The Value of Dialogue
The Unifying Force in Human Relations
In this edition of M2 Dialogue, I offer three posts highlighting what I've been exploring through Dialogue as a Service (DaaS).
The Value of Dialogue: An Open Letter to ‘Someone I Can Talk To’
As a provider of Dialogue as a Service (DaaS), I live and breathe the value of dialogue, and this work continually heightens my appreciation of dialogic compatibility as a precondition for generativity. We can neither define dialogic compatibility non-reductively nor fail to recognize the simple pleasure and value of time spent with ‘Someone I can talk to’.
Bird Box: Salvation Through Blindness
We don't see the world as it is, but as we are. Is dialogue even possible with people possessed by the desire to force us to see our world as they are? Through the lens of Bird Box, the 2018 film, I examine the limits of dialogue in a retribalizing culture. I focus, in particular, on why evangelism is inimical to dialogue.
The Economics of Art: The Art of Pricing the Priceless
We price the priceless all the time, but how do we do it? Through the lens of cultural economics, I explore the apparent paradox and the emerging rules for the creation, distribution, and pricing of “cultural goods”, including Substack posts. Practicing what I preach, I also name the price for my art and respond to feedback from the market.
Further Explorations
Measuring the Immeasurable
Here's Daniel Kahneman on measuring wellbeing.
Dialogue as a Band-Aid
As a case study of the potential and limits of dialogue, consider this article about Evangelical churches turning to a Jewish nonprofit (Resetting the Table) to help them have hard conversations. In my view, the value of RTT's approach to “collaborative deliberation in the face of strong differences” is undeniable but also undeniably diminishing. I'll develop this view through an open letter to RTT (ETA TBD).