tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21999805.post8393545150170906436..comments2024-03-27T06:25:29.002-05:00Comments on Anecdotal Evidence: `To Fill a Great Barrel of Silence'Patrick Kurphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08436175583386298032noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21999805.post-73387674040253260252011-11-18T21:08:17.166-06:002011-11-18T21:08:17.166-06:00Recently I've been reading volume I of Trollop...Recently I've been reading volume I of Trollope's <i>North America</i>. What he says of the Midwest of 1862 suggests to me that democracy does not, of itself, produce babbling:<br /><br />"A western American man is not a talking man. He will sit for hours over a stove with a cigar in his mouth, and his hat over his eyes, chewing the end of reflection. A dozen will sit together in the same way, and ther shall not be a dozen words spoken between them in an hour."<br /><br />Talk shows strike me as a special case of the Curse of Bandwidth. Every channel of communication that an engineer can devise, an entrepreneur will fill, with little concern for the material.Georgehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21999805.post-52652651731047937492011-11-18T13:19:54.971-06:002011-11-18T13:19:54.971-06:00Your account of contemporary conversation baffles ...Your account of contemporary conversation baffles me, for I’m literally surrounded by sparkling conversationalists. It’s just expected in my part of the world to be able to combat wit with wit, cross-reference with cross-reference, to pull sublimity out of the most parochial of complaints. It’s hard to recall, since conversations are like dreams, but just in the past 24 hours I’ve had conversations about the meaning of Native American spiritual totems on the Oklahoma flag; the fragmentation of civilization into passionate, discrete camps that know nothing of each other; how all the world’s record companies came to be owned by one frustrated songwriter; whether Jack London was the most rooked writer of the 20th century; the philosophical debate about whether movies (like J Edgar) that put one to sleep may actually be more beneficial (for the sleep) than movies (like the Rum Diaries) that are goosed to the gills but don’t have air in their tires – all of it randomly generated from such inauspicious beginnings as disagreeable people, football games, UPS guidelines and TV programs. Good conversation, like a good jam session, can open up, effortlessly, whole new ways of looking at or articulating things. More importantly, it requires listening, feeling, giving, putting oneself in another’s shoes – qualities people increasingly value as technology makes the propagation of ideas ever easier and ever colder. Talk –about anything – rekindles the human heart.WAShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10403669322174979974noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21999805.post-29063809601966639632011-11-18T11:15:00.322-06:002011-11-18T11:15:00.322-06:00One of the reasons we find so few persons rational...One of the reasons we find so few persons rational and agreeable in <br />conversation is that there is hardly a person who does not think more of what he wants to say than of his answer to what is said. The most clever and polite are content with only seeming attentive while we perceive in their mind and eyes that at the very time they are wandering from what is said and desire to return to what they want to say. Instead of considering that the worst way to persuade or please others is to try thus strongly to please ourselves, and that to listen well and to answer well are some of the greatest charms we can have in conversation. <br /> ~ Duc de La Rochefoucauld 1613-1680, Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims no.139 (1687)The Sanity Inspectorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04808433661634318393noreply@blogger.com