Ecosymbolism Philosophy & Dialogue, Acknowledgment & Echo.

The First Movement of the Dance

Before we can make a decision, we must know.

Before we can know, we must be willing to observe, communicate and listen.

This is why dialogue comes first.

Human beings did not evolve through isolation. Anthropologically, much of human development has depended upon our ability to observe one another, imitate, communicate, teach, correct and improve.

One person discovers a technique. Another observes it. Someone copies it, changes it or perfects it. Knowledge passes from one mind to another and from one generation to the next.

Observe. Communicate. Imitate. Question. Improve. Exchange.

Then the process begins again.

This is one of the fundamental movements of the Dance of Life Freedom.

The Echo

An echo does not have to return exactly as it began.

An idea can enter another mind and return transformed. It may be expanded, corrected, contradicted, combined with another idea or developed into something its originator never imagined.

This is how knowledge grows.

The echo is therefore not repetition for the sake of repetition. It is circulation.

We receive something from another human being, examine it, transform it through our own experience and knowledge, and perhaps return something new to the world.

Someone else receives it.

The circle continues.

Acknowledging the Other

Dialogue begins with a simple but difficult act: acknowledging that another person exists outside ourselves and may know something that we do not.

We naturally want to speak. We want to explain ourselves, defend ourselves and make others understand what we see.

But dialogue requires something more difficult.

We must listen.

Listening can be as important as speaking, and sometimes more important, because listening gives us information.

The loudest person in the room is not necessarily the person with the greatest knowledge or the best idea.

Somewhere outside the noise may be a quiet person whom nobody has asked to speak.

That person may hold an extraordinary idea.

Perhaps even the solution.

But silence can conceal something else as well. A person may hold destructive ideas, resentment, deception or intentions that could eventually become dangerous.

We need to know both.

We cannot understand what remains permanently hidden.

The Voice as a Symbol

For this reason, the human voice—speech and communication—is one of our most important symbols.

Without communication, we cannot truly know what another person thinks. We cannot exchange knowledge, discover an unknown solution, expose an error, recognize a danger or reach an agreement.

Freedom of speech therefore contains another freedom that is discussed much less:

the freedom to listen.

Listening does not mean agreement.

Listening does not mean surrender.

Listening means access to information.

When we allow another person to speak, we allow an idea to reveal itself. Once revealed, it can be examined. We can question it, challenge it, reject it, adopt part of it, improve it or recognize its consequences.

Silencing an idea does not necessarily destroy it.

Sometimes it merely pushes it into darkness, where we can no longer see what is developing.

The Stagnant Pond

Knowledge needs circulation.

Imagine a pond fed by moving water. The water enters, travels and leaves. Then something blocks its movement. What had been circulating begins to stagnate.

Human knowledge can suffer the same fate.

When a society, community, institution or individual permits only familiar ideas to circulate, it can become an intellectual stagnant pond.

This is the danger of the echo chamber.

A true echo should travel.

An echo chamber does the opposite. It traps the same sound inside the same enclosure until repetition begins to resemble confirmation.

If we hear only ourselves and those who already agree with us, we may become very certain while knowing less and less about what exists beyond our walls.

We need to come out of the bubble.

Politics Is Part of Human Interaction

Politics does not begin only with governments, parties or elections.

Politics appears wherever human beings organize themselves, make collective decisions, distribute responsibilities, negotiate differences and determine who will lead.

It exists in the community, the workplace, institutions and society because decisions affecting many people must eventually be made.

This makes dialogue essential.

The person demanding the most attention is not necessarily the person with the greatest merit. Leadership without information can become blindness, and information cannot circulate when nobody is listening.

A quiet voice may contain an answer.

Another voice may contain a warning.

We need the freedom to hear both.

Dialogue Is Not the Destination

But dialogue alone is not enough.

Information is not automatically truth simply because somebody has spoken it.

What we receive must be examined.

We cannot absorb every idea indiscriminately, nor should we reject an idea merely because it makes us uncomfortable or comes from someone with whom we disagree.

Information must pass through something like a colander.

Some things will remain. Others will pass through. Some will need to be tested again.

This requires evidence, observation, critical thinking and introspection.

And that leads to the next movement of the Dance of Life Freedom:

Knowledge.

We listen first so that we may know what is there.

Then we must determine what is true, what has merit, what we should discard, what we should learn from—and what we are going to do with what we have discovered.

The echo has reached us.

Now we must think.