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Feature - The art of conversation

Dialogue Cafés show a true exchange of ideas is not a one-way street

I have a confession to make. I’m 28 years old and I can stop a conversation dead in its tracks.

This is not an art I cultivate. A skill aided by a shelf full of how-to books. It’s not actually a talent at all. Typically it’s in response to an innocent inquiry, some unsuspecting conversation-making. Like, "So why are you a vegetarian?" Or, "What’s so wrong with SUVs/McDonald’s/George Bush/trophy homes, anyway?" There’s no NORAD warning for them (yellow alert: Subject likely to explode). Having shocked or browbeaten my listeners out of conversation, out of dialogue, out of reach, I wade through the awkward aftermath alone. It’s not my most prized ability.

Peter Gibian, an English professor at McGill University who has focused on the American parlour phenomenon of the 1800s, notes that the goal of a talk-fest "is to keep the conversation going, rather than to stop conversation. If you say something, it must be a prod for other voices to come in."

Touche.

Confession? I hunger for the deep connection, the meeting of minds, the stimulus that makes my grey matter pulsate with little shocks of electric current. So when William Roberts, the Executive Director of the Whistler Forum, announced that Eleanor Wachtel was coming to Whistler, to host a Dialogue Café, I leapt. The host of CBC’s Writers and Company. An evening talking about books, writers, the writing life. A gathering of like-minded people!

Not like-minded, he corrected me. People might not agree with you at all. And that’s the point – the debate, the dialogue, the exchange of ideas.

Right. Whatever. I’m gearing up. Read up on writers and dissidents who are being silenced by totalitarian regimes. In some countries, disagreeing with the government can get you run over by a tank (unknown student, Tiananmen Square, 1989) or a bulldozer, (Rachel Corrie, Gaza Strip, 2003), arrested (Arundhati Roy, India, 2000), detained (Ang San Suu Kyi, Burma, 1989-1995, 2000-2002, 2003) or strung up and hanged by the neck (Ken Saro-Wiwa, Nigeria,1995). I want to do some honour to these people. I want to write about dissent, about the brave voice, about having something important to say.

I seek out my favourite Whistler voices for a preparatory reconnaissance, for the skinny on being impassioned.

Confession? I love Kenny Melamed. I love what he stands for and that he can summon the energy to keep standing up, to not compromise, to not sell-out. I ask Ken what he stands for.

"Social justice is a big one," he answers. "Equality. Maybe that comes into social justice, but it disturbs me when people use their power and influence over others. To let people have equal opportunity no matter their status and wealth. Living within our means."

For Melamed, believing in these things more often than not means standing against things. He’s been the lone dissident voting against the Olympics, spot rezonings, "bookmarking" the Callaghan for residential development, monster homes, the Nita Lake Lodge development.

"Yes, it’s very lonely," he admits. "But what keeps me going is the feeling that I need to be actively involved in working for change. I’m very privileged to be at that table, no matter how frustrated I might feel when I walk out of a meeting at the end of a night.

"I think we live under the illusion that we have a democracy. Certainly we don’t at the provincial and federal level. The popular vote doesn’t elect the party in power and the people have no influence on policy. At a local level, there’s little accountability. A truer democracy would have more plebiscite decisions and more open decision making. Here, when you talk to councillors and municipal staff, they’re scared of giving the people a direct say. Part of the fear comes from the level of engagement in our citizenry. There’s generally a large level of apathy or unwillingness to get involved. But, at the same time, we get lots of great input when people care to participate. I believe the best decisions are made when we get the greatest input possible."

William Roberts, the Executive Director of the Whistler Forum says that this apathy is part of what the Dialogue Café is trying to remedy.

"I think our Dialogue Cafes should almost be a public utility, like the fire department, police, schools and hospitals. We should have centres for dialogue which allow people to engage at the front end of issues."

Roberts served for seven years as an MLA in Alberta, and is also an Anglican minister. He’s currently rolling his experience advising non-profit groups into the establishment of a local non-profit civil centre, the Whistler Forum, something akin to the Aspen Institute or the Banff Centre.

"Whistler has a huge amount of recreation. All the pleasures of life. I see it as useful to enhance that by having a centre for excellence, to develop community, give people a sense of place."

Roberts remembers family conversations, sitting around after dinner and chatting up a storm.

"That seems to have disappeared."

Thirty years ago, the Beatles wrote a song that included the line, "Ah, look at all the lonely people." Now, we have ATMs, drive through restaurants, cell phones, voicemail, the Internet. A person can technically go through an entire day, paying bills, ordering groceries, eating, doing business, and not have to see another human being. You don’t have to make small talk. You don’t have to talk about anything at all. Could alienation be the defining experience of our era?

Chris Hedges thinks so. A Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter and veteran war correspondent, Hedges made headlines in May this year when he was booed from the stage of Rockford College, Illinois, for proclaiming his anti-war views in the commencement address he’d been invited to give. In a radio interview later that week, Hedges commented, "You know, as I looked out on the crowd, that is exactly what War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, my book, is about. It is about the suspension of individual conscience, and probably consciousness, for the contagion of the crowd for that euphoria that comes with patriotism. The tragedy is that – and I've seen it in conflict after conflict or society after society that plunges into war – with that kind of rabid nationalism comes racism and intolerance and a dehumanization of the other. And it’s an emotional response. People find a kind of ecstasy, a kind of belonging, a kind of obliteration of their alienation in that patriotic fervor that always does come in war time."

If alienation is one of the rogue sources of today’s social issues, then Margaret Wheatley, expert in organizational behaviour and change, offers up a solution: "In conversation, people discover they are not alone in their concerns and dreams. Meaningful conversations move rapidly through human networks to reach many others. In networks of concerned people, ideas and energy grow exponentially."

The Conversation Café is not a new concept, but has experienced a resurgence of late. From Utne Reader’s salons, Boston’s Public Conversation Project, the global Philosophers Cafes, to SFU’s Dialogue Institute, dialogue is being held out as a tool for social change.

Dialogue as a social tool can be traced as far back as the Greeks, and the concept of "koinonia", or impersonal fellowship, the early Athenian democracy in which all free men of the city gathered to govern themselves. Dialogue itself means through (‘dia’) the words (‘logos’).The French Revolution was seeded in café gatherings.

But why now? Why this recent proliferation? William Roberts explains: "I think people are getting a lot more sophisticated, multi-cultural, post-modern… There’s been a breakdown in common meaning. We don’t all share a white Anglo Saxon Protestant point of view. Dialogue aims to get under that growing diversity and have a safe environment in which to say, ‘Oh, I understand where you’re coming from.’"

On Nov. 21 st , Eleanor Wachtel will host Whistler’s 10th Dialogue Café. Each Café is centred around a different topic, from Gay Marriage to Backcountry Access. A guest-speaker starts the gathering off, giving their take for 15 minutes, taking a position on the issue. Then the conversation begins.

"It’s not about having a speaker," Roberts explains. "It’s to enhance people talking about things and thinking about things. I think it does resonate with people. The conversation lasts for an hour and a half, and most nights people are pretty energized at the end of the night, whereas at most meetings, the energy tends to go the other way. You might start out charged, but it drains away. Here, we can engage citizens and build levels of trust and understanding and be a place where people can really care about each other."

Eleanor Wachtel, host of CBC’s Writers and Company, and the Arts Today, might be obsessed with the idea of a good conversation. In her Introduction to Original Minds, a 2003 collection of her interviews with such people as Noam Chomsky, Jane Goodall, Oliver Sacks, Desmond Tutu and Gloria Steinem, she writes: "I suppose I wanted them to tell me the meaning of life, or at least to provide models of a fully engaged intellect… I wanted to know what kept these thinkers so passionate… They have an appetite for the world and for the present moment, and this openness is combined with discipline, with conviction, and with a readiness to take risks. They also have in common a desire to be read by a wide public… (they) wish to make their ideas accessible… There is a generosity in this impulse, but also faith that a community of concerns unites us all. And although these thinkers neither share the same views nor agree with one another on many fundamental assumptions, they all insist on being citizens of our world. They are in daily conversation with us."

In the foreword of that same book, the late Carol Shields, wrote, "An interview with Eleanor is very like a conversation." She complimented Wachtel for being willing to follow unexpected threads, being able to digress.

Wachtel acknowledges this. "It’s the most interesting part of the process," she says, of her 13-year stint interviewing writers about their work and lives, "the way they respond. If I knew exactly what was going to happen, it wouldn’t be as engaging, for me or the listener."

Despite having made a career from great conversations, Wachtel doesn’t necessarily admit to being a good conversationalist.

"One thinks of a good conversationalist at a dinner party as being someone very witty, with great things to say, a terrific raconteur. I don’t really know if that’s me. I can be quite subdued."

What makes Wachtel so skilled, and so widely praised, is her ability to listen.

"I listen, and I like to listen. As far back as high school, I had a friend who said, ‘You should be a psychologist because you like to listen.’"

She didn’t take psychology.

"I’m much luckier. I think as a therapist you end up getting a bit stuck, having to listen to the same thing over and over. But for me, it’s always fresh and different."

Confession? I thought dialogue was all about having something important to say. I have come to realize that the important thing is in really being able to listen. The alienation that can turn so easily into fanaticism might stem from there being so many people clamouring to speak out, but no one willing to do the hard work of hearing.

After all, don’t we all just yearn to be heard?

Roberts’ next guest to host the Dialogue Café and launch discussion will be Whistler’s own G.D. Maxwell. Maxwell has scribed over 400 columns for Pique Newsmagazine and is the reigning title holder of Whistler’s Favourite Writer.

"When I first started doing this," says Maxwell, "I likened myself to the everyman. So if something makes me scratch my head, or think, ‘did I actually hear that?’ then I figure that there’s a whole bunch of other people reacting in the same way. The difference is that I get a chance to write about it."

Maxwell’s philosophy represents what the Dialogue Café’s are all about.

"I don’t think in terms of who’s an important thinker. There’s pretty brilliant stuff everywhere. We’d like to believe there’s a wise guru on the mountain, but the fact is, we’ll probably get more good stuff done if we rely on our own native intelligence."

Walt Whitman said something similar: "There will soon be no more priests… every man shall be his own priest."

Up until a generation ago, people gathered regularly. In church. Important issues were talked about, but maybe there wasn’t room for a lot of discussion, a lot of dissent. Times change. We live in an age of increasing secularization, which frees people to be their own priests. The hole that’s left is the forum. The gathering in community. The entry into conversation and dialogue to help us work through our ideas, to challenge them, to take into account life experiences and values outside our own. The safe place in which to share and to practice listening.

"If people come in and yell and scream and feel unheard, it won’t be successful," explains Roberts of his newest project.

We’ve already got enough of that, on talk-back radio, daytime television, in the courtrooms. But now, thanks in part to the Dialogue Café, we have a place to honour the god-ness in other people. Even if they don’t agree with us. Namaste.



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