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DIALOGUE DEEPENS UNDERSTANDING OF PROBLEMS
International students' debate tournament
Address by the President of the Republic Milan Kucan
Ljubljana, 26 April 2000
If the society is capable of establishing inner dialogue, then even a small community can be a spiritual superpower in its own microcosm. However, it must be capable of implementing a high culture of dialogue between individuals and groups who listen in order to hear, who look in order to see and speak in order to talk and thus come to an agreement. A society that is not capable of this succumbs to empty talk where individuals listen and hear only the echo of their own voices, the president pointed out in addressing the participants of the tournament from ten European countries.
Distinguished young participants of this international debate tournament,
I am sincerely happy to be able to welcome you to Slovenia today.
I am particularly glad to be able to listen to your discussions and to be able to hear your young minds' unhindered and persuasive search for truth, seeking it on the path to fellow man. Their trying to understand him, his valuation of problems, understand his doubts and fears, his interests and ambitions. I am convinced that your decision in favour of a culture of dialogue is proof of your firm commitment to remain open for what is different and to accept difference as a way to surpass and enrich the subjectively limited cognition of the world and of life. Your thoughts about arguments and the elements of arguments in a debate are themselves proof of the fact that you do not see this world in black and white and that you deem it worthwhile to persevere, through argumentation, in the search of common ground between yourselves and your collocutors. This deepens the understanding of problems and thus makes finding decisions easier.
Dialogue and tolerance in dialogue are and always have been special values in society. They are witness of the inner strength of those who are able to lead a dialogue with others who have different views, as well as of the inner strength of all of society which stimulates dialogue. If it is capable of establishing inner dialogue, if it is decided to support thought and argumented assumption of positions concerning the dilemmas it is facing, then even a small community can be a spiritual superpower in its own microcosm. However, it must be capable of implementing a high culture of dialogue between individuals and groups who listen in order to hear, who look in order to see and speak in order to talk and thus come to an agreement. A society that is not capable of this succumbs to empty talk where individuals listen and hear only the echo of their own voices.
Dialogue and tolerance are also very special values in the emerging global society, in the Internet society of globalisation and individuation, establishing a different comprehension of time and space in which new systems of human relations are being outlined. There is no doubt that these relations will also be shaped by the virtual Internet experience, outside the traditional direct scope of experience of an individual. To a high extent, his world will be shaped by stimuli from the various ends of the world competing for his attention. In this multitude of stimuli, the individual will have to be capable of understanding the weight of arguments, and the validity of sound thought and simplifications, clichés and stereotypes which open the gates to irrationality, fear, intolerance and hate. That is also one of the reasons why I so gladly welcome your decidedness to cultivate dialogue. I stand convinced that your experience as debaters will help you in seeking solutions for new challenges of the global society which, at least as its pre-modern predecessor, will require inner links and dialogue.
The culture of dialogue as a social value is gaining in importance in the new democracies which are slowly getting accustomed to political and spiritual pluralism. In order for these democracies to become as strong as possible, the right of an individual's own truth, found only in dialogue with fellow man, needs to be defended every time and everywhere. Through mutual respect and respectful words. Experience shows, including the most recent one in the Balkans, that there is only a short distance between violent words and violent actions, that the lack of arguments is quickly replaced by intolerance or hatred towards fellow man or groups. The strongest defence against such phenomena are the sensitivity and capability of a society to recognize the futility that such substitutes of argumentation have offer as a possible choice. The capability to distinguish between arguments and simplified clichés is the best guarantee of a kind life for us all and for our future. You, too, young debaters, have a place in our common hope for sound thought about the good choices for the future of mankind. In your efforts to find a common language, the language of thought, mutual understanding and respect, you are strengthening the system of values as the bonding tissue of a new Europe and you are opening new hope for a kind world in the future.
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