There’s an interesting conflict happening right now in the Philippines between the Catholic Church and the President of the country. The President supports the use of contraceptives for those citizens who wish to use them, and as a result the Catholic Bishops are threatening to ex-communicate the President, who is a practicing Catholic, from the church. This probably isn’t all that spectacular in terms of the content, but what I did find interesting is that the president of the Catholic Bishops told the press “right now, we are open for dialogue.” I couldn’t help but think that he was totally butchering of the word “dialogue,” as if someone who was being threatened with ex-communication could honestly have a dialogue with the other party. This made me wonder about the nature of dialogue, and how I understand that term.
In my mind dialogue had at least a few central components:
- Mutual Respect – It involves at least two parties who have mutual respect for one another.
- Openness to Compromise – Each party is open to compromising (though this doesn’t mean they “have” to end up compromising).
- Not Knowing – Each party has a certain access to “not knowing” to being able to let go of what they think they know, at least for a short period.
- Awareness of Power Dynamics – Each party can recognize the power dynamics between them, but is committed to not unconsciously playing into them.
Mutual Respect
It’s pretty easy, as human beings, to tell when someone hates our guts. It’s also easy to pick up on subtle clues that someone doesn’t respect us, or doesn’t honor our position. We generally have fantastic bullshit radars. And when we can pick up on a lack of respect, or on overt hatred, it’s very difficult to have a mutually beneficial conversation with another party. It seems obvious, and yet we go into “dialogues” all the time with hidden contempt and disrespect in our hearts. And then wonder why the result sucks. And we usually leave feeling it’s the other parties’ fault.
Mutual respect is about owning our own frustration, lack of understanding, and aggression and not letting that dominate the conversation. It’s about tapping into our shared humanity with one another, and being willing to have, even if it’s only a small amount of, respect for each other.
Openness to Compromise
If we go into a dialogue, where we’re seeking some sort of result, it’s crucial that there is some willingness to compromise on our current position. If there’s absolutely no willingness then the dialogue is doomed to failure. Either you will get your way, bending the other person to your will and reinforcing broken patterns of engagement, or you won’t, which will further fuel contempt and make future compromises even more unlikely. If one person shows some willingness, however, to give way, than it can very easily encourage the other to do so. It’s amazing how easily it is to empathize with another person, and to meet them somewhere toward the middle, when we see them take the first step.
Now, what openness to compromise doesn’t mean, is that we are necessarily going to reach a compromise, or that we “have” to in order for something to happen. Sometimes, as in the case where the other party literally isn’t willing to give, then we can leave a dialogue knowing this position, and can choose to work with the problem in another way. And when demands and threats are part of the compromise, we may decide to take a determined stance against the very context of the discussion, and thus will not reach a compromise. It’s also possible, and many people don’t like to hear this, that if we are in a position of power, and the other party isn’t willing to genuinely compromise, even though we understand their position and have made ample efforts to meet them toward the middle, that we can consciously decide to use our power to force a beneficial result. Parents do this all the time with their kids, and bosses have to do this sometimes with employees. It happens many times, and it isn’t always a bad thing. In fact, nothing is “always” a bad thing. If you think it is, then may not be open to compromise.
Not Knowing
A big part of reaching an understanding with someone has to do with setting aside what we know for a short time. It’s very difficult to understand a position if we automatically disregard it, don’t understand it to begin with, or hear it on a superficial level and then squash it into our current model of understanding. To dialogue effectively, we need to step into a space of what in Zen is called “don’t know mind.” It can be uncomfortable, and scary, but it’s a space out of which all sorts of genuine insights emerge.
Awareness of Power Dynamics
When people speak about dialogue, there is often an understanding that a real dialogue has equal, or flattened, power dynamics. This is often called “egalitarian dialogue.” The problem with this assumption is that it just doesn’t work out this way. All roles contain within them certain inherent power differentials, and many of these differentials are both useful and necessary. In fact, as Ken Wilber often points out, the assumption that power should be equal is itself a power play by those who share this belief. Even then we have a power differential, but in that case it isn’t in the open.
What I’ve learned about dialogue is that it’s helpful to acknowledge, or be aware of, the power dynamics at play. We can hold each others basic humanity as the starting point, but can also recognize the very real differences between us. Both unity and difference are respected.
What Does it Mean?
In some circles where I’ve hung out the term dialogue gets elevated to supreme status, and in others it gets criticized as being a catch-phrase for naïve pluralism. In the case of the Catholic Bishops in the Phillipines, it’s clear that what they mean by dialogue is simply exchanging words, and not much else. They are words exchanged under duress, where the power dynamics are hidden (but implicit) and where there really isn’t respect or openness to change. For some people that is a dialogue.
The term itself means many different things to many people. But it seems that no matter what we mean by it, we still have to find ways to communicate and come to understandings with one another. If we can’t count on certain groups or individuals doing that skillfully, then I’m afraid that we are the only ones who can rise to the occasion. Personally, I am both terrified and energized by the prospect.
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