Falling in love with the Dialogic
Author: Dr Robyn Whittaker, Africa Voices Dialogue / Kaleidoscope Lights
Making a case for the beauty, healing potential, and possibilities for insight, wisdom, and deepening relationality that dialogic work offers.
Dr Robyn Whittaker is a medical practitioner who, after 17 years in practice, entered into the social change sector in order to better support the capacity for shared work, relationality and trust. Her commitment to integrating dialogic practices into our social spaces is manifested through Africa Voices Dialogue, Kaleidoscope Lights, the work of the EdEco Connect Initiative (within the South African education and learning ecosystem), and the NetEdu Project. She also consults and writes widely on this, and aligned, topics.
The relationship between diagnostic and dialogic work has often been held in a false dichotomy, with the diagnostic being regarded in the light of “hard science, fact, quantitative, evidential, clear” and the dialogic being seen as “soft, experiential, qualitative, emotional, fluid and evocative”. However, the relationship between these two ways of engaging and interacting with our world might better be understood as being similar to the relationship between illness and healing; between pathology and ‘salutogenesis’; between education and thriving learning experience. The perceived polarity between the two is usually couched as an either/or option yet is in fact a powerful both/and opportunity that offers tremendous creative possibility.
Relating this distinction into a Design Thinking framework assists us to appreciate both the role and the experiences of these two approaches within social and communal contexts, as well as how they relate to and are necessary to each other.
It is easy (and common) to feel opinionated about which of these approaches is the most useful, or most “valuable” — to position ourselves into an untrue polarity that either one OR the other is more effective. However, in seeking health — whether of the individual, a family, a community, society or “the system”, both approaches are critical and necessary. Both approaches, and the individuals who are attached to them, generally share the same intent — they are seeking the health of the whole. The diagnostic does this through the identification and removal of that which damages health, and the dialogic through the understanding of and incorporation of that which supports wellbeing or thriving. These two approaches in fact work beautifully when held together within creative, constructive, and generative balance.
Unfortunately, in many of our historic and current paradigms, we have become extraordinarily focussed on the diagnostic. We might even consider ourselves to be addicted to it. In our health, learning and economic systems, our language revolves around diagnostic terminology, ie “what the problem is” — measurement of norms and standards; measuring productivity and outcomes; GDP; comparative indices; epidemiology and disease rates; academic outcomes; benchmark testing — and on and on in a similar vein. The diagnostic mindset is an outcome of, and has very effectively served, an industrial and output-oriented framework, in which efficiency and clarity is highly valued. The challenge is this: diagnostic thinking becomes increasingly overwhelmed and ineffective in the face of complexity — primarily because deeply complex environments can almost never be simplified down to singular, binary, or even plural, definitive “truths”.
We have fallen out of kilter with the necessary balance between diagnostic and dialogic thinking and experience, landing heavily into the realm of the diagnostic. Our resultant inexperience, discomfort with, and unfamiliarity with the practices of dialogic work means that we keep trying to apply a diagnostic framework to an increasingly complex environment, leaving us feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, fearful, and hopeless.
Fortunately, within our biology as a species, and our history as social beings, we do have an affinity for and a propensity for the dialogic. We may have lost sight of it, and be so out of touch with it that it feels unfamiliar — perhaps even feel uncomfortable and vulnerable when we initially re-encounter it — but our hearts, minds and bodies do recognise it when we experience it. There is, deep within us, a primal recollection of the fact that “I am because we are” — that the singular exists within the context of the collective and the whole, and that we are somehow intimately and inextricably woven together — both in our humanity, and in our relationships with the “other-than-human” environments we live within.
Our loss of familiarity with this understanding, and our habituation to primarily thinking through the lens of the diagnostic, leads us to a precipice of isolation and loneliness. We are being called back from that precipice — invited and compelled to refind within ourselves the capacity for, comfort within, and love of the dialogic.
The space and time in history that we occupy begs for, needs, calls out for systems awareness and thinking — and not just the technical approach to systems thinking that is articulated by systems modelling, mapping, or process thinking, but a truly humanising systems approach. Contrary to popular thinking, systems thinking is not about (or only about) the “large scale” view. It is, in fact, far more fundamentally about the intimate relationship between the particular and the collective, the individual and the whole. It is about the ability to zoom both in and out, out and in — to travel the path between the singular and the whole with grace, agility and increasing ease, and with a real commitment not only to understanding, but to healing. Seeing the system means not only seeing the parts of which it is comprised, but seeing what lies between the parts, what holds them together, how they relate and move in concert with one another. A systems thinking approach is deeply relational and sees not only the obvious, but also what lies beneath.
Moving beyond the fixation only on the parts, on placing them and understanding their individual roles (ie “diagnosing” them), and towards sensing and feeling, engaging with them, listening to the perspectives held by those in their distinct spaces within the whole — shifting towards the dialogic — helps us to recognise that healing and the restoration and regenesis of what lies between these parts, is not the same as “fixing” or “curing”. Curing is a response to the diagnostic — it seeks to eliminate a pathology or problem at the level of the particular part. Healing, on the other hand — “salutogenesis” — recognises the inherent relationality between the parts, on the wellbeing of the whole. It is by nature collective, and seeks interconnection and healthy flow. Salutogenesis — the move towards thriving -recognises, enables, and celebrates the dialogic. It facilitates the interplay and movement of energy, emotion, thought, love, and life in between the component parts of the whole. It supports regenesis and growth, and is a movement forward to balance and integration.
Our age is calling us to (re)learn the art and gift of the dialogic — not to replace the diagnostic, but to balance and make sense of it, and to give us the tools, courage, energy and collective agency and capacity to address the extreme level of complexity within which we exist.
We can consider this as a movement from a design thinking divergence/ convergence framework, towards a systems understanding polarity and creative tension understanding, as below:
While our minds like the simplicity of a specific and definable approach, our souls thrive in complexity and in connection, and our bodies are the physical manifestation of this dynamic balance, which is why embodiment work is such a powerful way of accessing our other forms of intelligence and understanding, to support a deeper appreciation of the systems which we are a part of. Leaning into this kind of deeper appreciation of the balance between diagnostic and dialogic framing helps us to appreciate that these two styles are not true opposites, but rather integrating and balancing forces — that “the truth is the whole thing”, and that if we simply visualise the perceived polarity differently, we can appreciate that it is in fact a source of deep balance and creative possibility…
At a collective level, we are moving through the repeating and deepening phases of convergence and divergence that accompany all complex systems — and we are doing this at an accelerating pace. However, it seems that we lack a true sense of how this kind of complexity should be navigated, and the collective sense of vision of what is unfolding. We feel afraid — it is as though our societal training wheels are coming off, and we have not yet discovered our centre of gravity to allow us to move forward confidently, cycling between the convergent and divergent processes being demanded of us, between the diagnostic and dialogic, with clear intentionality and a sense of balance.
We are on an extremely steep global learning curve, giving rise to a rapidly emergent and shifting capability amongst many (though certainly not all) for viewing our world with greater systemic appreciation. Practical philosophical narratives such as those of Ubuntu, Sociocracy, Collectivism and the Unitive Narrative are on the rise, and with them is growing a new set of social and organisational management skills for the weaving of social, societal, and integrative ecosystems. We are becoming more familiar and comfortable with terms such a social weaving, systems integration, co-creative work, collaboration convening, co-creative facilitation, and community building. These are ancient human skills being rebirthed for a new era.
Our capacity to engage, recognise, foster, and support these skills at this time of system flux is critical. Systems in transition are under strain — so much effort and energy seems to be expended in maintaining the status quo, resisting the impetus towards breaking through the inertia and promoting the tendency to fall back into old and established patterns, and yet the skills to carry us forward into the new frames of possibility have not yet been fully birthed. If we do not want to descend (further) into complacency or war, we need to pay acute and exquisite attention to the art of learning how to be together, how to reformat ourselves into healthy social and collective ecosystems, and to engaging with our natural ecosystems as integral components and partners of these.
We have learnt from the healthcare space that simply knowing what is wrong, being able to identify the noxious sources of our pain and dis-ease, does not automatically lead us to wellness. For this, we require more than the diagnostic — we require the process of sense-making and integration that is offered by the dialogic.
To step forward into wellness, personal and societal healing, and into thriving, we need to feel supported, motivated, connected, and valued. We need to feel that we matter. Caring, and being cared for — being seen, heard, loved, and understood — is what motivates us towards wholeness. Our journey towards full, thriving wellbeing is calling out for the dialogic to be fully realised.
We are… pluripotential possibility… we offer each other the opportunity for attunement, for round and rich amplification of our individual and collective movement and energy towards growth, coherence, and life…
