Dialog— A Meaning for Education

The objective of this study is to understand the absence of meaning of life in the context of a fluid society, offering reflections on the contribution possibilities of dialog to the recreation of existential meaning. This study can be described as a theoretical-reflexive essay dealing with the liquid modernity and existential void concepts of Bauman (2001) and Lipovetsky (2005), respectively. The results indicate that humankind is on a pilgrimage between light and darkness, revealing a disenchanted society and, on the other hand, a more hopeful one. In this context, the education process guided by dialog could be a signification of the human condition. Keywords— Educative Dialog, Existential Void, Sense and Meaning.


I. INTRODUCTION
Dialog is an inherent dynamic of the human condition since its constitution; therefore, it contributes to the existential meaning of the humanization experience. Even though such presumption has been practically incorporated to the development of personal projects or social systems in different moments of history, in the current context this procedure needs to be constantly created and recreated, including regarding the educational process.
This propensity becomes ever more relevant because we live in a society that lost track of the existential meaning of the greatest benchmarks, such as the experiences of more democratic and participatory governments, more spiritual and communal religious configurations, or with utopian projects getting closer to some sort of accomplishment.
Beyond these cross-sectional configurations, it is possible to notice that contemporary reality is in a liquefaction stage, according to Bauman (2001). This process, according to this author, is transforming relations, situations, and institutions in a state of constant fluidity, thus characterizing the liquid modernity that presents itself immediately as light, liquid, and fluid.
To the same setting, Lipovetsky (2005) introduces the era of the void concept. This period, despite the excess of products for consumption, presents itself existentially ever more void. This existential vacuum is mainly potentialized by technologically prompted values because they privilege velocity, pace, and movement. Thus, for this social model, the more information gets in circulation and the more goods and products get in fact consumed, the deeper human beings get entrenched in emptiness.
To this narcissistic reality it is possible to add the Castoriadis (2009) understanding that the present society is extremely chaotic, an aspect that in part explicitly shows the deterioration of human dignity and the social systems frailty. This chaotic context, according to the author, is conducive for the existential meaning of constant deterioration.
In the understanding of these approaches, described by means of analogies on fluid societies, where the human being is turned into simple reflexes of existential void, and personal relations and institutions endure a chaotic reality, is it possible to create or recreate existential meaning?

II. THE CONTEXTUALIZATION OF MEANING
With the purpose of proposing dialog as one of the possibilities to exercise existential meaning, it is timely to begin with the contextualization of meaning, so that it can be configured as personal or social aim in the contemporary culture's construction process.
In front of the setting described above and perceiving that despite all the consumption offers available people are still empty; despite infinite entertainment offered by In part, the meaningless world can be perceived by the previously described analogies because they reveal that we are experiencing a moment of existential meaning drainage, as well as a period of distancing in the humanitarian sense primarily due to a frightened relational context with regard to differences and diversity, and indifferent towards the other. Such aspects, among others, would contribute to a sharp degree of dehumanization of the very human culture.
Besides this reality perception, some scholars have been calling attention to the absence of meaning in the contemporary context. Among many authors, it is possible to agree with Jung (2011) when he affirms that the lack of meaning is modernity's general neurosis. Such a neurotic condition would be affecting primarily the western civilization because it is supposedly turning its back to the human soul's beauty.
The human soul is the energy that could awake the human being to value the diversity of relations and relationships that can be experienced in daily life, whether the ephemeral or the enduring ones. Contemporary reality has potentialized immediate, superficial contacts through digital technologies; however, it has not paid due attention to permanent, deeper bonds that only existential meaning can provide.
Thus, the contemporary subject is more often connected and less bound; he/she has more contacts but fewer meetings; sends and receives more information but dilutes the intensity of interhuman relations. It is like he/she were surfing the sea waves without plunging into the ocean. Such perception allows saying that human beings have lost a great deal of their identity because they can barely identify themselves with something, except for transient waves that keep crossing their lives.
According to Le Breton (2018), this procedure adds to the fact that human beings are "disappearing" from themselves because they are possibly being permanently diluted by daily activities. In this conjuncture, even if floating along these waves, it is advisable to search a reference, a compass for indication on where to retrieve individuality and, consequently, existential sense.
This initiative is even more urgent as technology is offering humans the possibility of living another identity. Humans put themselves in the movement's dynamic, which transports them to another reality where they assume the identification of someone else, proposed by the diversity of entertainments. In this move, the existential void grows bigger and the absence of conviviality consolidates, leading people to desperately provoke void and absence, for this way they keep on feeling like navigating.
This dynamic is not only a segment that has detached itself from the human condition, but it has also transformed itself in a system that encompasses all existential realities. Along with this procedure, there has been an existential dynamic inversion in the sense that living in a different way, guided by values linked to the existential sphere, has become a mere thread in an immense net involving the human being and the set of social vectors.
The most evident movement in the human condition set of possibilities is directed towards externalities. In this sense, it is not the internal energy that propels in the external direction, it is rather the external dynamics that strongly influence the human existence. In this case, the gravity center is no longer the person, but the intricate net of connectivity and instrumentalities.
For this reason, it is timely to accept Frankl's suggestion, in the possibility of affirming that the meaning of life is something essential and worth searching, primarily because "this meaning is exclusive and specific, since it needs and can only be accomplished by that determined person. Only then this meaning assumes importance capable of satisfying the people's own longing for meaning" (2018, p. 124). According to the author, the existential meaning is unique to each subject and can only be proximal to the meaning of others.
From this statement, it is possible to affirm that the meaning of life is singular and specific, momentary and continued, aspects that demand a responsible answer to each moment, in each situation. Such an attitude of answering with responsibility is what reveals the subject's disposition to effectively search for the meaning of life.
In the sequence of this proposal, Frankl (2018) suggests that in the existential sense, the human existence selftranscendence should be taken as a relation process with the world, providing it with an existential meaning. That is, the meaning does not exist isolated from reality, it must be experienced in the world. That is why a person that dedicates to a cause or loves someone has more conditions to create and recreate the meaning of life.
Human existence is full of meanings, but it is necessary that it gets understood by the human feeling, thinking and acting. It is based on these possibilities that life can have a meaning, but it can also have none. As a meaning is indicated, it can assume a direction, that is, establish a geographical route (telos), as well as a reason to be (pathos), or characterize itself as a rational procedure (logos contribute to a humanitarian project and to a significant existential meaning. So, instead of pointing to a direction, the sense as a route (telos) is reflecting the person herself and her current existential condition. That is why meaning has been much more a mirror than a lens that could help humankind to visualize its own way better. Thus, in the current context, the human condition would be closer to the mass media screen than to the telos, that points to the utopia of a meaningful life, a life projected in a horizon of mysteries.
The second aspect of the existential meaning is the reason to be (pathos). To confirm this statement, it is advisable to resume Frankl's proposal, which says that "the human being is not someone in search for happiness, but rather someone searching for a reason to be happy" (Frankl, 2018, p. 162). Despite this proposition, it is noticeable in the current dynamic a search for happiness oriented much more by the purchase of goods and services than by a disposition to search for the accomplishment of the human essence as a reason to be happy.
And a third category for the understanding of meaning is oriented by the sapiential procedure, that is, the meaning understood as logos. Thus, logos is deeper than knowledge and information, that is why, according to Frankl (2018), the Greek logos is comprehended as existential meaning.
Therefore, the meaning of life through telos, pathos, and logos characterization, that is, the human condition inherent aspects, sets the meaning as part of the preoccupation and questioning, constantly explicit among the many cultural subjects and revealed in the distinct social spaces to answer the following challenge: Is it possible to contribute to the meaning of life?

III. THE DIALOG PROPOSITION
In the above-described context of meaning and awareness and in the dawn of a new millennium, humanity might be preparing itself for the era of the dialog. According to Swidler, after overcoming the period of logic and duality, modernity might be incubating the dialogic relation and the interactivity. The author states, for this reason, that "the age of monologue is coming to an end and the age of dialog is coming in" (Swidler, 1996, p. 69). Based on this statement, new positioning and choices should be exercised among humans.
With the objective of potentializing the dialogic context, different actions could be developed; however, the individual disposition to empathy, sympathy, and synchrony would be essential to create a favorable dynamic to trigger dialog, primarily from the manifestation of the dialogic subject. Subsequently, the respective dialogic subject would need to increase his energy to potentialize involvement with the other and the commitment towards community, as well as the development of a social project. Such dynamics would be essential to recreate a dialogal net.
The mentioned net would be fed by different relations because, according to Kast, "the human being was designed for relationships" (Kast, 2016, p. 90). Such proposition would be fundamentally implemented by language, through which hearing precedes talking, understanding comes before judging, and learning is followed by teaching.
Through this referring, dialog constitutes a spiral energy, according to which the subject gets constructed. Bound to this proposition, there is also the relational dynamics through which the others start to interact in historical terms. Subsequently, would come the cross-sectional dimension, which points to the horizon of mystery.
With the objective of retrieving the meaning of life, offering a new reason for human existence, the dialog would be proposed with the features of a route covered by three pathways. Dialog would be understood in an educative perspective because it is comprehended in relation to itself, to others, and to the transcendent. Thus, this three-dimensional dynamic is being proposed to confer life a meaning.

IV. DIALOG WITH ONESELF
All individuals are unique, integral, and autonomous. The individual in its totality is an autonomous unit. According to Jung (2012), the individuation is this relationship between interiority and exteriority; that is, the interior reveals itself in the subjective integration while the exterior is revealed in the objective relation, which can be with the other, with nature, or with the transcendent.
The dialog with oneself would need initially to recognize the importance of corporeality because, according to Sousa, "every human body needs to know itself, feel itself and know everything around it. It needs to know its relations" (Sousa, 2011, p. 62). Therefore, corporeality is the clearest expression of every human being, and all human subjectivity is expressed through it.
Besides, of a body, the human being is constituted by a soul. According to Thibaudier, "in the search for his soul, man has discovered news ways that lead to his interiority; his inner space becomes a new place of experience" (Thibaudier, 2014, p. 5). This procedure becomes a movement of personal and trans-personal encounter, as well as a relational dynamic of unity and completeness.
Coordinating body and soul, or binding interiority to Therefore, to establish a continuous dialog between body and soul can result in a significant process of existential meaning to oneself.

V. DIALOG WITH THE OTHER
Human beings, for being incomplete and unaccomplished, always need the other to carry on completing and accomplishing themselves. It is in relation to the other, that is, in the acceptance of alterity, that the individuality reveals itself, whether by means of meetings, language, and/or a common project. In this meeting of the I's sound with the other's echo, is that a dialogic relation, in its turn, could be established.
The relation with the other contributes, therefore, to the fundamental experience for each human, in the sense that those who are involved in a dialogic relation can seek together a reason to live. In this sense, Henrich suggests that "the relation of the I with the you, where each one is, with the same weight of life, a meaning source for the other can be assigned to a first maturity in life (Henrich, 2018, p. 117). In other words, it is in the relation with the other that the human being becomes ripe and fulfilled.
Such process does not deplete itself just in the relation between two subjects, but the involved subjects exercise their citizenship. This perception was already introduced by the Greek culture when a new, dialog-based way of thinking called attention. This dialog became then a way of constructing citizenship because every human being is born a citizen, with regard to the citizenship construction.
While responsible for himself, the human being is also accountable in relation to others. The accountability for the other is characterized as an ethic option. Therefore, the alterity principle first acknowledges the singularity and the diversity of the other, but at the same time, acknowledges the multiplicity of languages that might arise from the recognition and interaction with the other.

VI. DIALOG WITH THE TRANSCENDENT
An authentic relation with the other awakes the transcendence awareness as well because the divine manifests itself in humanity and prompts the human condition into welcoming and revealing divinity itself.
Thus, one of the most important strategies in contemporary reality is to strengthen the dialog with the transcendent.
According to Guitton, "the universe has an axis. Even better: a sense. This profound sense is found in its own interior, under the form of a transcendent cause" (Guitton, 1992, p. 48). Dialog can contribute, therefore, to the existential meaning as it awakes inside itself the relational energy that points to the transcendent.
The transcendental dynamic is inherent to the human condition, but only in the disposition to openness and cross-sectionality it is possible to exercise this transcendental dimension. That is, human beings only find meaning in their existential dimension as they project themselves outwards, whether to establish new bonds with others or new relations to nature.
The human beings' richest and most expressive experience is, therefore, those through which they accept to connect with the transcendent, identified here by divinity. In the perspective of this targeting, human beings meet the higher mystery, which is, in fact, God's mystery.
Therefore, considering the propositions about dialog, would it be possible that it could contribute to the meaning of life in the educational process?

VII. DIALOG AS A MEANING FOR EDUCATION
Aiming at understanding the importance of dialog in the educational process, which appears as one of the possible conditions to exercise the meaning of life, a field research was performed with lecturers that, according to our perception, manage in dialogical perspective to make of the exercise of teaching a pathway to the meaning of life.
So, a questionnaire was sent to six lecturers of the Brazilian Federal District public and private institutions, all of them working in the training of lecturers. The survey had three questions: Why is dialog an essential dynamic in the educational environment? How could dialog contribute to the teaching and learning processes? How could dialog cooperate with the meaning of life in the educational environment?
Considering also that these lecturers have philosophy in the basis of their academic background, their names were identified as philosophers to protect their identities and meet confidentiality standards. So Besides this attitude of proximity towards the other, dialog projects the human being towards the transcendent. This can be perceived in Plato's reflection, as he states that to be a human being it takes to listen to a radical other of mystery, which, however, for being the closest intimate to ourselves, ends up being the non-other, namely, the one we invoke by the name of God. Regardless of profession of faith, dialog encompasses a relation with oneself, with others, and with the transcendent, necessary aspects to characterize the education process related to dialog.
After understanding, with the lecturers' help, that dialog is a human condition inherent element and, therefore, an educational process intrinsic dynamic, the questioning shifted to establishing the dialog's input in the teaching and learning process. Such aspects were considered as determinants to upbringing, whether in the sense of personal development or of educational and professional background development. This process's defining element is, however, language. According to Plato, dialog may be the most intense mode of teaching and learning in human conviviality. According to him, it is through speaking to one another, listening one another, silencing towards one another, correspondence, the very same that prompts us to think and challenges us to know and love, namely, reality and life. Maybe the aspect that arises in this dynamic is that dialog does not exhaust but always reveals a certain intentionality. According to Simone de Beauvoir, using dialog in the classroom may contribute to make society more equitable, humanitarian, and egalitarian. In this sense, dialog practiced in the teaching and learning environment causes interlocutors to think and project an actual possibility so that this experience may be implemented under broader social circumstances.
In addition to dialog being a constitutional element of the subject and characterizing as a dynamic that is inherent to the teaching and learning process, it can cooperate with the meaning of life. This potentiality should be recovered, particularly due to the disillusion that can be perceived in young students, as well as by the discouragement of people who live in a meaningless world. For this reason, we asked lecturers about the possibility of dialog contributing towards the meaning of life in the educational process.

VIII. FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
Due to different factors, the first years of this new millennium are still revealing that humanity keeps on a pilgrimage between light and darkness. Despite numberless advancements, whether local or global, the shading of a disenchanted society, the disappointed cultural processes, and the misruled government systems are still prevailing. Such reasons, among many others, feed the need for recovering the possibility of an existential meaning.
The educational process could be proposed as a possibility to change this ever more subjugating reality for young people, keeping them submerged in boredom, anguish, and depression. That is why an educational project directed by dialog, here characterized as a singular and universal energy, encompassing a moment of inspiration, a process of reflection, and a meaning-provided life postulation project, is being proposed. That is why the future of humanity needs to go through the dialog among humans, their cultures, religious systems, scientific advancements, economic agendas, and ideological options. But it is particularly in the educational environment and in the teaching and learning processes that the dialog, as a dialogical procedure, needs to be present and to be exercised in a constructive, critical, and creative way.
Through the dialogic options diversity and regarding the numberless opportunities that dialog can reveal, the meaning of life could, according to Boff (2014), refer to the purpose of life, the reason to exist, or the existential values, aspects that require also the experience of the transcendent because God would be the meaning of meanings. The meaning of life assumes, therefore, a direction that conveys meeting its own soul, but encompasses possibilities of the other relations as well, including divinity.
At last, the poetic testimony of the lecturer here identified as Plato could be suggested for the conclusion of this work. For that to happen, in my view, it is necessary to educate not only for the mastery and conquest of the real, for the diurnal clarity of scientific and technical knowledge, but also and above all for the thinking that meditates the Meaning and that, in non-knowledge, in not having, finds the black pearl of Mystery, and manages to see in the darkness of this black pearl the most noble shine, the shine of the Night.