I really like your shift in focus to the environment in which any conversation is taking place, and how this either facilitates or dampens the quality of the encounter: venue, atmosphere, norms and culture of that space, etc. We have a tendency to privilege the propositional content (and often, rhetorical force) of whatever is under discussion as the "important" part, while overlooking the process and context of those facilitating conditions; the assertive over the receptive. Which also means overlooking ethics. The irony is that disagreements often revolve explicitly around matters of ethical concern and clashing values, even as the ethics surrounding how we approach and engage in this disagreement is mostly ignored. Perhaps this is because wrestling with ethically loaded topics gives the impression that we are already "doing ethics?"
One thing I would add is that even appeals to "dialogue" easily becomes a convenient rhetorical device, which functions to support the same old debate paradigm (only with some hand-waving about civility). I'm not remotely well-versed in dialogical theory/ethics, or related work in dialogic pedagogy, but one thing this literature makes clear is that a genuine dialogical exchange is a major human achievement, not something we can expect to happen of its own accord. It's not "talking across divides" but meeting in between; embracing and lingering within the space of difference, and holding those multiple voices. And as you say, listening. So escaping the familiar argument mode takes more than good intentions.
By the way, I recently stumbled across this guy who has apparently founded a Center for the Arts of Speech - new book looks interesting:
Thanks for engaging Chris and for the positive feedback.
I can certainly see calls for dialogue being cynically exploited, and I 100% agree that a genuine dialogic exchange is a major human achievement, both in the sense that humans are rare in our organismic capability for such exchange, and in the sense that it’s really hard!
I think the two places where dialogic exchanges most easily emerge and can be practiced are in intimate relationships and friendship because there is enough structure there to sustain a connection through hurt and misunderstanding. In particular, there is enough desire to maintain the connection that when someone gets really angry at you there is a tendency to assume you’ve made a mistake, rather than to go into a defensive stance and start applying motivated reasoning everywhere. That of course does occur in many (most?) cases, but the conditions are better than in say, political discourse.
I’d like to think I’ve always been quite open minded and interested in listening to people who disagree with me, but it was only after developing the emotional intelligence required for listening through hard conversation in intimate relationships that I was able to engage with ideologies that communicated in ways I wasn’t used to. When I was a leftist undergrad I could communicate with libertarians and utilitarians because we all spoke the same broadly rationalist language and came from a similar habitus. I had some similar capability for listening to religious people because my family is very Catholic. Only more recently have I developed the capacity to participate in discourses around more radical politics, in large part I think because I healed my own crippled capacity for engaging with things emotionally rather than rationally. Part of why I am so allergic to debate culture nowadays is because it actively undermines these sorts of human transformations, and that is a very sad thing.
I need to get across the dialogic pedagogy literature for some of my research on coproduction and deliberative democracy, so thanks for the links and pointers. I think there is a strong connection between these ideas and others in therapeutic studies (which is basically about the therapist helping you dialogue with yourself), and also metamodernity and some of the tropes of Everything Everywhere All At Once, especially Waymond Wang’s climactic statement: “The only thing I do know is that we have to be kind. Please, be kind. Especially when we don’t know what’s going on.”
Thank you so much for this very thoughtful reply I haven't been on in a couple days so just seeing this now, but maybe I'll follow up more later. As it happens I'm really interested in metamodernism, as well (I recommend Greg Dember's book Say Hello to Modernism and his website https://whatismetamodern.com, if you haven't seen those). I know you get into that a little toward the end of your Beyond Happy book, which I intend to read very soon.
I really like your shift in focus to the environment in which any conversation is taking place, and how this either facilitates or dampens the quality of the encounter: venue, atmosphere, norms and culture of that space, etc. We have a tendency to privilege the propositional content (and often, rhetorical force) of whatever is under discussion as the "important" part, while overlooking the process and context of those facilitating conditions; the assertive over the receptive. Which also means overlooking ethics. The irony is that disagreements often revolve explicitly around matters of ethical concern and clashing values, even as the ethics surrounding how we approach and engage in this disagreement is mostly ignored. Perhaps this is because wrestling with ethically loaded topics gives the impression that we are already "doing ethics?"
One thing I would add is that even appeals to "dialogue" easily becomes a convenient rhetorical device, which functions to support the same old debate paradigm (only with some hand-waving about civility). I'm not remotely well-versed in dialogical theory/ethics, or related work in dialogic pedagogy, but one thing this literature makes clear is that a genuine dialogical exchange is a major human achievement, not something we can expect to happen of its own accord. It's not "talking across divides" but meeting in between; embracing and lingering within the space of difference, and holding those multiple voices. And as you say, listening. So escaping the familiar argument mode takes more than good intentions.
By the way, I recently stumbled across this guy who has apparently founded a Center for the Arts of Speech - new book looks interesting:
https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=watch-your-words-a-manifesto-for-the-arts-of-speech--9781509567294
https://www.politybooks.com/blog-detail/watch-your-words
Thanks for engaging Chris and for the positive feedback.
I can certainly see calls for dialogue being cynically exploited, and I 100% agree that a genuine dialogic exchange is a major human achievement, both in the sense that humans are rare in our organismic capability for such exchange, and in the sense that it’s really hard!
I think the two places where dialogic exchanges most easily emerge and can be practiced are in intimate relationships and friendship because there is enough structure there to sustain a connection through hurt and misunderstanding. In particular, there is enough desire to maintain the connection that when someone gets really angry at you there is a tendency to assume you’ve made a mistake, rather than to go into a defensive stance and start applying motivated reasoning everywhere. That of course does occur in many (most?) cases, but the conditions are better than in say, political discourse.
I’d like to think I’ve always been quite open minded and interested in listening to people who disagree with me, but it was only after developing the emotional intelligence required for listening through hard conversation in intimate relationships that I was able to engage with ideologies that communicated in ways I wasn’t used to. When I was a leftist undergrad I could communicate with libertarians and utilitarians because we all spoke the same broadly rationalist language and came from a similar habitus. I had some similar capability for listening to religious people because my family is very Catholic. Only more recently have I developed the capacity to participate in discourses around more radical politics, in large part I think because I healed my own crippled capacity for engaging with things emotionally rather than rationally. Part of why I am so allergic to debate culture nowadays is because it actively undermines these sorts of human transformations, and that is a very sad thing.
I need to get across the dialogic pedagogy literature for some of my research on coproduction and deliberative democracy, so thanks for the links and pointers. I think there is a strong connection between these ideas and others in therapeutic studies (which is basically about the therapist helping you dialogue with yourself), and also metamodernity and some of the tropes of Everything Everywhere All At Once, especially Waymond Wang’s climactic statement: “The only thing I do know is that we have to be kind. Please, be kind. Especially when we don’t know what’s going on.”
Thank you so much for this very thoughtful reply I haven't been on in a couple days so just seeing this now, but maybe I'll follow up more later. As it happens I'm really interested in metamodernism, as well (I recommend Greg Dember's book Say Hello to Modernism and his website https://whatismetamodern.com, if you haven't seen those). I know you get into that a little toward the end of your Beyond Happy book, which I intend to read very soon.