Political violence is on the rise.  War abounds.  Our virtual, technological culture is making it increasingly difficult to find spaces of real encounter.  Loneliness, anxiety, and fractured relationships are the result.  In analyzing these different crises, we arrive at the same diagnosis: people have stopped talking to each other.  How would our world change if we re-learned how to dialogue?  

 

The word “dialogue” has Greek roots.  Literally, it means “through word,” but for the ancient Greeks, it had a great depth of meaning.  In contemplating the world, they noticed a logic or “logos” that seemed to order all reality.  They believed that it was precisely because of this order that reality was intelligible to them.  A person trying to explain reality spoke “logos” if they were faithful to this inscribed logic; their speech was “rational.”  True dia-logos, therefore, is not only achieved through speech, but also through reason and reality.  For the Greeks, this reality-seeking discussion was the key to intellectual growth.

 

UNIVLab 2026 is where we'll explore the art and bridge-building potential of dialogue where it matters most.

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Bridges don’t stand on fluid terrain: they require foundations. Just so, dialogue requires convictions. Philosophy and psychology help us understand the why and how of our convictions, and therefore, of our dialogue. Human nature is rational and relational, but also fallible and free. Our capacity to know the truth is much greater when we talk things through. Psychologically, this requires openness, but also firmness. Personal convictions should be open to reality, not closed in on themselves. A person who forms convictions in pursuit of the truth maintains a healthy curiosity, a readiness to adjust her stance if someone presents a perspective that she had not seen before. Rather than closing herself off, a commitment to the truth is precisely what opens her up to others in dialogue.
 

If dialogue is a bridge, friendship is its buttress. Friendship is dialogue on the relational level. Motivated by her love, a friend takes an interest, listens, tries to understand, talks, works through conflict, and rectifies. Our times are desperately calling for this kind of commitment to connection, to embodied relationality. It is only through opening up to another that we approach the truth, about the world and even ourselves.

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Bridges are constructed with many kinds of materials.  And dialogue on the societal level takes many forms: free and spirited debate, a commitment to fundamental principles, readiness to compromise... The objective is the common good.  But only by listening to all members of our communities can we foster a good that is truly common. If we want words instead of weapons and plurality instead of polarization, we must commit to social dialogue, be that in politics or in our institutions.

 

Join us at UNIVLab 2026.  Let’s Build Bridges together, and rediscover the Art of Dialogue.