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Fuschl
2002 input paper: Lenser - Benking
Team
1:
New
Agoras for the 21st Century:Conscious
Self-Guided Evolution
Cultivating
Dialogue with Magic Round Tables
David
Bohm[1]
wrote that the form of free Dialogue could be one of the most effective
possibilities to investigate the crises which society is confronting today.
Even more, he felt that this form of exchanging ideas and information could
be of fundamental importance to change cultures in such a way that creativity
will be set free.
A
kind of “New Agora” will definitely be formed by (re)inventing a form of
free dialogue which allows that everybody can bring up his/her suggestion/opinion
about any topic.
That
means a “New Agora” has to overcome what we experience today in conferences
and symposia where one monologue follows the other and the discussion is
short and poor; where participants wait for the break or evening to finally
talk to each other, but too often only to the people they already know.
Like
many others we realized that the “modern”, usual form of meetings and conferences
is not the way we can expect to solve our problems, neither on group or
global level.
Definitely
there are examples in history and in other cultures how to communicate
and find shared meaning, for example the method of the Native Americans
who come together in a circle sharing their ideas and thoughts and feelings
- often with the help of a talking stick. The one who has the talking stick
can talk as long as she/he wants and the others will listen carefully without
making a comment to it. After finishing she/he will put the talking stick
in the open space in the middle of the circle and someone else will take
it - at once or after a creative silence.
This
method was restored by the Native Americans themselves (Council process)
but also used in some therapeutic groups or in the environment of new age
circles.
A
great method if a group has enough time for such a process; the problem
in our times and our culture is how to cultivate listening and share ideas
when the speakers are fighting for “air-time” in order to “sell” their
message” in the tight time-budget of a meeting or conference.
The
question is how to communicate, share, listen, ponder, reflect and jointly
elaborate the issues instead of doing just ones own preprepared “statement”
with typically no reference to what was said before, and no time for discussion
as everybody is overusing his time slot, as we have all too often not learned
to be brief and concise.
The
Magic Round Table method - presented here as one direction to tackle this
nightmare of self-presentation and isolation of the individual in groups
- is based on the work of David Bohm, specially his book “On Dialogue”,and
the work of Anthony Judge and Nadia McLaren on “Time-sharing Systems in
Meetings”[2]
and the DaZiBao participative conference messaging approach[3].
In
his book “On Dialogue” Bohm refers to the meaning of the Greek word “dialogos”
where logos means “the word” and “dia” means “through” (not two as we often
think - a dialogue can be among any number of people).
“The
Image this derivation suggests is of a stream of meaning flowing among
us and between us - a flow of meaning in the whole group, out of which
will emerge some new understanding, something creative”.
In
his concept of Free and Open Dialogue, where people come together in a
circle (often 40 or more people) without agenda or moderator is one problem
left: how to stop dominant talkers? David Bohm himself found this problem
in his dialogue groups and mentioned that it would be helpful to develop
some “rules” to avoid this.
So
what we do and propose is to modify the generally accepted timesharing
methods where every speaker has his/her speaking-time. Instead of just
dividing and distributing the time available (maybe only one hour equal
60 tokens) to pre-selected speakers, we give tokens - physical time-beats
like stones, nuts, paper-decks etc. - to potential speakers and surprise-guests.
To introduce the game we nominate a “moderator” as time-keeper and independent
guard to secure that the rules are understood and applied, before maybe
they are modified and adapted.
Participants
preferably sit in a circle and are kindly asked by thefacilitator
not necessarily to introduce themselves, but primarily propose a topic
or theme to the group they would like to elaborate. This offer can be anything
- a passionate project, a dominant feeling, the wish to do something else
(offering a little performance, to go for a demonstration which is happening
around the corner, asking for some silence or meditation or anything else
- all this are examples we experienced the last 7 years). After the “offer
of themes and proponents” the participants are asked to give the token
credits as a present and encouragement to the persons who offer something
as a topic which they feel should be elaborated and jointly explored.
The
very difference to other methods is the DYNAMIC allocation of attention
and interest, which encourages co-creation and the exchange of ideas, which
become like “flows” or a “social sculpture”[4]
where the group jointly elaborates and models in the given time. Time symbolized
as a token to other people will encourage and give them a sign of interest
and sympathy which allows to share meaning, jointly follow lines ofinterest
and learning about common threads, concerns, assumptions and approaches.
The
magic round tables were introduced during the last years in a very broad
range of settings, with a great variety of participants sitting at one
table or in a circle in political, scientific, peace and mediation “environments”.
Outcome
and topic, or the manner how the dialogue evolved was always a surprise.
It was nearly always unclear who would get the speaking time and what would
attract the most interest.
We
realized that the method works with all kinds of participants, politicians,
scientists, artists, kids, youngsters and all kind of cultural, social
and political background; nobody refused to obey to the rules, not the
sheik of a traditional sufi group, nor the right winged youngster who started
with the “offer” to beat somebody in the group, nor the follower of a radical
left winged political group who first refused to sit at the table with
somebody who belongs to an opponent group. For example the last one insisted
to not sit with him around the table and disturbed with aggressive remarks,
but was stunned with astonishment, when this person got up to give him
“time to speak”. In such cases the method works as a tool for mediation,
as people realize and changed their assumptions and prejudices[5].
Open
and free dialogue is en vogue, we saw recently the method of OPEN SPACE
being applied everywhere, like some years ago “future-labs” (Robert Jungk,
Rüdiger Lutz); all these methods are relevant and have their place.
What we propose is a proper mix of methods, adjusted to the time available
and layout of the room of premises. With Harrison Owen[6]
we agree that all this methods are already there, and they are of one family
as long as they allow the free flow of meaning and hinder the dominance
of a selected few.
In
order to create a “New Agora” we think that it is necessary to build up
a kind of “communitas” in the sense of Martin Buber[7].
For him communitas is the consequence of a dialogue process which expresses
the relation between the I and the You. In this sense we
agree with David Bohm who considered this shared meaning as the “glue”
or “cement” which holds people and societies together.
Farah
Lenser, Heiner Benking, Berlin, January 2002
