Wherever I am between you I am with you.

– Jordan Peterson

conversation is tinder for the flame of epiphanies.

– David Perell

Notes

• Good conversations have lots of doorknobs meaning they always offer affordance
  • Talking to another person is like rock climbing, except you are my rock wall and I am yours. If you reach up, I can grab onto your hand, and we can both hoist ourselves skyward. Maybe that’s why a really good conversation feels a little bit like floating.
• darren-allen on conversations from his book self-unself
  1. conversations with personalities can feel like interrogations. They begin with a sense of, ‘oh, this might go somewhere interesting’, but it’s just question after question after question, nothing developed or ever really shared, while, the whole time, you get the feeling that your answers aren’t really being listened to, as the interrogator is just thinking of the next question to ask. Some conversations feel like talking with a sophisticated computer; all language, no meaning, everything taken at face value, no shared under-truth, and so no way to play with its form, all gestures beyond the literal meaning of what we are talking about—metaphor, comedy, implication, irony—hitting a wall. In fact, talking with the literal ego is far worse than talking to a wall; at least things bounce back from walls. Still other conversations feel more like listening to a daytime radio soap opera that you can’t escape from. Conversations with such people, like sex with them, become enhanced masturbation, like giving yourself a dead arm so you can use it to pretend someone else is feeling you up. Egos do little more than share likes and dislikes, fears and desires, memories, facts and theories. They learn that they cannot speak unless they allow others to speak, so they patiently wait until you are done, offering the requisite number of head-nods and uh-huhs—possibly a functional question or comment—before cutting through you and launching into a self-gratifying monologue which you are expected to endure in the same manner.
  2. Conscious selves care about those who are listening to them. They continually check, directly and indirectly, to see if you find the conversation interesting. Not just once or twice, but over and over again, always adapting. Egos do not. They either indiscriminately pour words over their listeners, without caring what’s going on inside them, or they passively withdraw from the interaction, having learnt that this is what conversation entails, being an audience member for second-rate tribute acts.
  3. Ego is socially inept, and inapt. It has no social graces, it doesn’t know what to say, or what to do, or how to hold itself, and either relies on a laughably fake series of conversational routines or it hides behind its shyness, its fame or its classic bone structure. There is, in the egoic group interaction, no passive awareness of non-participants, no stopping the train of information or anecdote to welcome a new passenger, no checking to see who is not participating in a conversation and whether the topic should be changed so that they can, no social sensitivity whatsoever. Or there is, if the group is made up of hyper-sensitive masochistic selves, no-one willing to take charge, change the channel of communication entirely or flat out entertain us.
  4. Ego cannot concentrate. Fuelled by restless emotion it skids over the surface of language, looking for anything it can get, or anything which might threaten it, both of which stick out from the flow of speech (or text) like flashing signposts saying ‘one way only!’ ‘sale now on!’ ‘click here!’ Any idea in a conversation which points off piste, into the unknown, and any meaning which requires time and patience to reach, are invisible to ego, as are the tonal shifts, play of expression and, above all, silences that breathe through meaningful exchange as air passes through a room, making it habitable. For ego all is solid and graspable, yet, founded on the ever shifting sand of emotion, uncertain, confusing and forever on the edge of collapse. Talking with extremely emotional people is like trying to swat a fly in a thunderstorm; in order to get across an idea it needs to be brief, self-contained, emphatic and shoved into their minds while the light is on, because it’s not on for long.
  5. Conscious conversation is conducted in an atmosphere of contextual awareness, sensitive to where the river of meaning is taking us, guiding it here and there, sometimes even damning it or driving it over a cliff, but essentially egoless, allowing the natural flow to take us somewhere else. Egoic conversation is more like a plane trip; strap yourself into an antiseptic tank for an hour or two before landing somewhere identical to the place you left.
  6. Conscious conversation is like a game of tennis between two pros; a range of powerful baseline strokes, delicate drop-shots, lobs, volleys and smashes. Egoic conversation is more like two people firing cannons at each other.
  7. There is the curious sense, when talking to a personality, that you are not really talking to a human being at all, but to a projection, as if the words and gestures and facial expressions are being operated by a homunculus sitting in the control room of the mind. Smile now, pull the ‘amazed’ lever, press the ‘worked-up and indignant’ button… until its attention wanders and it turns on the autopilot so it can go off into the television room, leaving a face before you working away by itself, but with nobody at the controls. This is registered first of all as appearance or expression, and then, over time, as the armoured facial features of the personality armour. We call this physiognomy. The default state of ego is a bored, tense, aggressive or dead expression; the resting hate-face of the armoured woman, the empty-eyed lassitude of the distracted man. These are permitted with underlings, who can stare straight into the void, but strong feelings, being selfish, are suppressed in the presence of power or in the company of those from whom ego stands to get something. In their place the face broadcasts a crude series of flag-waving approval-signals; ‘oh wo-ow! really!?’ and ‘uh-huh-uh-huh, so fascinating’ and ‘oh my God that’s hilarious!’ Not so much participating in a conversation as twiddling whatever knobs are most likely to win a jackpot. After a lifetime of this kind of conversation, the face resembles a sack of potatoes with a clown’s face painted on it.
• Conversation of 3 instead of 2 to have a center
• Conversation with jordan-hall on the costs/importance of projection conversations that host difficult topic
  • projections as gatekeeping
  • its about responsiblity of upholding projections that might work (in the individtual or collective) as good gatekeeping

pattern-language design-principle of a good conversation

from 3 key principles for great conversation | Emily Chamlee-Wright

• epistemic-humility
  • we need filling in knowledge gaps
• critical thinking
  • ability and eagerness to identify/spot gaps in logic or evidence based argumentation
• sympathetic listening

See

• conversation-modalities

Links

• https://expressiveegg.org/2021/04/22/personality-and-character/
• https://thestoa.substack.com/p/three-types-of-debates-we-need-now
• https://systems-souls-society.com/praxis/antidebate/
  • Is War Natural? (and other questions). An illustration of the experimental Antidebate methodology.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeneutics_of_suspicion
• How your newsroom can use Bluesky this election season