The student revolution of 1968 in Paris was, by all accounts, an incredible moment. One of the things about it that participants remember most were the conversations. They had the feeling that everyone could talk to everyone else. Old hierarchies were broken down. Students talked to professors on the streets. Neighbours talked freely with one another. One activist said, ‘It was fantastic. May was like that, like living on a constant high. Life was beautiful, the weather was lovely … everything we did immediately belonged to History. All the hierarchies had suddenly dissolved.’ Another said, ‘in that month of talking you learnt more than in the whole of your five years studying. Learnt because you could talk to anyone and everyone. It really was another world – a dream world perhaps – but that’s what I’ll always remember: the need and the right for everyone to speak.’ Another witness reported 'a gigantic lid being lifted, pent-up thoughts and aspirations suddenly exploding, on being released from the realm of dreams into the realm of the Real and Possible. In changing their environment people themselves were changed. Those who had never dared say anything before suddenly felt their thoughts to be the most important thing in the world and said so. The helpless and isolated suddenly discovered that collective power lay in their hands. People just went up and talked to one another without a trace of self-consciousness.' This makes me think of Peter Block's book [[Reference Notes/Community]], in which he gives conversation the central role in transforming community and creating the container for belonging to occur. --- Source: [[From What Is to What If]]