Dialogue: How to Discuss an Issue

One of my retirement activities is conversation.  I love talking with people, but not so much small talk as big talk.  I like to discuss things that really matter.  For decades I have sought out people not likely to agree with me for such discussions.  I do a lot of this online as emails, but my favorite way is in person.

A few years ago I started an email conversation with Tony, a political conservative.  We had both had letters-to-the-editor published locally and we got in touch by email to discuss our very different views.  A little later a local psychologist got a letter published suggesting civil discussion across ideological and party lines.  Tony and I got in touch with him and the three of us met every few weeks in Larry’s office.  Over time each of us told friends about our little group and it grew.  Eventually it grew to an email list of about twenty people who range from the left all the way to the Tea Party.  We now call our group The Curmudgeons.

The email correspondence is overwhelming but I try to engage in it as best as I can.  The in-person meetings are now monthly and these follow a format that allows everyone to be heard.  There is a main speaker and then everyone in the room gets an opportunity to ask questions or express an opinion.  We try to find speakers among ourselves but have started bringing in people.  Our most recent meeting, at which there were 16 people in attendance, had a professional commercial lobbyist as speaker.

I came to this idea of conversations among different kinds of people from my own life experience.  At age fourteen I was part of a group which probably consisted entirely of what we would now call nerds.  We met once a month and brought in a speaker or film for discussion.  On TV in Chicago we had a truly remarkable talk show, “At Random” with Irv Kupcinet.  This unrehearsed one-camera program started after the late movie on Saturday night and lasted for about two hours.  I wish I could find a recording of one of these programs but I think none exist.  I did find a brief clip on YouTube with just the introduction of the guests which included Walter Winchell, Walter Cronkheit, and Edward R. Murrow.  I guess the subject was going to be news media.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP_bJJYuP9U

There are also historical models for this group.  Benjamin Franklin presided over such a group for about forty years, until he got too busy with the Revolution.  He called his group Junto and its members included people of various opinions.  Mark Twain also had such a group who met over cigars and scotch for decades.  Before then, there were the coffee houses of Europe where men (I think it was mostly men) would discuss the affairs of the day over cups of joe.  Madame de Stael held salons in Paris and other places where the great men of her day met to discuss and argue.  Then, of course, there was the salon of Gertrude Stein early in the 20^th century.

The Curmudgeons seeks to keep alive a wonderful and venerable tradition of polite conversation of hot issues.

How do we do this?  We are not allowed to attack each other personally and we are encouraged to argue our own opinions and beliefs while respecting those of others.  I have a favorite teaching about dialogue from Hasidic tradition.  It says that in order to dialogue we must be true to ourselves.  I learned this from my teacher Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi who quotes it in the name of Menachem Mendel of Kotzk (sources are important).  Here goes (you ought to read this out loud and probably more than once in order to understand it).

If I am I because you are you

And

You are you because I am I

Then

I am not I and You are not you.

But

If I am I because I am I

And

You are you because you are you

Then

I am I

And

You are you.

[And we can talk]