"If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of doubts of my own."
-- Goethe
I've
never been a fan of small-talk. I appreciate that you need a personal
context for conversation -- I've tried to have meaningful conversations
(via IM or voice-to-voice) with people who have commented on my weblog
posts, and face-to-face with people I've just met, but it's hard.
As
soon as I have that context, however -- a subject of shared passion, an
understanding of why the person I'm conversing with cares about that
subject, and an appreciation of how they communicate (not how well, just how:
we all converse differently and you need to chat long enough to pick up
a sense of their conversational style) -- as soon as I have that, I'm
ready to waltz them outside the rest of the crowd and engage one-to-one
(or occasionally in small groups) in deep, intense, serious conversation.
In such situations I try to adhere to my ten steps to effective conversations.
But often I get so carried away that these conversations tend to go off
on wild tangents, exploring a wide terrain in search of especially
fertile common ground.
What surprises me, though, is the large
number of people who have no interest in 'serious' conversation. This
crowd includes many intelligent, creative and informed people and at
first I thought it was just me -- surely such people with imaginative
ideas, important knowledge and powerful insights would want to share
them with someone. But I've
come to believe that the large universe of conversationalists (people
who love to talk) and the smaller universe of people with something
considered and important to say, are two different (and only partially
overlapping) groups. To make things worse, even when I manage to find
meaningful conversations, the majority of them are theoretical, not
actionable, and accordingly, while stimulating, not terribly
interesting to me. I am learning to pay better attention, but my
attention span is still childishly short.
As I mentioned in Pilgrimage Part Two,
I've always found it challenging to discover people who care to talk
about things I think are important. In every country I've visited, in
every community in which I've lived or spent time (in Second Life, and
elesewhere online, as well as in real life) most people seem content to
talk about immediate and superficial things -- gossip, recent news,
sports, weather, entertainment, work, what to eat for their next meal
etc. So few people seem to care about what it all means, why we're
here, where we've come from, where we're going, or what we can or
should do about it.
I am tempted to chalk this all up to what I
see, globally, as three endemic human malaises: (a) imaginative
poverty, (b) lack of intellectual curiosity, and (c) anomie:
- Those
who lack imagination can't conceive of the world being better or
different from what it is, so why would they be concerned about
changing it?
- Those who lack intellectual curiosity simply can't
care about what's happening outside their immediate situation in space
and time.
- Those who can't or won't empathize with others'
situation and who think the world is fucked anyway no matter what, will
only ever care about finding what pleasure they can, now, no matter
what the later consequences.
Perhaps it's not surprising,
then, that places and opportunities for meaningful conversation are so
rare -- parts of the blogosphere, book clubs, and some universities --
and places and opportunities for meaningful, actionable conversation even rarer.
That's
why I'm so obsessed, these days, with finding more powerful,
interactive ways to communicate with you, dear online friends, than
through the comments thread or e-mail. So if you're fed up with my lack
of response to these clumsy communications media, then IM me (via
GMail/GTalk), schedule a voice-to-voice conversation (GTalk Call, or
Skype), or meet me in Second Life, and let's talk.
A friend of mine recently offered me these great 'lead-ins' to meaningful conversation:
- Tell the other person something you're passionate about, and why. Tell them passionately.
- Tell them something they should know that they don't, preferably as a story, and make it clear why it's important.
- Tell them about a possibility you've imagined. A real possibility, not just an ideal, a wish or a dream.
- Tell them a different way of thinking about something, one that sheds new light on what it means.
- Don't argue. Just don't.
- In all of the above, make sure what you tell is actionable. But don't tell them what to do.
- And above all, keep it short, clear, and simple or entertaining. A conversation is a mutual gift.
Works for me.
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
