Conclusion

As we are able and willing to use the skills of critical thinking and creative compassion to create a way of life rooted in dialogic behaviors, we can enjoy the many dimensions of life with a heightened consciousness in all realms of our being. The following ten points are meant to indicate the multidimensional benefits of a way of life sustained by dialogue:

1. Rational thinking at its very core serves as critical and dialogic.

2. The scientific method essentially serves as an endless critical dialogue between the scientist and the observed data.

3. Our language becomes the dialogic ability to express to others what is within; we should strive to be as critically clear and as precise as possible.

4. Our imagination becomes the dialogic ability to move out of our world into others, to which we should be open critically.

5. Our emotions will move us dialogically from where we are to another place, fostered by the reflection of reason and intuition.

6. Our esthetic ability will find beauty in a world outside ourselves.

7. Our body will engage in a reflective dialogue with itself, our spirit/mind, other persons, and the world about us.

8. Interpersonal relations will thrive in a dialogic, win-win, though clear-headed and critical, manner.

9. Our moral sensibilities will develop in the critically reflective dialogue of loving the Other as ourselves.

10. We humans with a critically reflective dialogue between ourselves and nature will heighten our ecological sensitivity.