I Miss Good Conversations, But I Probably Shouldn't

9/23/2021

Beyond members of my family, I rarely - if ever - have good conversations with people anymore. Though I spend the bulk of my working days speaking to people, I can't recall the last time anyone said anything remotely interesting to me. Granted, work is seldom a venue conducive to substantive discussions, but I must mention that I work at not one, but two universities in two different countries. You would think at least one of these places would house at least one individual capable of facilitating a riveting exchange of observations and ideas.

Don't misunderstand. I never expected to find intriguing conversationalists at our contemporary citadels of darkness, but I've noticed that even the small talk among over-educated academics barely rises above apathetic weariness. The innately loquacious among them - who are dwindling by the day - have resorted to regurgitation. Listening to them is akin to hearing a fatigued anchorperson monotonously drone through the previous evening's news headlines without saying a word about the news itself.

It doesn't get any better outside of work. My neighbors tend to stick to the weather or sporting events. The few friends I do have here limit themselves to complaining about work. Talking to the priest at the village church is like talking to one of the church walls.

I sometimes think the fault lies within me. In terms of conversation, perhaps I am attracting exactly what I deserve. Or, perhaps I am drawing precisely what I am projecting. Yet I cannot ignore the attempts I have made to elevate a conversation above the usual topics of sun and rain and taxes and bosses. Unfortunately, the individuals with whom I try to kindle engagement have no trouble ignoring my attempts. They douse the sparks immediately and ensure their tinder remains non-flammable.

I wonder if others are experiencing the same phenomenon.

Whatever the case, I have decided not to let it bother me anymore. If I can't find a good conversation beyond the boundaries of my family, it very likely means I need to be content with the good conversations I do have with my family. It also a forceful reminder that the conversations I seek might not exist in the external human world for the time being, but exist instead in good books, in the Gospels, in the Holy Spirit.

In Jesus Himself.

12 Comments

Max Overhead

9/24/2021 01:30:56

I think it is because we're all stuck on that planet-destroying ship from John Carpenter's Dark Star. I find it helpful to not volunteer, especially not anything above their wavelength, because it will have a discordant effect and won't accomplish what you want. To engage them in a real conversation, you would have to raise them consonantly and a little at a time. You might be able to have a conversation with them in the same way people once played chess by mail.
You also have a scorched earth attention span to contend with, made worse by the rise of video platforms with easy streaming and video games marching them all into VR, which promises to titillate them more than any conversation.
Conversation can return only to a place which is away from the current things of man. It won't come back wherever the smartphone is. Imagine trying to start a conversation on a topic, only to have the other person pull out the smartphone and begin looking up the topic. It isn't even degenerate conversation, it is something else that is much worse.
At a certain point all of the bars and restaurants began putting flat screen televisions everywhere, and blaring music. Not a subtle message.

Sean Fowler link

9/24/2021 02:35:28

I feel exactly the same Francis.
Solzhenitsyn knew what it was about. You’ll know this quote but it’s worth repeating.
“Our present system is unique in world history, because over and above its physical and economic constraints, it demands of us total surrender of our souls, continuous and active participation in the general, conscious lie. To this putrefaction of the soul, this spiritual enslavement, human beings who wish to be human cannot consent. When Caesar, having exacted what is Caesar's, demands still more insistently that we render him what is God's — that is a sacrifice we dare not make!”
On another occasion he said that after having lived in this system for a time, people stopped talking about anything at all. For fear of saying something dangerous. If you do that for long enough there is hardly anything left of you.
This is the world in Sweden that I inhabit. People talk about nothing if they talk at all.
This is why I feel that truth has to be spoken regardless of the traps that have been lain for us. It’s a terrible state of affairs. I remember a time when we could broach more or less any subject, within and occasionally beyond the boundaries of decency.
I find myself, in such circumstances being antagonistic. Just to get people going. Pushing boundaries. Refusing to be cowed. But it’s generally pointless I’ve had to concede.
Having said that, one can be surprised how some people will open up and drop their defenses if you can get them alone or in a small group. They are often relieved to find themselves in company where they can speak freely.
Intuition is the key to finding such souls. It’s like Winston and Julia from 1984. She saw something in him.
Keep looking.

Dynamic

9/24/2021 05:56:32

Perhaps part of the problem is that having good conversations spontaneously with acquaintances is a skill that requires constant practice, and, starting in March 2020 for some reason, people have not been getting the opportunities to practice that skill...

Makes one wonder what else we'll suddenly discover has gone missing in our society.

Francis Berger

9/24/2021 08:18:54

@ Dynamic - Destroying human relationships and communities is unarguably an objective of the 2020 birdemic coup. The "art" of conversation has certainly been decimated over the past 18 months, but the seeds of this destruction further back and much deeper. As commenter Max mentions above, technology certainly has played a role, as has the non-stop manipulations via politics, education, and the media, but I sense there is something else at play as well.

People are becoming increasingly objectified and are increasingly objectifying. I believe this has spiritual implications connected with consciousness. People have become so alienated from other people, the world, God, and themselves that they perceive the world purely as a place of things.

Deep, meaningful conversation needs spirit - the understanding that the person with whom you are speaking is more than just flesh and bone. Real conversation is a kind "communion" between beings that recognize each other as inherently spiritual beings. That is becoming increasingly rare these days.

In my more optimistic moments I consider the possibility that consciousness is recoiling for the time being in order to rediscover the divine self. When it does rediscover the divine, conversation will flourish again. On the flip side, consciousness may collapse upon itself and become fatally despiritualized. If that happens - and for some individuals it may already have happened - then deep, meaningful, engaging conversation will become practically impossible.

bruce charlton

9/24/2021 09:35:56

Real conversation has always been rare (and prized) in my life, even though I used to seek it very actively when young (travelling many hundreds of miles to meet up with friends with whom I could really talk).

Now, it is indeed restricted to the family - plus the rareish phone or email conversations with those who are on the same/ similar wavelength.

There were only two or three briefish periods in my life (in universities - more than 30 years) when I had good conversations with a wider range of people at a higher frequency. It was clearly a labile situation.

As of now (and since around the millennium) I can't think of anyone employed in a UK university with whom I would be especially keen to converse, face to face. Among the few that there were, almost all have crossed to the dark side.

I did go to some lengths a few years ago to meet and talk with Jeremy Naydler for a few hours, and that was worthwhile in helping understand his work. And I have long conversations by phone with Michael Woodley a couple of times a year, which provide food for thought.

The basic problem is that I do not want to have a deep conversation with anyone who (whether they know it or not) is on the dark side - in the first place it would not be of interest (except maybe as yet-another negative example); in the second place it would be a one-sided 'conversation' (i.e. not a conversation) - me trying to speak honestly and deeply, them self-justifying and manipulating.

Heather Shaler

9/24/2021 15:48:53

I feel like we're living through The Great Divorce, where they're discussing whether a certain woman is just a grumbler, or if she has turned into a Grumble. I mean that in so many conversations I've had in the last 18 months, the person is so manifestly identified with their favorite petty sin that you can't tell where the sin ends and the person begins, anymore.

For example, I have a relative who was always a bit of a braggart about status, but in my last conversation with her, she brought up the fact that her daughter's boyfriend's brother is a doctor, at least six times. What an exhausting and boring conversation! Another relative can only talk about her resentments regarding mother's will, and hangs up if I try to steer the conversation away from that. And obviously a great many people are intensely fearful right now. Church-goers are some of the most annoying people, lecturing the rest of us about how "this is what loving your neighbor looks like."

I'm getting to the point where I'd rather not talk to most people at all, because I hate to encourage people in their favorite petty sins. It feels like actively helping them strip away their own humanity. Better to say nothing at all.

lea

9/25/2021 05:28:30

I have been sleepwalking through life, lots of bud and drinking, and more importantly lots and lots of amusement. I think we should all ingest whatever we want within limits but when it leads to a process of atrophying the soul, that's the limit right there. At the risk of sounding like a meme, once you see the dark, you can turn away and act like its not real, you can wish for a fantasy movie akin safe space, but it always comes back into focus at some point. Someone pointed out recently that amusement is the de-activated version of the muse; to be inspired, moved, what else you may. The inner flame doused, corralled, or steered. Good conversations is slightly subjective perhaps, but they are rare because people are scared of them for some reason, more so than that they are incapable of having them.
The materialist reductionist philosophy underpinning so many parts of science now is the main culprit, and this is not by accident. This leads to immense cognitive dissonance; the premises of 'a good life' believed in can not be meddled with, possibility of shame, acceptance by the tribe, and feelings of safety overrule everything else in decision making. Alot of non-tarnished occult traditions speak of these issues as well, and essentially point at the same thing; declaring humans the kings of the universe and technology the way they shall rule it has possibly been the most destructive thought in history.

Todd

9/28/2021 23:26:46

Francis,
It is indeed extremely difficult these days. Nothing ensures the death of a conversation with the great majority of people than telling your interlocutor what you really think about something of import (say, the jab for example).

I don't even have family members with whom to have good conversations. I do have a member of the community who is a truther type and Christian, and a few indepedent pastors. That's it.

I've recently discovered an acquaintance online, and we've had a few phone consersations. I hope this relationship continues and grows, as it has potential.

Main point: telling 99/100 people what you really think causes a collapse of the conversation, as they glitch out or become fearful or probably just think you are nuts.

NLR

10/3/2021 04:53:48

I think you bring up something important with conversations, since they are something of a barometer of public society.

In that regard I believe we're in something of a double bind.

At some point a sufficiently large number of people started believing that society should only focus on the most material aspects of our lives and that anything else was merely a private hobby.

But then society changed so that it *became* only about material, "objective" aspects of people's lives. And so not only are people psychologically used to such conversation, but those aspects of life now objectively form the fabric of our public lives.

You make a good point in speaking about good conversations within the family. At this point, the family is the core of real social life and if there are to be good conversations again, I believe they will arise via the family in some way.

10/3/2021 17:38:43

@ NLR - We all experience some form of servile dependence upon society, which can be a stifling, crushing force. At the same time, we need society/community. We are spiritual beings, but a great deal of our spirituality in this world depends on social interactions - the sharing and transferring of knowledge, especially via conversations.

Really excellent conversations happen at the spiritual level - between two spiritual beings who recognize each other as spiritual beings. This does not entail that the topic of conversation needs to be spiritual in nature. The "spiritual" connection between two or more people involved is enough.

I would guess this is why good conversation is limited to family and a few trusted friends in this time and place.

I got to thinking about all of this as I thought about the severe anti-social, community, and communication-destroying aspects of everything that has transpired in the past two years. Yes, the seeds were sown decades ago, but they really only sprouted recently.

10/7/2021 14:05:26

Having been 'out of the loop' to a large extent for the last 10 years or so it has been shocking to see what poses for 'communication' these days. I had concerns about the thumbs up/ down phenomenon for a while but never would have guessed that simplified binary thinking and extremely short attention spans could set in on large parts of humanity like this. So perhaps the reduction of human contact into digital form itself has been a mechanism of despiritualization. The same sort of conclusion seems to be coming out of various non-christian spiritual traditions; people have unwittingly been suckered into the neo-darwinian set of promises for the future where 'we will fix nature' and make things better, without understanding how they really worked in the first place. But 'science' is now the answer for everything. And science means a materialistic reductionist view of everything now; this part of the brain, or that DNA strand we need to follow up on for its biochemical pathway, will surely explain it all. Isolate this chemical from a plant and then coat/ deliver it such and such way, its all segregation instead of holistic thinking. I agree with you that a connection does not have to tie into a(ny) topic specifically. When its there its palpable and wholesome, but when its not i have to resist just 'shutting off'. Everyone reading this experienced this during random bar conversations or whatever similar; 'Me, I, Me, Work, Career, Politics, What do you think of this public figure?' rinse and repeat.

Im ranting, why did it sprout recently? (i would argue there never was an old normal but alas), not sure. I remember the internet as a wild and fun place with stuff to discover on every corner, and not taking alot of advantage from that unfortunately but hey, the tube was pretty good, googol delivered results from 5-10 word queries that made sense, websites were not frontloaded with crap everywhere and the idea of a war between crawling bots vs defenses against seemed weird. All of it had promise, and potential to change things for the better and then things started to slip and slide; in concordance with data collection from FB and such leading to actionable stuff perhaps? It's an undeniable aspect of mass psychology, something studied by the forces behind all of this nonsense for ages, but never before with so much data at hand.

I think the last ten-ish years have signified the optimalization of psychological control mechanisms on various levels that would take me too long to describe accurately here, and its where humanity did not recognize the double-edged character of the internet itself. Having so much more connection potential (even if diminished by the medium) never ended up leading to more actual communication, and that was by (partial) design. Now i feel like i should delete all of this and come back to basics; despiritualization is the key, as long as we interpret the opposite of that as a creative force that does so many good things. Food from a lab, everything 'synthesized'. No notion of life force or energy. The club wants people that accept the idea that we can 'usurp' nature and then make it better. And it all comes from the idea that life is just a big machine with us as small rudders inside it until we break down. I think there is cognitive dissonance there within literally everyone that has seriously examined the idea, but somehow being wrong/ ashamed/ not part of the tribe is such a strong emotional trigger that barely anyone speaks out, and therefore we move on within the machine.

10/7/2021 17:39:59

@ lea - Great comment!

You've essentially summed up a great deal of what could be termed "objectification", which is a severe form of despiritualization. As you note, technology - particularly computers - have played a significant role in this process.

So much of what is happening today is completely unprecedented. Humanity is in uncharted territory. At the risk of being overly pessimistic, I sense many are heading toward a literal spiritual dead end and will not find their way out of this.

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