Thoughts and Inquiries On Communication
As human beings, we all have different perspectives and opinions because of our background and previous experiences. This past two weeks, I read a lot about dialogue and the importance of different perspectives, which have impact on our daily living. So after all, every single human has their own voice, their own spectacles about reality. How can we manage to agree on something? How can we create something in common? Those were the inquiries that Bohm had while writing On Dialogue. It seems to me that if people could just try to understand each other, everything would be more powerful and we would discover a lot more about many things. We live in a society with a lot of paradigms, which people hold as true. It reminds me of the paradigm that someone better trained than you know the truth, how can they determine that? How can determine that anybody holds the ultimate truth?
We are born in a world full of ideas, theories, laws and beliefs. I dare to say that many people see truth as a hierarchy rather than a heterarchy; those are the words that Hofstadter uses. What would it be like if we all share our opinions as a network, where everybody is at the same level? I’ve been experiencing this at the MPC, every single day and it’s fascinating to hear other people expressing their voice. Through dialogue we create something new. However, truth isn’t a democracy. I am aware that it’s very hard to achieve universal agreement, but it can be possible if we shift mentality and if we are open to listen and understand why a person thinks the way he does. Something that really struck me is that we usually tend to hear other’s opinions with our own thoughts. We don’t really suspend the voice inside our heads. So at the end, if we don’t manage to suspend our assumptions we don’t really understand the other person.
It’s very mind blowing to think that every single person of this world has its own ideas or at least beliefs, something that they hold as truth. I think that many of these ideas and beliefs are influenced or maybe even invented, history is extremely important to understand why people think the way they do. It reminds me of the two-sphered cosmology, it’s impressive to understand how human beings questioned and came up with theories that were hold as truth through many centuries. But what strikes me more is how humans kept on questioning, exploring and discovering. That’s what Copernicus did and arrived to the solar system we hold as true nowadays. However, his ideas were considered crazy and people didn’t even try to understand them. What would have happened if people had engaged on a dialogue with him? What would have happened if others approached his discovery with curiosity?
This way of dialoguing and approaching the other may sound like a utopia, but at the end I think we all want to be understood and this process of dialoguing would help a lot to improve our communication as human beings. We sometimes aren’t aware of our mind’s capacity and I’m sure that as a species we can totally change our habits and our way of thinking towards other’s ideas. We have so much potential inside, every single human being. However, we have to learn to convey and receive messages. We have to be aware of our spectacles; we have to be exposed to this idea of dialoguing since children so that we don’t have a hard time later on. I’ve witnessed an impressive evolution in dialogues, in the participants. It’s overwhelming how people that used to be closed-minded now embrace other’s ideas with the arms wide open.
There’s an analogy that would be useful to understand this notion of dialogue better: we all live in the top of a circus carpet, inside of it we keep our ideas, beliefs, notions and desires. They are always being protected and usually we don’t tend to share them with a stranger or with someone that thinks differently from us. We don’t let them in. It’s important to remind that the other person also lives in the top of his circus carpet. The problem here is that we don’t get to know what’s inside the other person carpet if we don’t get off our carpet and if he doesn’t open us the curtains. At the end, both have to get off their carpets. And what’s even more fascinating, is that both can open their curtains and share what’s inside each other’s carpets in order to let something new emerge or to find something in common.
Achieving this, the participants of the dialogue get to share a “stream of meaning”. It’s amazing what could emerge from that stream of meaning. I like to think that someday, we’ll reach a world in which everyone’s ideas matter and in which we’ll have this stream of meaning as a survival tool in order to let new ideas flow. The world needs innovation; we can have even more than we have today. The conversation would be in between all of us, not one side or the other, but among us. A world in which we’ll construct on the other person thought or opinion, rather than destroy. I’m not saying we’ll all agree, I’m saying that we’ll deeply understand why we disagree with the other person. Really understanding without paradigms and barriers among ideologies or differences. Haven’t you ever stopped for a while and realized how many wars human beings have experienced because of difference in opinions? How many deaths? How many ideas have been shut down because they sound “crazy”? How many misunderstandings have impact in our daily lives? Do you think that we can peacefully engage in a dialogue in order to understand and be understood? How much are we loosing because of being closed towards other’s thoughts? I think we are loosing more than we think; there’s a lot more to discover, understand and imagine together.
We are born in a world full of ideas, theories, laws and beliefs. I dare to say that many people see truth as a hierarchy rather than a heterarchy; those are the words that Hofstadter uses. What would it be like if we all share our opinions as a network, where everybody is at the same level? I’ve been experiencing this at the MPC, every single day and it’s fascinating to hear other people expressing their voice. Through dialogue we create something new. However, truth isn’t a democracy. I am aware that it’s very hard to achieve universal agreement, but it can be possible if we shift mentality and if we are open to listen and understand why a person thinks the way he does. Something that really struck me is that we usually tend to hear other’s opinions with our own thoughts. We don’t really suspend the voice inside our heads. So at the end, if we don’t manage to suspend our assumptions we don’t really understand the other person.
It’s very mind blowing to think that every single person of this world has its own ideas or at least beliefs, something that they hold as truth. I think that many of these ideas and beliefs are influenced or maybe even invented, history is extremely important to understand why people think the way they do. It reminds me of the two-sphered cosmology, it’s impressive to understand how human beings questioned and came up with theories that were hold as truth through many centuries. But what strikes me more is how humans kept on questioning, exploring and discovering. That’s what Copernicus did and arrived to the solar system we hold as true nowadays. However, his ideas were considered crazy and people didn’t even try to understand them. What would have happened if people had engaged on a dialogue with him? What would have happened if others approached his discovery with curiosity?
This way of dialoguing and approaching the other may sound like a utopia, but at the end I think we all want to be understood and this process of dialoguing would help a lot to improve our communication as human beings. We sometimes aren’t aware of our mind’s capacity and I’m sure that as a species we can totally change our habits and our way of thinking towards other’s ideas. We have so much potential inside, every single human being. However, we have to learn to convey and receive messages. We have to be aware of our spectacles; we have to be exposed to this idea of dialoguing since children so that we don’t have a hard time later on. I’ve witnessed an impressive evolution in dialogues, in the participants. It’s overwhelming how people that used to be closed-minded now embrace other’s ideas with the arms wide open.
There’s an analogy that would be useful to understand this notion of dialogue better: we all live in the top of a circus carpet, inside of it we keep our ideas, beliefs, notions and desires. They are always being protected and usually we don’t tend to share them with a stranger or with someone that thinks differently from us. We don’t let them in. It’s important to remind that the other person also lives in the top of his circus carpet. The problem here is that we don’t get to know what’s inside the other person carpet if we don’t get off our carpet and if he doesn’t open us the curtains. At the end, both have to get off their carpets. And what’s even more fascinating, is that both can open their curtains and share what’s inside each other’s carpets in order to let something new emerge or to find something in common.
Achieving this, the participants of the dialogue get to share a “stream of meaning”. It’s amazing what could emerge from that stream of meaning. I like to think that someday, we’ll reach a world in which everyone’s ideas matter and in which we’ll have this stream of meaning as a survival tool in order to let new ideas flow. The world needs innovation; we can have even more than we have today. The conversation would be in between all of us, not one side or the other, but among us. A world in which we’ll construct on the other person thought or opinion, rather than destroy. I’m not saying we’ll all agree, I’m saying that we’ll deeply understand why we disagree with the other person. Really understanding without paradigms and barriers among ideologies or differences. Haven’t you ever stopped for a while and realized how many wars human beings have experienced because of difference in opinions? How many deaths? How many ideas have been shut down because they sound “crazy”? How many misunderstandings have impact in our daily lives? Do you think that we can peacefully engage in a dialogue in order to understand and be understood? How much are we loosing because of being closed towards other’s thoughts? I think we are loosing more than we think; there’s a lot more to discover, understand and imagine together.