Dialogue Community refers to four visions that stem from the new practice of DEPTH Dialogue. These are deep formative intentions (what Socrates and Plato called ideas) that push forward into the future to be manifested and realized:

1. A Network Of Peer-To-Peer DEPTH Dialogue Guidance
2. Relationships Based On True Loving Friendship
3. A True Partnership Culture
4. A New Platonic Academy Based On DEPTH Dialogue

Here is the vision for each of these:

1. A Network Of Peer-To-Peer DEPTH Dialogue Guidance

DEPTH Dialogue is true friendship. It is not primarily a profession or a teaching. It does not require the dialogue guide to be in any kind of superior position, as do traditional teaching and therapy modes. It does not even require the guide to be self-realized. Self-realization naturally results from the practice of DEPTH Dialogue, but this is a built-in feature of the very dynamics of the practice and does not require any special qualities be present in the guide.

All that is required to do good DEPTH Dialogue guidance is loving friendship for the student, knowledge of the elements, practice in the art, and true, deep, personal experience in the process. Anyone with sincerity and focus can do this if they want to.

Because of this, DEPTH Dialogue can be done in a peer-to-peer manor as well as in a professional practice. People can guide each other, either as the only means of doing DEPTH Dialogue, or as an adjunct to getting more expert guidance from a more highly skilled guide.

This would be an exceptionally good way to do this because it would allow diligent students to proceed very quickly through the process to full creative self-realization by participating in dialogues regularly and frequently on a cost-free basis.

The other factor that would make this advantageous to the diligent student is that the guide benefits more from doing the practice than the student does. This is because experientially truth-centered passionate love-radiance is initially more activated in the process of giving friendship and guidance than it is in the process of merely following guidance. (This is thoroughly elucidated in Plato's Alcibiades Major, where passionate love radiance is called eros, and experiential truth-centeredness is called sophrosyne. See the commentary on that Dialogue for a full discussion of these crucial ideas.)

Back-and-forth guidance and help also encourages, awakens and activates true deep loving friendships based on equal partnership. It may be one of the best ways to foster true sharing friendships, deep intimate love relationships and deep community love-connections and harmony. (See the topics that follow for more on each of these.)

Because of this, training in peer-to-peer DEPTH Dialogue guidance, as well as training for trainers in this, is something that is planned. See the section on Training for information on this (when it becomes available.)



2. Relationships Based On True Loving Friendship

Relationships based on the structure of the ego-self can never be truly loving, truly intimate or deeply sharing. They can therefore never be truly genuine or satisfying.

The limited ego-self relates from images, internal representations, dramatized charged-up emotions, and belief systems based on these. This is relating to an object of your own mind rather than to a real live aware experiencing other being. Like all relating to objects, it carries the ego-mind's primary intention of manipulating that object for its own satisfaction and self-centered goals.

This is not an evil intention. It is just a fundamental trait of the deepest level of the ego structure. It is what we all learn as a matter of growing up. It is necessary for adaptation to the physical world, where manipulation of objects, in certain contexts, can be useful. It is also necessary for the development of cognitive abilities, most especially the intellectual ability to differentiate and discriminate. And this ability is actually a crucial prerequisite for being able to do the kind of deep self-exploration that DEPTH Dialogue uses.

So, you actually need to have developed a high degree of ego-self abilities in order to do the deep self-exploration that allows you to transcend the ego-self. This deep self-exploration leading to ego-transcendence is what leads you into greater and greater abilities to really and truly love, to really and truly relate "I" to "I" with another alive aware experiencing feeling human being, not as an object to manipulate or exploit but as an inner connectedness.

Because of this, one way of looking at DEPTH Dialogue is that it is training and practice for true deep loving relationships, whether these be friendships, business relationships, community ties and dialogue, romantic/sexual relationships, marriage, child-rearing, really engaging education, truer, deeper psychotherapy or counseling, or whatever.

Relationship that goes beyond the ego-self's object manipulation is always based on dialogue. Dialogue that engages true feelings and honors the inner integrity of each person is the necessary foundation. Beyond that, dialogue that touches into the deepest, truest inner experiencing is even richer and fuller, more loving and more satisfying for both person's. Dialogue that awakens and activates the truest, deepest Self toward full creative self-realization, is the best because it fulfills the deepest inherent longings for the fullest kind of creative life that there is in all of us. DEPTH Dialogue is this last kind of dialogue.

DEPTH Dialogue, therefore, is a way of finding the deepest kind of loving friendship that is possible for the greatest possible kind of joy and fulfillment in life. It would therefore be extremely useful to practice it as an essential part of any and all relationships. Because of its nature and what it accomplishes, it will completely and totally transform any relationship in the most profound way.

DEPTH Dialogue produces relationships based on true loving intimacy and friendship.



3. A True Partnership Culture

The societies and cultures that we have in the modern world have been developed from the ego-self's object manipulation abilities. This is most evident in the advanced technologies that we have. We can manipulate objects to land on Mars, roam around there and send back pictures and geological data. We have a vast worldwide computer network that allows spam to be flood our e-mail boxes on a daily basis. We have great industries that produce wonders as well as pollution that threatens life on earth.

It has been said that humankind has progressed greatly in technology in the last 2000 years but not one little bit in the ability to deal with that technology or its consequences. It is obvious that technology has advanced but why has there been no seeming advance in human ability to deal with technology or to relate better with one another?

This is because the development of object manipulation in a culture corresponds to that same development in an individual. It is one stage of development. It must happen in a sequence, following previous stages and playing itself out into completion before the next stage can start. The present world culture is at a very advanced stage of development corresponding to the "formal operations" level of human individual development (see the Introduction section for an explanation of this.) This does not mean that every individual has reached this stage. It simply means that the leading edge of cultural development, where innovations affecting everyone else take place, is at that stage. It is being played out to the max right now.

This maximum edge of the "formal operations" culture has been called "the Dominator Culture." This is because the object manipulation that characterizes this stage has as its primary directive the manipulation and exploitation of objects for its own self-centered ends. In other words, it seeks to dominate objects. To do this it first makes objects to dominate. This means that it objectifies everything and everyone that comes into its scope of attention. It also means that it tries to bring as much as possible into its scope of attention in order to dominate. Other people, natural resources, political, social, economic and religious systems, and on and on. Domination has its own ineluctable internal logic, and that is -- dominate as much as you can as quickly as you can!

Just as in the stages of human development there comes a time when the natural dynamic tensions in the old way of doing things becomes so great that it puts a seemingly unbearable strain on the system itself. The system starts to disintegrate through the ultimate unfolding of its own internal logic. There is only so far that it can go. Then, now, something must change radically and fundamentally.

We see this all over the world at present. Ecological crisis, economic chaos factors in the financial markets threaten to collapse the whole system, huge grass-roots movements of deprived peoples in "undeveloped" countries challenging the old men of the World Bank, the IMF, multi-national corporations, etc. etc. In the face of this, the old boys world order is making last-ditch desperate attempts to hold onto its grip on the old system. The trouble with this attempt is that the system they are attempting to hold onto is crumbling as they are grasping at it. They continue in their old ways because that is all they know how to do. They are dinosaurs in a world that has already made them extinct. Their demise just has to play itself out in the aspect of time.

What is emerging is what has been called "a Partnership Culture." Instead of the old model of "dominate all you can as quick as you can" there is a new model of doing things that is based on real human beings relating to other real human beings face-to-face, eye-to-eye and feeling-to-feeling. It is a new culture based on real human relationships rather than on domination, manipulation and exploitation.

The Partnership Culture as it is today is the very first delicate beginnings of the stage of development beyond the Dominator Culture that developed out of the "formal operations" level of ego development. It is not well-formed and strong because it is so new, and the old ways are so entrenched. Any new stage of development in human development starts off in fits and starts, sometimes retreating to the old ways out of fear and need for old forms of comfort. The new ways are at first vague because we are just groping. This is something we don't know, haven't done before, haven't even seen before. Any new experience or action takes getting used to.

The other big reason why the new Partnership Culture is at present so vague and formless in comparison to the old Dominator Culture is that changes in stages of development naturally meet with separation anxiety and disintegration anxiety. This happens for individuals, and it is now happening for an entire culture. This is why the  20th Century was called the "age of anxiety." The 21st Century hasn't started out any better. We seem to have come collectively into a sort of "age of desperation." All systems are seemingly breaking down. There is widespread apathy, numbness, addiction, self-drugging of all kinds. Most all of the desperation is denied and masked, but it is seething beneath the surface. People are not happy, while large numbers of people in the affluent countries are pretending to be, are pretending that their possessions and moneyed social status is the same thing as happiness. Lives of "quiet desperation" as Thoreau called it.

In any transition in normal human development there are devices and institutions of society that help a person through the transition and through the natural anxieties that the transition engenders. These include family, friends, schools, religion, etc. etc.

The same thing happens on a cultural level, as new members of society are brought into the fold of higher levels of culture. We all learn what it is to be civilized, according to the standards that have been set down generation to generation.

What is happening at the present time is that world culture is going through a major developmental transition, but there are no institutions or social devices to help it through that transition. All the social means of civilizing young ones are set up to enculturate them into the 5000 year old Dominator Culture. These devices cannot and will not serve to help in the transition beyond themselves. The culture is therefore a ship at sea, and the seas are becoming very rough. And there are no lighthouses to show the way into a safe port.

This is not a necessary state of affairs. Just because there is no cultural guidance for the presently called-for transition in the devices of the modern world does not mean that this never existed. In fact, this existed in the classical world of ancient Greece in the form of Plato's Dialectic and Plato's Academy. These cultural forms were fully developed at that time and guided individuals beyond the dominator ways of the formal operations way of being. Plato's Academy was in continuous operation for more than 1000 years, with both men and women learning and teaching, in true partnership ways. Transitions to many stages beyond formal operations were guided and attained there.

The ways taught at Plato's Academy never became a wide-spread cultural norm. This was probably because the dominator culture was still relatively new on a historical basis. This means that the leading edge of cultural innovation was just starting to become of a formal operations type. This, then, also means that there were only a very few who had reached that level. The vast majority of the others were on lower levels. Most were on very much lower levels. Hallucinatory consciousness dominated the ancient world. Most were slaves or servants. Only the very wealthy had the education that would bring them to the formal operations level. People who got there were the radical innovators of their day.

Today, the number of people who are on a high enough level to be able to go into higher stages of development is vastly greater than in antiquity. This is because world population is so much greater and because education is much more available. This doesn't mean that the whole world is ready for higher stages but that there is a very large group that is ready to serve as the vanguard for the transition. This is always the way that it takes place. There are certain "cultural creatives" who have the vision, creativity, adventurousness, education and guts to lead the way into uncharted territories. There are huge numbers of these people living today. What would it take to put a spark to this tinder that would light the fire that would spread like a raging brushfire in dry grasses on the prairie?

It would take the right kind of direction and guidance from where it always comes from for major transitions. It must come from the right kind of education. In this case the right kind of education is education for deep, transformational, transcendent creativity. This is exactly what Plato's Dialectic provided in the ancient world.

Even though the practices of Plato's Academy never became a cultural norm they were developed enough to do so. They were strong and clear and practical. The relatively few people who were part of the Academy did proceed to higher levels of creative self-realization. The Academy itself lasted a very long time.

The only record we have of the teachings of Plato's Academy is Plato's Dialogues. This is probably only a fraction of what was available at the time, but most of the record were destroyed when the library at Alexandria was burnt to the ground by cultural dominators of that era.

However, Plato's Dialogues alone have proven to be enough to recover the cultural guidance that Plato's Academy provided for a clear, smooth transition to a Partnership Culture. That guidance is in the form of what Socrates and Plato called the Dialectic. That is what is presented here as DEPTH Dialogue.

DEPTH Dialogue - the present incarnation of Plato's Dialectic - if it became a cultural norm, or even if it just had a significant influence on those on the leading edge of the movement into the new Partnership Culture, could be the cultural guidance needed at this time in order to make the much-needed transition.

As pointed out in the preceding topic, DEPTH Dialogue fosters true deep loving relationships in those who practice it. Having these kind of relationships is the necessary foundation of a true Partnership Culture. It cannot come about by just wishing that it were so. It will not happen just by having warm cuddly feelings of friendship and love. It won't happen through idealistic philosophies of unconditional love, gaia theology, new democracy, or any mental projection of the like. There has to be a concrete practical way for individuals to themselves transition beyond the formal operations level of domination. Only individuals who are truly and practically living on the partnership levels themselves can form a true Partnership Culture.

Only the practical focus and results of DEPTH Dialogue, or something else like it, can produce individuals who are capable of forming and participating in the coming Partnership Culture. DEPTH Dialogue can be a major formative force in that new birth.



4. A New Platonic Academy Based On DEPTH Dialogue

As noted above in the last topic, Plato's Academy lasted over 1000 years, teaching higher learning into full creative self-realization.

Given the rediscovery of the central feature of that school, Plato's Dialectic (DEPTH Dialogue) it would now be possible to re-establish a modern-day version of Plato's Academy, teaching the same path to full creative self-realization. This school would exist both to teach individuals and to become an influence on the culture through graduates who would teach others, and through spreading the word about the transition to the true Partnership Culture that would be happening in the school and modeled for the whole culture.

It would be both a school and a model for living in partnership based on DEPTH Dialogue.

The school would teach peer-to-peer DEPTH Dialogue as well as train teachers of this. It would teach professional level DEPTH Dialogue for those who wish to do it on the highest level. It would also train trainers of teachers for these courses, and then trainers of trainers. It would thereby develop a whole culture of DEPTH Dialogue education. No one person would be a guru or leader. It is meant to become something held in common by the participants, and developed further in partnership as the community deepens in experience, knowingness and truth-speaking.

A new Platonic Academy embodying the true deep Socratic Dialectic would be a working model of the nascent Partnership Culture because it would have the means of creating true living partnerships as its central practice. Everything about the Academy is rooted in the very deepest of true loving dialogue. Every aspect of its teaching is a way of reaching deeper into the sources of the deepest dialogue. All the forms of its institutional culture are rooted in real relationships of individuals living in deep true dialogue, based on constant practice of DEPTH Dialogue. Everything about it flows in the direction of greater freedom, love, creativity from the deepest sources, and true power from within (NOT dominating power.)

This vision is very possible to achieve. DEPTH Dialogue fosters powerful creativity from within, from the deepest formative forces of the psyche. These formative forces are what creates all the forms of appearance in the seeming world. This action is sometime called manifestation. It is not an act of will but of intention. The level of intentionality that DEPTH Dialogue reaches is the most basic level of all creation. What is projected on that level is what happens.

Do you want it to happen? This is not a vision for just one person. It will take a few others to feel into this and feel it is right for them. This is an invitation to you to feel into yourself and find out if you have a true affinity with this. Most will not, but if you do, let's get together and do this.