Having difficult conversations about … is an attempt to add more considered and deliberate method to dialogues that seem to be stuck.
Two key questions
One of the ideas we explore is the insight that two questions lie at the heart of any difficult conversation: “How can we know anything?” and “How can we share power?” These two questions usually exist in tension with each other. If you are committed to the first question you are focused on what you are trying to know. What you mean by truth is focused on how we know things. If you are committed to the second question you are focused on who you are in relation to the other participants. Your sense of truth is focused on how power is abused to sustain inequality and exclude certain identities from accessing opportunity.
The first question is about epistemology (the study of how we can know anything). It grapples with the human ability to create knowledge about reality through human sensations, perceptions, feelings, memory, language, ritual, art, narratives, technology, relationships, institutions, etc. The kinds of guidelines our ideal dialogue seeks with this question are about what constitutes a reliable method for accessing and assessing knowledge and for arriving at the best explanations and solutions possible. You may believe that rational consensus can be reached if we maintain the process of disagreeing with each other while agreeing on criteria for what constitutes mutually beneficial disagreement.
The second question is about social justice and inclusion. It grapples with positions of privilege and lived experiences of oppression. The kinds of guidelines our ideal dialogue seeks here are about maintaining a conversation between diverse cultures, identities, knowledge systems and points of view. Guidelines sought here are also about preventing power from controlling access, distorting dialogue and silencing voices. It is about actively deconstructing systems of oppression, unnecessary social hierarchies and limiting social categories. It’s about preventing positions of privilege from controlling the narrative and about opening up space for all voices and experiences.
This is the tension between knowledge production and identity politics.
In its quest for knowledge the first question seeks methods that are as universal as possible and ideas that are as objective as possible. In this way it seeks to transcend constructs that are culture-specific and create explanations that can be understood by anyone – especially non-believers. In contrast, the second question values subjective experience and cultural capital. It seeks to treat all ideas as valid and worthy of engagement. In the quest for social justice with the second question, we want everyone to win, to be treated with dignity and to have the appropriate means to access equal opportunities. In the quest for knowledge with the first question however we do not consider every idea to be equally valid. We want the most effective explanations and solutions (the ones with the least amount of error) to become the ones we implement.
The first question seeks robust dialogue in which all ideas can be critically engaged, put on the table and separated from the person who had the idea, without anyone taking that critical engagement personally and without the need for empathy. The second question seeks safe enough spaces in which people feel their identity and worldview will not be disrespected, but that they will be engaged with empathy by people who are genuinely trying to understand and appreciate them for their own sake without any other end in mind.
The two questions become most crucial when there is disagreement about what constitutes reliable knowledge and what constitutes legitimate power. They represent the two most common sources of disagreement in any dialogue.
Resolving the tension
The singular thing that makes constructive dialogue valuable is that participants get somewhere they could not have gotten to on their own. If you are simply trying to destroy the reputation of the other participants, or shout louder than them, or repeat your slogans without being willing to have others engage them critically, then you do not share any objective with the other participants. What is it that you are hoping to get out of this conversation? Are you just in this to change the other participant’s mind or are you willing to accept the other participants as fellow truth seekers and meaning makers?
Do you want to know what is really going on or do you want to be right about what you know or who you are? This is not an easy question for someone who is highly invested in the facts they have uncovered and believes that denying them will perpetuate ignorance, delay progress in human development and cause unnecessary harm. This is also not an easy question for someone who believes they have suffered some obvious injustice that is being ignored. These participants are unlikely to admit that they could be wrong about some things and that the other participants could add something that deepens their understanding.
If all participants recognise that the questions, “How can we know anything?” and “How can we share power?” seek different objectives and require different processes, they can engage in a different quality of dialogue. If it is difficult to answer questions or deal with disagreements about knowledge and power simultaneously, shouldn’t we allocate space for each and then keep moving between them - identifying the error and ensuring dignity?
Find out more about a co-created culture of dialogue that is both generative and inclusive.