I really love this entry G, in part because I was privileged to have heard some of the evolution of these ideas and because you have shaped them into a stronger, more cogent argument for the value of the markers or signs of essential conversation. Although I was not previously, I am now sold on this idea of markers and eagerly look to an opportunity for you and I to intentionally add flags and/or footnotes to our next conversation. I think it will be tricky to accomplish, but worth the effort.
I also want to add another thought. I think conversations with the kind of intentionality you describe in Audience are especially challenging because they require both the motivation to be a better listener and also the repertoire to do so. Your fine musings have the potential to inspire the motivation needed to take on such a challenge and your markers add what may prove to be useful tools in some instances, but I am suspicious that once we commit ourselves to giving up needing “to be seen and heard in our own right,” many of us are still without the essential tools needed to listen and hear, such as summarizing and reflecting the ideas and feelings being expressed while saying nothing more than that. Even asking questions has the potential to lure us back into thinking of our own next incisive question (and thereby succumbing to the need to be heard in our own right) rather that listening fully to and hearing what is being said right now by the speaker. Then again, if listening (and hearing) were easy, everyone would be doing it. : - )
Wow, thank you for these engaging and thoughtful comments. Well, I'm privileged to have you hear my ideas twice and more than twice, and to have you appreciate the evolution with me.
You are right there are requirements beyond the motivation to be a good listener, skills involved that are difficult, maybe unique to this context. As you say, you have to be able to summarize and reflect ideas without mixing your own assumptions or interests into them, "polluting" them. That is a skill. It requires a temporary detachment from yourself that is unusual for us, and maybe not entirely possible, though certainly something you can be better of worse at.
About conversational markers, I agree: it is worth the effort, though it will be tricky to accomplish, and maybe even impossible. I mean, the relations between topics, ideas, the ties between them, are too immensely intricate and complex. We are bound to get tangled.
I will enjoy thinking on these points, and look forward to picking up these flags.
I feel you, and I tend to approach conversations - at least the more important ones that won't or can't occur as often as I'd like - "prepared", with a checklist of topics I want to discuss with the other. But sometimes I wonder if it's worth the ensuing loss of spontaneity. Who knows where would we have ended up without it? Most likely nowhere - but still...
My dialectical dream would be not annihilating the spontaneity of conversation but somehow being provided with sufficient tools for taking advantage of it, harvesting it, without loss. I see, however, the tension you are pointing at. Too much insistence on or preoccupation with "stately, ordered" conversation might come at the cost of the riches of spontaneity.
Luckily, from this perspective, the tools I sketch here are a long way from being practically sufficient for maintaining order in conversation. In my experience, in good conversation there is always much spontaneity and the conversation assumes an organic structure rather than an externally maintained one as I suggest here.
I really love this entry G, in part because I was privileged to have heard some of the evolution of these ideas and because you have shaped them into a stronger, more cogent argument for the value of the markers or signs of essential conversation. Although I was not previously, I am now sold on this idea of markers and eagerly look to an opportunity for you and I to intentionally add flags and/or footnotes to our next conversation. I think it will be tricky to accomplish, but worth the effort.
I also want to add another thought. I think conversations with the kind of intentionality you describe in Audience are especially challenging because they require both the motivation to be a better listener and also the repertoire to do so. Your fine musings have the potential to inspire the motivation needed to take on such a challenge and your markers add what may prove to be useful tools in some instances, but I am suspicious that once we commit ourselves to giving up needing “to be seen and heard in our own right,” many of us are still without the essential tools needed to listen and hear, such as summarizing and reflecting the ideas and feelings being expressed while saying nothing more than that. Even asking questions has the potential to lure us back into thinking of our own next incisive question (and thereby succumbing to the need to be heard in our own right) rather that listening fully to and hearing what is being said right now by the speaker. Then again, if listening (and hearing) were easy, everyone would be doing it. : - )
Wow, thank you for these engaging and thoughtful comments. Well, I'm privileged to have you hear my ideas twice and more than twice, and to have you appreciate the evolution with me.
You are right there are requirements beyond the motivation to be a good listener, skills involved that are difficult, maybe unique to this context. As you say, you have to be able to summarize and reflect ideas without mixing your own assumptions or interests into them, "polluting" them. That is a skill. It requires a temporary detachment from yourself that is unusual for us, and maybe not entirely possible, though certainly something you can be better of worse at.
About conversational markers, I agree: it is worth the effort, though it will be tricky to accomplish, and maybe even impossible. I mean, the relations between topics, ideas, the ties between them, are too immensely intricate and complex. We are bound to get tangled.
I will enjoy thinking on these points, and look forward to picking up these flags.
I feel you, and I tend to approach conversations - at least the more important ones that won't or can't occur as often as I'd like - "prepared", with a checklist of topics I want to discuss with the other. But sometimes I wonder if it's worth the ensuing loss of spontaneity. Who knows where would we have ended up without it? Most likely nowhere - but still...
My dialectical dream would be not annihilating the spontaneity of conversation but somehow being provided with sufficient tools for taking advantage of it, harvesting it, without loss. I see, however, the tension you are pointing at. Too much insistence on or preoccupation with "stately, ordered" conversation might come at the cost of the riches of spontaneity.
Luckily, from this perspective, the tools I sketch here are a long way from being practically sufficient for maintaining order in conversation. In my experience, in good conversation there is always much spontaneity and the conversation assumes an organic structure rather than an externally maintained one as I suggest here.
AKA free association. Stream of consciousness. Who was Joyce conversing with in Finnegan’s Wake?