by Mitch Bogen
Special to the Tribune
The 2024 edition of the annual Indigo Talks featured a longtime friend of the Ikeda Center, Andrea Bartoli, whose talk was called “Opening Pathways to Peace: The Role of Dialogue in Times of Conflict.”
Bartoli currently is president of the Sant’Egidio Foundation for Peace and Dialogue as well as executive advisor of the Soka Institute for Global Solutions at Soka University of America in Aliso Viejo, California.
His reflections were based on his reading of three of Daisaku Ikeda’s published dialogues: Choose Life with Arnold Toynbee; Choose Peace with Johan Galtung; and A Quest for Global Peace with Joseph Rotblat.
Three points stood out for him. First, dialogue succeeds as a peacebuilding activity when we realize the pathways to peace are already within us. Second, the best dialogue happens when participants view it as a field of surprises. And third, dialogue is not something that imposes itself but is given as a gift to the other.
The Q&A session offered many opportunities for Bartoli to dig deeper into the meaning and value of dialogue.
Asked to identify the difference between argumentation and dialogue, he said that with the former you already know what you think and just need to convince the other of it. However, with the latter, while you do know that you have something to say, you also know it is not definitive.
In response to a question about how we can practice dialogue with those more powerful than ourselves, Bartoli made a key distinction. “It is a common mistake,” he said, “to view those who have the power to kill on a large scale as powerful, since killing actually is an abomination of power.” He clarified that true power is what gives life and brings it to its fullness.
During closing remarks, Ikeda Center Executive Director Kevin Maher shared Daisaku Ikeda’s conviction that “although it may seem a modest method, dialogue is the only thing with the power to generate soul-stirring encounters that truly change humanity.”[1]
September 6, 2024, World Tribune, p. 4
References
- Choose Hope, p. 26. ↩︎
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