One World in Dialogue is a six-month course led by Dr. Elizabeth Debold and Dr. Thomas Steininger, hosts of the two-day webcast, One World Rising, initiated by evolve magazine for consciousness and culture. It is designed for persons who realize that being part of global change calls for a change in our consciousness and that global change won’t happen unless we can come together in new ways, across the usual boundaries that divide us. By placing the local genius and wisdom of each culture in a global context, the course will empower participants to be change agents in schools, clinical settings, organizations, communities, NGOs, and among any engaged, passionate, and diverse group of human beings.

One World in Dialogue fosters the development of the capacities needed to engage in productive, integrative relationships across cultures and civilizations. The aim of the course is to encourage the creation of spaces that value the unique contributions of cultures and persons within a context of greater unity. These spaces can be in educational or clinical settings, an aspect of community building, or sponsored by NGOs or think tanks. We will develop these spaces as a practice of social transformation. It is not about trying to get somewhere or to come up with one grand perspective. It is about the emergent potential inherent in truly meeting other human beings.

One World in Dialogue will empower a cadre of global change agents from different sectors, such as education, international aid, counseling, social enterprise, and NGO-related work, to create spaces of real human encounter that form the heart of a new activism. Through presentations, Q&A, experiential exercises, readings, and dialogue practice, participants in the course will be given the opportunity to build a strong foundation within yourself and to open bridges to others so that you can catalyze deep and productive communication across cultures and divisive boundaries.

Humans are a globalizing species. To think of globalization only in terms of the West’s colonialization of the south misses the larger movement that homo sapiens has been part of for the last 60,000 years. Something in our species has led us to spread across the surface of this planet; we’ve done it again and again. Yet at this point in the process, humanity appears to be at a critical stage—one that might risk the viability of life on this planet.

Due to the creativity and aggression of modern science and technology, all of the different niches in which humans developed unique cultures and belief systems are rubbing up against each other. We have a desperate need to communicate, value, and integrate the different perspectives that we hold. This is a new, living integral consciousness that takes us beyond theory into authentic, holistic action.

We need to integrate different perspectives in dialogue with others. Simultaneously, we can critique our own paradigms and uphold our shared humanity. These dialogic spaces have the potential to create reality themselves—a reality that emerges from deep engagement with others. To invoke Jürgen Habermas, the “system world,” is running amuck, seeking to commodify increasingly intimate aspects of our humanity—which is what he calls the “life world.” Developing new social spaces where aliveness can thrive through enriching and deepening our shared understanding of each other’s life worlds and struggles against the juggernaut of the system world is critical to social transformation. In fact, you could say that it constitutes the core of a new activism.

The activism of the 1960s and 70s is over. Petitions, protests, marches, sit-ins, boycotts seem to have a very limited use at this point. And it’s also the realization that the way forward is a mystery. Even our best plans and programs to create change, reduce poverty, or liberate the oppressed haven’t worked as we’d hoped they would. In fact, too often they have backfired.

Is this cause for despair? Yes and no. The situation we are facing on our beautiful planet is extreme. Many of us feel that in our bones. The interacting forces—economic systems, political corruption, human desperation, ecological degradation and climate change, war, xenophobia—are too big for any one person or group of experts to comprehend or to plan a response to. Yet, this desperate situation calls us to let go of our assumptions, logic systems, and conclusions to embrace life as a mystery that is beyond our control and inherently, surprisingly, creative. Our plight calls us to embrace that mystery in a way that frees us to participate in the emergent process of life itself. From there, we can come together in real relationship through dialogue with human beings who share our care but hold diverse worldviews, knowledge, and experience. We can discover the living mystery that arises from the uncharted potential of real human relationship.

What will come from this is unknown, unplanned, and experimental—as creating something new always is. This is a shift in human consciousness. Not a magical New Age paradigm shift that will dissolve violence and conflict into love and light, but a profound confrontation with and celebration of our shared humanity.

As a participant in and co-creator of One World in Dialogue, you can:

• Discover a new global interior space, inclusive of our individual and cultural identities, that empowers us to act from a much bigger perspective
• Build a cosmoscentric view on global history that liberates us from limited, Western-centered narratives of our shared human story
• Develop a trust in the life process that will give you greater freedom to engage with difficult or painful issues in yourself or with others
• Learn how to hold greater cognitive and emotional complexity so that you can respond more effectively and fully
• Liberate yourself from cultural shadows and discover a new rootedness in your culture that enables more authentic, less defensive cross-cultural communication
• Practice the skills of Evolutionary Dialogue—a deep process to facilitate collective creative emergence among people holding diverse perspectives
• Forge powerful new relationships across boundaries such as race, culture, or religion that usually divide us
• Create new spaces for authentic communication that allow us to hold diversity in unity so that we can intuit the next step(s) in creating an enlivening future for all of us

For group facilitators and helping professionals, One World in Dialogue provides the unique opportunity to reflect on and explore the ways in which one’s cultural identity may limit one’s effectiveness and authentic connection with persons from diverse cultures. Simultaneously, the course will open up new channels of human connection across cultural boundaries that can facilitate work with clients in diverse communities.

Throughout the course, you will be coached to learn the practice of Evolutionary Dialogue. Evolutionary Dialogue is a communication practice developed in Germany by Dr. Thomas Steininger and his colleagues. This form of dialogue places attention on the “space between us,” or intersubjective aliveness, that releases us from self-concern and defensive motivations in order to discover the creative potential that can emerge through human relationship. Evolutionary Dialogue can be used across a variety of settings, from collaborative inquiry to organizational strategy sessions to the intimate context of a therapeutic setting. It is particularly useful for group facilitators and helping professionals who want to engage in a process of deep mutuality in order to catalyze a creative response and break out of old patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting.

You and the members of your dialogue group will schedule your own meeting times twice monthly.
The course will be highly interactive. How much you get from the course will depend on how much you put into it.
Wholehearted engagement in the group dialogue sessions will be critical to the learning process.

A word about fees:

We don’t intend to make a fortune through this program—that’s not what we are doing this for! The standard fee for the course per month is 75 euros. Our special Under 35 rate is less than 43 (dollars or euros) per month. (That’s less than the average cost of a concert ticket!) If you cannot afford the course, please contact us at info@oneworldindialogue.com and tell us why you want to join the course and how much you feel you could pay.

SPONSORSHIP: If you are from the Global South or from an indigenous/people of color community still facing economic discrimination and hardship, we have a sponsorship program to allow you to take the course for free. Please write to us if you would like to be sponsored to join the course. You can reach us at: info@oneworldindialogue.com.