Glossary for Syntrepreneurship

‘Without dialogue there is no communication, and without communication there can be no true education.’ ~ Pierre Furter Going back to source, the etymology of the word: dialogue (n.) c. 1200, "literary work consisting of a conversation between two or more persons," from Old French dialoge and directly from Latin dialogus, from Greek dialogos "conversation, dialogue," related to dialogesthai "converse," from dia "across, between" (see dia-) + legein "to speak" (from PIE root *leg- (1) "to collect, gather," with derivatives meaning "to speak (to 'pick out words')"). dialogue (v.) "to discourse together," c. 1600, from dialogue (n.). Related: Dialogued; dialoguing. source: Etymonline From Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, written in Portuguese in 1967-68, but published first in English, in a translation by Myra Bergman Ramos, in 1970: Dialogue is the encounter between men, mediated by the world, in order to name the world. Hence, dialogue cannot occur between those who want to name the world and those who do not want this naming - between those who deny other men the right to speak their word and those whose right to speak has been denied them. Those who have been denied their primordial right to speak their word must first reclaim this right and prevent the continuation of this dehumanizing aggression. If it is in speaking their word that men transform the world by naming it, dialogue imposes itself as the way in which men achieve significance as men. Dialogue is thus an existential necessity. And since dialogue is the encounter in which the united reflection and action of the dialoguers are addressed to the world which is to be transformed and humanized, this dialogue cannot be reduced to the act of one person’s ‘depositing’ ideas in another, nor can it become a simple exchange of ideas to be ‘consumed’ by the participants in the discussion. Nor yet is it a hostile, polemical argument between men who are committed neither to the naming of the world, nor to the search for truth, but rather to the imposition of their own truth. Because dialogue is an encounter among men who name the world, it must not be a situation where some men name on behalf of others. It is an act of creation; it must not serve as a crafty instrument for the domination of one man by another. The domination implicit in dialogue is that of the world by those who enter into dialogue, it is the conquest of the world for the liberation of men. Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound love for the world and for men. The naming of the world, which is an act of creation and re-creation, is not possible if it is not infused with love. Love is at the same time the foundation of dialogue and dialogue itself. It is thus necessarily the task of responsible Subjects and cannot exist in a relation of domination. Domination reveals the pathology of love: sadism in the dominator and masochism in the dominated. Because love is an act of courage, not of fear, love is commitment to other men. No matter where the oppressed are found, the act of love is commitment to their cause - the cause of liberation. And this commitment, because it is loving, is dialogical. As an act of bravery, love cannot be sentimental; as an act of freedom, it must not serve as a pretext for manipulation. It must generate other acts of freedom; otherwise, it is not love. Only by abolishing the situation of oppression is it possible to restore the love which that situation made impossible. If I do not love the world - if I do not love life - if I do not love men - I cannot enter into dialogue. On the other hand, dialogue cannot exist without humility. The naming of the world, through which men constantly re-create that world, cannot be an act of arrogance. Dialogue, as the encounter of men addressed to the common task of learning and acting, is broken if the parties (or one of them) lack humility. How can I enter into a dialogue if I always project ignorance onto others and never perceive my own? How can I enter into dialogue if I regard myself as a case apart from other men - mere ‘its’ in whom I cannot recognize other ‘Is’? How can I enter into dialogue if I consider myself a member of the in-group of pure men, the owners of truth and knowledge, for whom all non-members are ‘these people’ or ‘the great unwashed’? If I start from the premise that naming the world is the task of an elite and that the presence of the people in history is a sign of deterioration which is to be avoided, how can I hold a dialogue? Or if I am closed to - and even offended by - the contribution of others; if I am tormented and weakened by the possibility of being displaced, how can there be dialogue? Self-sufficiency is incompatible with dialogue. Men who lack humility (or have lost it) cannot come to the people, cannot be their partners in naming the world. Someone who cannot acknowledge himself to be as mortal as everyone else still has a long way to go before he can reach the point of encounter. At the point of encounter there are neither utter ignoramuses nor perfect sages; there are only men who are attempting, together, to learn more than they now know. Dialogue further requires an intense faith in man, faith in his power to make and remake, to create and re-create, faith in his vocation to be more fully human (which is not the privilege of an elite, but the birthright of all men). Faith in man is an a priori requirement for dialogue; the ‘dialogical man’ believes in other” men even before he meets them face to face. His faith, however, is not naive. The ’dialogical man’ is critical and knows that although it is within the power of men to create and trans-form in a concrete situation of alienation men may be impaired in the use of that power. Far from destroying his faith in man, however, this possibility strikes him as a challenge to which he must respond. He is convinced that the power to create and transform, even when thwarted in concrete situations, tends to be reborn. And that rebirth can occur - not gratuitously, but in and through the struggle for liberation -in slave labour being superseded by emancipated labour which gives zest to life. Without this faith in man, dialogue is a farce which inevitably degenerates into paternalistic manipulation. Founding itself upon love, humility and faith, dialogue be-comes a horizontal relationship of which mutual trust between the participants is the logical consequence. It would be a contradiction in terms if dialogue - loving, humble and full of faith - did not produce a climate of mutual trust, which leads the people involved into ever closer partnership in the naming of the world. Conversely, such trust is obviously absent in the anti-dialogics of the banking method of education. Whereas faith in man is an a priori requirement for dialogue, trust is established by dialogue. Should it fail, it will be seen that the preconditions were lacking. False love, false humility and feeble faith in man cannot create trust. Trust is contingent on the evidence which one party provides the others of his true, concrete intentions; it cannot exist if that party’s words do not coincide with his actions. To say one thing and do another - to take one’s own word lightly - cannot inspire trust. To glorify democracy and to silence the people is a farce; to discourse on humanism and to negate man is a lie. Nor yet can dialogue exist without hope. Hope is rooted in men’s incompleteness, from which they move out in constant search - a search which can be carried out only in communion with other men. Hopelessness is a form of silence, of denying the world and fleeing from it. The dehumanization resulting from an unjust order is not a cause for despair but for hope, leading to the incessant pursuit of the humanity which is denied by injustice. Hope, however, does not consist in folding one’s arms and waiting. As long as I fight, I am moved by hope; and if I fight with hope, then I can wait. As the encounter of men seeking to be more fully human, dialogue cannot be carried on in a climate of hopelessness. If the participants expect nothing to come of their efforts, their encounter will be empty and sterile, bureaucratic and tedious. Finally, true dialogue cannot exist unless it involves critical thinking - thinking which discerns an indivisible solidarity between the world and men admitting of no dichotomy between them - thinking which perceives reality as process and trans-formation, rather than as a static entity - thinking which does not separate itself from action, but constantly immerses itself in temporality without fear of the risks involved. Critical thinking contrasts with naive thinking, which sees ‘historical time as a weight, a stratification of the acquisitions and experiences of the past’, from which the present should emerge normalized and ‘well-behaved’. For the naive thinker, the important thing is accommodation to this normalized ‘today’. For the critic, the important thing is the continuing transformation of reality, for the sake of the continuing humanization of men.