Thursday, March 17, 2011

The Art of Conversing

This really intrigues me: how a person converse to another person, passing information about their thoughts and feelings. As a philosophy addict, I am always compelled to define things. What is conversation really? What do we pass on during conversing?

I notice that if a person is filled with only feelings, it would be really hard to converse, particularly to make a point. Take Steven Tyler, currently judging the American Idol show. When he makes a comment, he goes round and round and round, reiterating the same point with different sentences, one after another. I'm not saying that it's not convincing; it is less convincing, for sure, but he cancels it out by what I call "the impact of consistency". This impact results from a habit that is cultivated over a long period of time, long enough for the cultivator to unconsciously believe in it. Even if your habit is "being unsure when you're speaking", people will give way to you, because you are "convinced" enough when doing it.
 Has this ever happened to you?

Safe to say that great conversations happens when both parties are not thinking about what they are saying. The words just come out, and they make sense of course. This comes from the confidence that the words that you say will make sense and answer the other party's questions. Many experts rely on this subconscious process, acting with confidence not with thinking. Conscious thinking is indeed powerful, but up to a certain point because it's very slow. In contracts, subconscious thinking is the cumulative result of what we have learned and experience so far, ever since childhood. Therefore the result is fantastic, and also natural. I read in a book that conscious thinking should be reserved only for creative process (brainstorming etc). The expertise of a person is defined as how many important operations he can do without thinking.

Did he use his brain? Don't think so, do we? But everyone followed his words.

Think before you speak? Think again.

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