I’m thinking about a brief taxonomy of conversational styles, centering around the issue of attention.

Other-centered: People who are more interested in giving attention to their conversational others than take it for themselves, as in … Interesting, tell me more …
Shared-center: People who are equally interested in taking attention from and giving attention to their conversational others, as in … I can relate to that because … how about you? …
Self-centered: People who are more interested in taking attention from their conversational others than in giving attention to them, as in … Enough about you, now about me …

If freedom is an existential given, as Peter Koestenbaum suggests, it’s interesting to define evil as that which tries to pursuade people that they don’t have freedom in whatever venue you want to talk about.

Given that definition, I’ll start the list of examples of evil with an institution that tries to control or prevent self-expression and experimentation in service of the vision.

It was another day of noticing people on their asses criticizing those at work about they way they’re working. Always good for a great belly laugh.

There’s a lot to be said about optimism and its power to inspire courage in spite of the apparent odds. It’s an unwillingness to be intimidated.

At the root of courage is commitment to make the difference we want to see in our world.

I listened to a friend the other night talking about her boyfriend. She lives daily in the shadow of questions about their future.

I don’t know why this provoked a childhood image of young girls picking off flower petals in a roulette of “loves me” and “loves me not”, but in response to my query about what she most loves about him, she says she loves most what she thinks he could be.

I was in a conversation with a guy today who remarked: Yea, I used to have an allergy to alchohol - when I drank, I’d break out in handcuffs.

We all live and interact within our comfort zones. The scope of our personal zones can certainly change and shift with experience. Our comfort zone is the space where we feel at our best.

Some people’s comfort zone includes a fair amount of risk taking and change; others’ comfort zones feature risk and change aversion. For some, comfort is continuous curiosity, discovery, and learning. For others, it’s continuous affirmation for they already think, feel, know, and do.

The important thing in all this is remembering that people do what they do typically because it’s within the comfort zone of their beliefs, values, and identity.

Websters defines “true”in 3 ways: (1): being in accordance with the actual state of affairs (2): being conformable with an essential reality (3): fully realized or fulfilled.

I think it’s fascinating that true is only one-third about alignment with reality as it is - the domain of facts. The other two-thirds has to do with what resides within our comfort zones and what aligns with our dreams ….

One of my lunch servers this week had a t-shirt that says: Save yourself time; assume I know everything. It reminded me of the saying that the opposite of love is efficiency.

In a talk I heard today at a regional economic development conference, I heard that biological evidence points to the fact that we’re hardwired for crisis-driven, competitive, hierarchical organizations and communities. Chatting with the speaker in the elevator, the very bright director of the Cleveland Museum of History, he remarked that with dialogue, sociology can transcend biology.

So how do we foster dialogue instead of debate? How do we encourage people versant in dialogue to participate fully in conversations?