first grade.
We all may come to appreciate the benefits in learning and practicing listening skills. Nearly all can benefit practicing speaking skills. Others are gaining hearing and understanding skills, and benefiting.
All benefit and are please that many are gaining skills at expressing themselves at an extraordinary level of honesty.
Others may feel that they benefit just by learning to accept that which another says is valuable information. Accepting it as valuable not necessarily for being true or something to be believed. But seeing it rather as a representation of another's opinion, interpretation, or experience. That is as a way to a deeper understanding of another whose opinions are very different from one's own.
Individuals benefit in a variety of individual ways. For me and others a great benefit seems to center on a flow of meaning which begins to flow through a practice group. That flow can lead to a kind of thinking together in face of great differences discovered in a group. That sort of thinking together is sometimes very powerful, perhaps more powerful than the sum of that of all individual inputs
The Practice Calls For Your Effort:
You will need to work the practice to gain your benefits. Listening, hearing, understanding call for your attention and more. Showing up and keeping appropriate silence take effort. Co-operating with your fellow dialoguers may be a pleasure, but also calls for effort. Learning the mechanics of this dialogue takes effort which may be called work.
You can gain certain skills and understandings. You may gain some shared meaning and culture. Showing up may be a bit of a job. But there are more advantages. You can gain word power and voice projection. It is possible to gain a more peaceful and meaningful life. Some improve their use of a language which is not their own.
This is about all the ramble in can handle today.
If you have an idea for practicing dialogue online, please share it. Remember, members must recognize each other and begin to know each other. You may use the "comments" app below.
Their are other dialogue posts to explore at this site. You are welcome to explore them.
Thanks for going on this ramble.
rcs
