Dialogues

The difficulties in finding group flow

“Bohmian” Dialogue has been something close to my heart for a long time. Something I’m trying to create at every opportunity I have. Something I think needs to happen.

This is not the first time I’ve talked about it. See old posts: Dialogue, Dialogue, Blogging as Bohmian Dialogue.

As I already mentioned back then in 2004, I had tried and failed to create online Dialogue spaces. Since then I have several times tried to create Dialogue online, and somewhat succeeded, but also failed. And I’ve facilitated a couple of face-2-face Dialogue spaces.

Let me quote one of those previous posts in giving an idea of what it is:

“It is a gathering that doesn't have any direct purpose or aim. Nobody's trying to "accomplish" anything or to gain agreement or to arrive at an outcome. One sits down in a circle, quiet at first, and then when somebody feels inspired to speak, one speaks. When they're done, when somebody else feels inspired to speak, they do so. What others said forms part of your impetus to talk, but you aren't directly answering the others. Everybody focuses what is in the "middle" of the circle. We're in a way talking about the same thing, but without having agreed on what that is, and without any requirement to agree. We're kind of talking about what we see, what we experience. We can explore our assumptions, ideas and feelings. And, magically, it leads somewhere. Not necessarily a neat result, and it is hard to say what exactly came of it, but something will. It is a different kind of space than what one finds just about anywhere else. It is free, real, authentic. People are present. Where it goes is entirely open.”

From 2016 to 2019 I facilitated a group called Conversational Experiments, which had weekly Zoom meetings. Each meeting was a different “experiment” where we explored something different or played with the rules for the meeting. For example, to only speak the truth during the meeting, or to practice mirroring each other, or to use sock puppets to have the conversation in our place. The stated aim wasn’t directly to do Dialogue, but we had a few meetings where the rule was to have a Dialogue according to the principles expressed by David Bohm. And it was always an underlying subtext for me, no matter what we were doing, to practice becoming better at something like Dialogue, to develop a sense of group flow, how to find it, how to create it, how to amplify it.

There are meetings where the participants are really engaged, where it feels like good things are happening, we’re discovering or creating something together, and we leave the meeting enriched.

There are other meetings where it is sort of tedious. Some people talk too much and listen too little. People push their same old fixed opinions, and take offense to what others are saying. Everybody’s just trying to get their 2 cents in. And at the end you’re kind of tired and happy that it is over.

And of course there are meetings where it is interesting and flowing well at some times, and other times not. The point of Conversational Experiments was in part to try to discover what the difference is. Can we notice when things go off the rails, and maybe fix it? Sometimes it is indeed a person who “talks too much”, but they somehow don’t notice when others start looking bored or exasperated. In our meetings we tried to capture things like that when it happened. Sort of, hold, time-out, let’s freeze things right here and examine what happened. Can we notice exactly where it changed? What can we learn from that? Can we become better at signaling to each other?

It doesn’t have to be bad. Sometimes somebody does or says something that shifts the whole group into a different gear, in a constructive way. It can be when somebody slows us down, takes a deep breath, and says something really heartfelt and authentic. Can we notice when that happens? And maybe do more of it?

We did explore this in many different ways, and we got wiser, I think. But it didn’t turn into any manual for how to do it. And it didn’t always work well, even when most people present had excellent conversational skills.

Some of the things that can go wrong is that if the group is fairly open, so that people can self-select to be there, some people will enthusiastically join who have very poor skills in group communication, and who aren’t able or willing to learn.

For example, a couple of people with, shall we say, mental issues, joined. Like schizophrenic, bipolar, obsessive-compulsive disorder, that kind of thing. That isn’t automatically a problem, and it certainly isn’t if the person mostly is hanging out and observing and listening, but it can be a problem if they’re very active. If we’re creating a space where there seemingly is freedom to say or do whatever you feel is right, that can be a problem if you have a weak grasp on reality and the inside of your head is overflowing with strange impulses. A Dialogue is probably not what you should be doing, and it can become very tedious for the other participants.

There will usually always be participants in a group that have the view that everything is welcome. Meaning that whatever shows up is the right thing. If somebody’s talking, they’ll talk until they’re done, and that is good. And, in principle, yeah, I agree with that. It is healthy to simply be present with whatever is showing up, and to become good at listening to others, even if they’re coming from a very different place than you. But what if there’s somebody who never stops talking, who will keep talking until somebody stops them, because they have a few wires crossed in their brain, and they don’t know how to conclude anything?

It doesn’t have to be somebody who is mentally ill. Some people will simply join for a different reason than expected. When setting up a Dialogue Space in the past, I have usually tried really hard to make sure that people had read about it before, that the principles have been presented to them, and they have agreed to follow them. Somebody might read all that, and go through the steps, and still be thinking inside themselves “Great! Some people to talk to. I’ve been lonely.” and will come barging in while everybody else quietly are contemplating some deep aspect of life and go “Hey, how is everybody? How’s your wife? Did you see that interview with Trump yesterday?” Which of course would be perfectly normal and valid smalltalk if you’re meeting somebody in a normal social setting. But it totally isn’t Dialogue.

Part of the problem is of course when it is online. In an in-person gathering it is much more likely that most of the participants pick up the vibe of what is going on. If you walk into a darkened room, and everybody’s sitting quietly in a circle, and people are speaking in subdued tones, then few people would start yelling and talking about football and politics. Most people would quickly figure, hey, I’ll sit down too and see what happens. Online it is not so obvious. The bandwidth is so narrow that even after all these years, there are people who in their minds think that this is just like a phone call, and they don’t have a sense of the space they step into. Because, well, it is just some pictures on the screen.

But I still would like to make it work, so I am considering my options.

• I could make a course in how to Dialogue

• I could come up with an online setup with the right kind of controls and options. For example, where there always is another space one can hang out in if one just wants to chat.

• I could organize face2face Dialogue groups, instead of trying it online

So, more to come. Just wanted to put it on the record that I’m working on it.