QQR

10/7/17
“The Little Book of Dialogue for Difficult subjects”

Quote: “People often do not recognize that every person experiences life in a unique way.
Learning in dialogue comes through exploring the similarities and differences in the experiences
of people from different backgrounds.” (Page. 42)

This little book actually really resonated with me because although I did not realize it,
“dialogues”, in a way, are how most issues in my family are typically dealt with. My household is
quite religious, and we do not like to resort to any violent or oppressive means when it comes to
different standpoints. The only difference in what I am used to at home, is that in my family we
do not necessarily have a “facilitator”, as mentioned in the book. I really do like the idea of a
facilitator who is unbiased, interested in what all parties have to say, and maintains the safe
space. This is especially important in the “new century”, as the book calls it, because although
people may attempt dialogues for difficult subjects, they might not always be able to perform it in
the best ways due to emotional circumstances, critiques about the other side, and strong
beliefs. I feel like having these dialogues with a facilitator is so absolutely important because not
only does it prevent harmful separation and conflict, but its whole purpose is not to have all
parties come to an agreement on views, but to create understanding, something that we need
desperately at this point in time. The book points out how dialogues are contrasting to debates
in that in a dialogue, as previously mentioned, the main objective is to create an understanding
towards different perspectives, while debates main goal is to “beat” the other side and find flaws
in their perspective. This book has a lot of ideas that we could all learn from and use to better
our society today. It worries me sometimes how much fighting and conflict there is in the world
simply because we cannot seem to understand the views of others, and how these days people
are even afraid to look at each other the wrong way and create a conflict. These things should
really not be happening. A question that I have for the author about all of this is how do we cope
when parties are not willing to use this peaceful method to problem solve and they resolve to
hate? Do we combat the hate in a different way? How do we get over the obstacle of
unbalanced power, mentioned in the book, that creates conflict? Hate is something most
people have trouble finding “perspective” in, so should we be using dialogue? Or should we do
as the book mentioned Gandhi did when his dialogues were rejected, and push for peace in
other non violent ways?