https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=7fRk_g2DS30
Hello and welcome to Navigating Patterns. What I’d like to discuss in this video is the idea of conversation. A lot of people, as I probably mentioned before in previous videos, are giving a lot of credit to conversation or a lot of blame to bad conversation for, we’ll say, the problems that we find ourselves in in the world today. But I think this is bad framing. I think we’re misusing the term conversation and equivocating quite a bit. So what I’d like to do is go over what I think conversation is and how I think it works or might work. And because we’re going to be exploring sort of a well-known word and using my definitions, obviously, as always, you can feel free to use my definitions. That would be great. I think they’re awesome. That’s why I use them. Or you can throw them out because who the hell is this smart guy anyway? Screw his definitions. But perhaps instead of throwing them out, consider adapting them so that they meet your needs. So it occurs to me that when most people say conversation, they don’t know what they’re talking about even a little bit. What we’re typically on about with conversation is as a solution to something or pointing to it as a problem, like, well, we don’t know what we’re talking about. But we’re really not defining what a conversation is, much less what a good conversation is. And sometimes people define what a good conversation is, but they don’t define what a conversation is. This is a common trick, by the way. A lot of people do things like this, and there’s a lot of problems with the way we conceive a conversation. So I think we’re going to have to look at this in a different way. And there’s a lot of problems with the way we conceive of conversation and why we might think that it’ll solve some problem that maybe it can’t solve. So when a lot of people are using conversation, the reason why they’re using it, as I mentioned before, is because they want to solve a problem with objective material reality using that tool. And they think, if we can just converse, I can get you to understand that I have a truth that you’ll realize, and then you’ll agree with me. That’s why people invoke conversation a lot. It’s not the only reason, and not everybody does this, but most of the people who are insistent on conversation as a solution, they think they have the truth, and once you see it through good conversation, which usually means not disagreeing with their ridiculous axioms, then you’ll be on board with them. Which is why wouldn’t you agree on objective material reality? Which doesn’t exist, by the way. Or even if it does, according to Einstein’s theory of relativity, not terribly useful. I’ll go over that in another video for sure. There’s different types of conversation. We use conversation quite a number of ways. One of the most common types of conversation, believe it or not, is something like testing. It’s this way of determining, even though I don’t care for the term tribal, it’s a way of determining tribal affiliation. Now, tribal affiliation is a little tricky, and I’ll go over that in a video for sure too, tribalism. But effectively, people will explore a group, maybe online, maybe on the Discord channel, and this happens on our Discord channel all the time. They’ll come in and start asking questions. And you may say, aha, they’re asking questions. They want to converse. No. They have no interest in answering questions. They only want answers to their questions. Very interesting behavior. They’re testing. That’s what they’re doing. Trying to find out, are these people people that I need to worry about? Are they going to come after me? Or are they people that are like part of my group? Do they agree that the lizard people actually run the country because then they’re my people and I can hang out with them? Or are they lunatics I can ignore? I mean, there’s lunatics you can’t ignore, but there’s lots, most people you can ignore. Like our normal state is to ignore all the other people. There’s seven billion people or something on the planet, something like that. It doesn’t really matter. There’s way more people than you can engage with on the planet. What are you doing with most of them? Ignoring them. That’s what you’re doing. And you should. You can’t pay attention to everybody. You should pay attention to a lot of people, not relatively speaking. And maybe you shouldn’t be paying attention to your relatives either, speaking of relatives. So that’s one type, this testing, it’s one type of conversation people are in. I mean, they’re conversing. They’re just, it’s not reciprocal, right? They just want lots of answers. And they’re asking lots of questions and they’re probably not answering very many, if any at all. That’s one type of conversation. There’s another type of conversation that’s fairly popular called debate. And, you know, I mean, I don’t like the formal debates. I think they’re foolish because they’re arbitrary rules and they’re incorrect rules, by the way. But yeah, I probably won’t do a video on that. It’s a waste of time. But debate style conversation goes something like this. I have a point. I want to make my point. And I want to win. John and Jordan Peterson, John Brevecki and Jordan Peterson talked about Philea and Ikea, right? The love of victory, right? So you’re having a conversation to be victorious. Yes, that’s a type of conversation. I would classify all conversations of that type rather than using crazy Greek words as debate. In a debate, you’re trying to win something. And look, a lot of people enter debates in very good faith and they’re testing their ideas. And they want to see if their ideas win. Yeah, fair enough. I have no problem with debate style conversation. Anybody who’s heard me talk knows I love to debate. I love to win. I also like to lose because then I’m learning something. If I win, it’s like, eh, it cares. It sucks. I don’t learn a damn thing. I like to debate with people who are smarter than me, which is actually a lot of people. Thankfully, I learn so much from them. There’s nothing wrong with that style of conversation. And any time you make a truth claim, any time you say something, you’re going to be stuck in finally in Ikea. You don’t have a choice. If you’re debating, you’re either right or wrong about something. If you make an axiomatic statement, you’re making a truth claim. You’re starting from some truth. Maybe you’re not making an absolute truth claim. Maybe you’re not stating the truth of the universe. You’re stating if we proceed as if, fair enough, but maybe you’re not framing it that way and somebody objects. That’s a debate, right? And I’m not saying that you debate is the only style or anything like that. When you have a truth claim or when you’re making a claim upon which you’re basing other things, other conclusions, that is a debate style of conversation. If the conversation may not stay in debate mode for very long, but it doesn’t matter. It matters that that’s a style of conversation. There’s another style of conversation in dialogue where there’s a back and forth. And this is driven mostly by the desire to just communicate with people, to put forth ideas or go into spaces. And dialogue is one type of conversation that is closely related to exploratory conversation. Exploratory conversation is when you’re just throwing ideas out to see what sticks. And that’s even more, in my opinion, free flowing than dialogue. You don’t have any particular agenda. You’re just sort of curiously trying to explore the other person’s mind or your own ideas or their ideas, find out what they are. And these are both dialogue and exploratory, are both sort of related to this more connection oriented conversation, which is the most common type of conversation, to be honest. Most people are looking for connection. And connection is somewhat related to this tribal, this testing, explorer, this testing type of conversation. In that, it’s the opposite. You’re specifically trying to find ways to fit in with the person you’re talking to or the people you’re trying to talk with. And testing is more trying to figure out where you fit, whereas connection is trying to figure out how to fit in. So those are fundamentally different, even though they’re related. And there is an element of exploratory in there. But the goal is different. And see, that’s the difference in conversation. If my goal in the conversation is different from your goal in the conversation, maybe that’s OK. But most likely, the conversation is not going to go well from one perspective or the other or maybe both perspectives. Maybe it will. Maybe it will be fine. I’m not saying there’s some magical system. I don’t believe in magical bullet systems that solve these problems. These are very complex things. And hopefully, what I’m showing you is how complex these things are. We throw out words like, oh, conversation. Oh, yeah, I know what that is. You know what that is. We all know what that is. It’s subjectively, materially the same thing to everybody. Right? It’s real. So conversations are real. Of course they are. People have conversations. They must be real. And if they’re real, they must be the same to everybody because we all see conversation. But they’re not the same. We have no idea what we’re talking about when we use that word. No idea. And so you can see how difficult this is, how complex conversation is. It’s not complicated. It’s complex. Right? And that’s important. It’s important to know what makes it good and what makes it bad. And aim, directionality. Which direction are you going in? What’s your purpose in talking? If you don’t have the same aim for the conversation, like I said, it might not go well. It’s probably not going to go well. It’s also important where we start. And it’s important what the goal is and if we can agree on the goal. And it helps to do that up front. Usually we don’t do it explicitly, by the way. We do it implicitly. You know, we do it through naming rooms online, clubhouse, for example. We do it by environment. If you’re at a party, you’re there making connections. You’re not there testing for tribalism, usually. Some people are. But generally, no. So the setting has a lot to do with what conversation you’re going to have. And some people get fooled. Oh, well, if we set the conversation up, right, we’ll have good conversations. Well, setting is often a filter. Right? I’m not a big party person. I don’t like crowds. I don’t like people. And especially I don’t like crowds of people that I don’t know. So I’m not good at connection sort of conversations at all. And I won’t go to parties, generally speaking. Not ever. I mean, I’ve been to plenty of parties in my day and enjoyed most of them. Deeply uncomfortable, deeply draining for me because I’m an introvert. But, you know, I’ll go. But generally, it’s a filter. Like, if there’s a lot of people, even on clubhouse, there’s a lot of people in the room, maybe I don’t go. Why? Because the more people, the more dumb. Just on average. And it takes very little dumb to ruin all the not dumb. So asymmetry there. Those conversations don’t tend to go well. In general, there are clear exceptions, obviously. But there are exceptions. And it’s important that you don’t think the exception is the rule, especially with conversation. And that’s why understanding that there are different conversations and then it’s a very complex set of equations is important. Because it’s not going to solve your problems. It’s not going to solve our problems. It’s not going to solve any problem unless we can agree on what we’re talking about and how we’re discussing it. And again, it doesn’t have to be explicit, although maybe that helps. But explicitness can also be a filter and it can give you very bad results. Because if you start having filters for your conversations and then you start having conversations, you might get this idea that, oh, well, look at all these wonderful conversations I’m having. The system I’ve set up for conversations must be awesome. Well, either that or the filter you have is great. And the system you have doesn’t work at all. It’s just the filter that’s doing all the work. I’m not saying that’s true. I will say I’ve seen that happen. I’ve seen it where people have taken the filter off and tried the rules and they don’t work. They just don’t work. It was the filter all along. And this happens in all kinds of domains, not just with conversations. We need to have good starting points. We need to have good goals. We need to have framing that is open to new points, to new ways of looking at things. We need to have curiosity when we’re talking to people in any type of conversation because curiosity is what drives us. Curiosity is the thing that drives us towards an open relationship with other people. And when we’re depressed, we don’t have that. When we’re angry, we don’t have that. When we’re frustrated, we don’t have that. When we’re tired and hungry, we don’t have that, at least not to the degree we need it. And these are important factors to consider. So conversation, while important, is something that requires a lot of care and thought and time and attention. And those are the important factors. And hopefully you’re noticing a theme around time and attention, which is why I’m very grateful for yours, as always, because that’s the magic. That’s the thing that makes things work. That’s the thing that imparts power. That’s the thing that gives you control. You can’t control something you’re not attending to. You can’t control something that you’re not giving your time and energy to. You can’t build structures without paying attention to them. You can’t converse with people unless you are listening to them. Listening to a person means paying attention to them. In some sense, it’s one form of attention. Being in conversation takes time. These things are factors. They’re the important factors. And knowing and understanding what the other person is on about. Because if they’re testing and you’re curiosity driven, you’re probably not going to get anywhere. Because they’re not interested in your curiosity. And if they’re not interested in your curiosity because they’re just trying to either protect themselves or find a tribe or figure out to ignore you, there’s not much point in spending too much time and attention on them when you can spend time and attention on someone better. And yeah, there are filters there. But let’s filter on the right stuff. Let’s filter on the things that actually matter. Let’s filter in a way where we’re not wasting anybody else’s time and attention. And we’re keeping our own sacred and precious because it’s important. It’s really important where you put your attention. I think Jonathan Pigeot is right when he says the world is attention. Yeah, I think that’s right. It is. And that’s why it’s so important that you pay your time and attention to the right things. And that’s why I’m very grateful. And I really am very grateful that anybody ever watches any of my videos. Because you’re giving me your time and attention. And that is the thing that allows me to continue to do this. And that is the thing that tells me that this is important, that it’s making a difference, because otherwise you wouldn’t pay your time and attention. And maybe you don’t get the video the first time around. And, you know, feel free to leave me a comment and let me know what I can do better or what I can do differently or what you didn’t understand. Because if you do that, maybe, maybe there’s a chance, there’s a chance that I can fix that, that I can do better next time, that I can do other videos and keep going so that we can all make sense of these patterns in the world together. The patterns of conversation, which I’ve outlined here, are very important, I think. So I just want to really emphasize, because I can’t stress it enough. It’s not possible. It’s not possible. How important it is and how grateful I am for your time and attention.