When was the last time you had a good conversation? The monologue you delivered to your mother about how unfair your ex-husband’s treatment of you was does not count, just as her upbraiding you for not following a stricter parenting course with your children. Your best friend used to be a great conversation partner, only she has two children, a demanding job, and a new boyfriend.
Sometimes you manage to have really good conversations with your children. Those are the best, but they are rare, because there is very little time. Somehow the pace of life has become staggering. Both children and parents have so much on “the agenda” that there are not enough hours in the day to fulfill the most pressing engagements and obligations, let alone have time to sit down and talk about things. Children love to talk. They long for a conversation. But the art of conversation has to be taught. How can we teach the art of conversation if we ourselves forgot how to practice it? The literature is full of satirical portrayals of ladies and gentlemen idling away time talking nonsense and gossip over tea or wine. By focusing on these, however, we forget to take into account how many intelligent conversations must have taken place between people. Their regulated routines included time for that. Intelligent, well-honed conversation is vital for exercising our intellectual abilities. Where does one learn? At parties, for example, where conversation is required. It would be interesting to find out what percentage of the population still throws house parties. In the developed world, leisure is mostly spent being physically active or engaged in virtual social networking. A conversation cannot flourish via Facebook or Twitter. If anything, the level of discourse tends to get lower and lower, discouraging many from participating. And then there is the lack of physical reality and accountability for what one says - main factors in a conversation. When people do face one another at a party, another problem is common: the growing inability to accept a difference in opinion. For all the celebrated experience in diversity, there is a surprisingly low level of tolerance for the dissenters from the main “party line” - views borrowed from a relatively small group of opinion makers. The latter dedicate their professional lives to creating and promoting the “narrative”, a storyline for educated people who do not make time for serious reflection on current topics, to use in social settings. Outside the Western world, conversation still lives, since large swathes of the population have no incentive to submit themselves to grueling schedules. Once they catch up, the same scarcity of real conversation will probably occur. Conversation requires investment of time and resources. If regarded as luxury, it becomes meaningless. Free thinking is inconceivable without good conversation. Totalitarian regimes spy on people’s conversations and punish the participants because they feel threatened by it. Tyrants are afraid of conversations. That alone should inspire us to keep it up.
This post is an entry in the blog contest responding to the new book, New Threats to Freedom edited by Adam Bellow. The contest is open to all and further information can be found here.
