The Art and Science of Conversation

An Essay on the Basis of Understanding among People

A future following a failure to communicate effectively!

INTRODUCTION

Communication is not the message intended. It is the message perceived. This old saying captures something essential in the human experience of conversation. In this essay, we will be exploring the nature of conversation and how it forms the basis for both understanding as well as misunderstandings. In an age where misinformation and outright deception seems to be the norm, it is ever more vital that we understand the fundamental basis of our culture, conversation between individuals to accomplish more together than we can separately. 

Why Do We Converse?

Simon Sinek advises in his best-selling book “Start with Why” that we do just that. Why do human beings converse? If we look at the history of our species as we understand it, for over a million years we - the chattiest of primates - have been using vocalizations to communicate important information. This probably began due to the need to convey warnings on the savannah as we came down out of the trees and began to work collaboratively on our hunting and gathering. For our first 990000 years or so, the hooting, grunting, and mumbling to ourselves gradually took other forms until we began seeing the need to put ideas and concepts into a form that could outlive the present moment. Oral traditions were all we had to convey culture and the accumulation of knowledge was consequently slow. It could be that in that span there were moments in which significant advances by some group of hominids were lost due to natural disasters. It is even postulated, that the transformation of humans from our forebears was perhaps driven by some cataclysm over 10000 years ago which made a fundamental break with how we processed information. (See Julian Jaynes’ “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”) 

Regardless of why we converse with each other as a species, what we converse about is equally important. Often, we are only concerned with communicating regarding the quotidian trivialities of being in the world. In more formal speech, we are often attempting to do things with others and our vocalizations assist with conveying our desires, our plans, and our future actions to each other so that they can be more readily understood by our fellow humans.

Before writing, conversation, by voice, gesture, and facial expression was the primary way of transmitting culture. After writing became available, it was possible to preserve much information in a form that could outlast individual human beings and we could, in essence, have conversations with the dead. This ability is one of the things that sets humans apart from other species and we’ve had it, as noted, for only a very short period of time; c. 5000 years. Then after at least as long transmitting culture through the oral tradition, writing in the form of cuneiform on clay tablets began to take shape in Mesopotamia. Pictographs predate this - reaching back to those marks left by species preceding our own, but overall, having history, the building conversation with generations past, really begins with the Sumerians.

What drove us to record our conversations? Agriculture - that single word. The ability to go from bare subsistence to surplus production, this drove us to make agreements and set them down in stone, or at least clay. The recording of a conversation is not a conversation, however. It is merely one of the offspring of the relationship between the interlocutors. It may or may not be an accurate distillation of the meaning found by the participants in the conversation. It is just one of the possible products now that human technology has produced a means for its preservation.

Reaching back before writing was available, the means of transmission being repetition in which any of us can tell you, distortion and alteration is not only possible but likely, was the sole means of sending information into the future. The cadence and cascade of rhythm and tone produced in the recitation of stories in which the characters have conversation lent itself to transmission through another technology which humans may have borrowed from nature, but which has proven to be an effective universal language; namely music and dance. 

What is required for Effective and Efficient Conversation?

So, these formal ways of transmitting information inter-generationally are all rooted in the art and science of conversation itself and now we turn to what effective and efficient conversation requires. Trust between those participating in the conversation is necessary, first and foremost. Not much can be achieved without initial trust and good will. The real magic ingredient though? Love is the answer. 

It is also helpful if all those involved know that communication is never the message intended. It is the message perceived. Having said that, this means that the act of listening with good will and trust that the speaker is honest and coming from a space of loving kindness, this is essential for a really good conversation. Awareness too that so much of the communication in a conversation is NOT verbal. It’s in body language, in gesture, in facial expression and can be impacted by so many environmental factors as well. This is one reason that conversations are often repeated and that each conversation stands on its own as a unique communication in time. Just as one cannot step in the same river twice, conversation also belongs to the present moment in which it happens and no other. 

So, we have these statements upon which to reflect. Love is the secret ingredient. It is the organizing factor that resists entropy. With that, let’s turn to some of the issues that impede effective and efficient communication.

The Confusion of Tongues

Most cultures have stories like that of the Tower of Babel where humans, having developed language, enter into an agreement to storm the heavens by building a tower to reach God or the gods. This is thwarted by a confusion of tongues - the division between the workers resulting from this confusion leads to chaotic results in which the tower cannot be completed. The confusion of tongues can happen within a culture sharing a common language as words change their meanings between generations and between elements within the culture. We experience this daily as we regard the transformations of language which make terms in common usage within recent memory, no longer acceptable language in polite company. Writing has helped us to be able to access the thoughts of those who have gone before; even to know the personalities of others who are long gone. It has afforded many of us a form of immortality. However, misunderstanding and confusion are often our lot as we attempt to communicate in conversation or through other means at our disposal. This requires us to explore some basic tenets of critical thinking.

To start with, we can remember the simple mantra taught to my late father during his undergraduate studies in history at the College of William and Mary: 

“If it is printed, it is suspect. Always go back to primary sources or as close to them as one can get. No one ever publishes anything without an axe to grind.”

Why? The answer is summed up in a cartoon by B. Kliban called “The American Revelation.” Being unable to find a copy of it online, I had Grok take a description from Gemini-Advanced and this is the result;

The American Revelation

So, the very fact that time IS money means that no one in their right mind would take the time to print anything without having a very good reason for doing so. The technology itself is cheaper now but not without costs, particularly because time is a commodity that is limited for all of us. Once a second is spent, it cannot be reclaimed, and this relentless march means that we approach our use of time, when we are conscious, with mindfulness, with care, and, at times of extremes, even with desperation. 

In conversation then, we are spending our time with the intent of conveying our meaning. We can only create perception though in others and often enough, if the listening is not acute, we fail not only in conveying our meaning but of being misapprehended entirely. This is especially true when trust is lacking. That has to be a prerequisite for effective and efficient communication in conversation. 

Since a conversation is necessarily a product of the present moment in which the conversation takes place, it is important to recognize the need to take it seriously and as an act of generosity on the part of all who are taking part in the conversation. Further, it is necessary to recognize that conversation is a creative process which transforms all who take part in it. This goes back to the old adage that when two people meet, if anything happens at all, both are transformed. 

Conversation as Giving Birth

This brings us to a discussion of the role of creative energy in conversation. It’s been mentioned that confusion often is the result of conversation if those involved mistrust each other and do not enter into conversation with the generosity inherent in the spirit of love. Sharing our time and effort in attempting to convey experiences and thoughts with each other to accomplish something more than what we alone might be able to do, that’s what I mean by sharing with the generosity inherent in love. When a conversation engages us, we literally feel that we are in harmony with those with whom we are conversing. It’s energizing. It’s constructive. It’s exciting!

When confusion results however, it is natural that the feeling we have is one of frustration, of not having been understood, of not connecting. Nevertheless, these two are products and any feeling we have has information in it which we can use positively. That’s the key thing in my view. We need to be open to what comes up, even when it is not what we had intended to create. 

This is where conversation is like bringing new life into the world. All of us start out as the result of an act of physical love. As we all know, we are all heading in an arc from conception through birth to eventual death and this means that our time is limited. Time spent in conversation is always a gift to our listener and the speaker both. Listening completely is one of the sincerest forms of generosity, of love, whether we realize it or not. Nothing is quite like the feeling of being seen and heard at depth, of being understood. It also helps keep entropy low. Love, after all, is the organizing principle of the universe. Cadence and cascade of vocal rhythm and tone, as mentioned earlier, lends itself not just to common speech but to song. The spirit of music can inhabit ordinary conversation as well as formal musical compositions. 

As any musician involved in improvisation can tell you, the importance of making a performance event come off well is in the listening. The musicians, like the participants in a conversation, must listen attentively to each other and feel the way in which the music wants to go. The energy between the individual audients of the performance event matters too and the energy between the performers on stage and those who have, through an act of commerce, come to appreciate the performance all enter into the mix. The same holds true with conversation. 

The recordings of the performance event whether it be a musical performance by a band or a conversation among members of a panel or on a podcast are outcomes of the event, but not the event itself. The event belongs to the moment and, like so much ephemera in our lives, does not exist in the past or future. It remains entirely in the eternal now, as opposed to those things that might result from the event itself. These include records but also impressions and memories. The participants' memories of the event take on lives of their own. Expanding on this idea, one arrives again at the “law of unintended consequences” - it is simply impossible to control the results of the actions of the event. The key is not to want to control but to allow the results to go and grow into whatever they are to become, much as parents learn to let go of children….and trust. 

One could expound further on these concepts but, for now, this little essay is drawing to a close.

Think of the number of conversations happening right now and how each is propagating into the future in ways we cannot currently imagine. Converse mindfully and remember that listening is as much a vital part of the process as talking. In fact, when we sit with each other in silence, we can find that this is what we really want to communicate - that we accept each other just the way we are, without the need for qualification or equivocation or even, vocalization of conversation and yet, we do converse in silence, in our being. I’m now reminded of a piece of artwork that I acquired at the City Winery here in DC back in 2022 when I attended an evening with “That Awful Man and His Manager” - i.e., Robert Fripp and David Singleton. It bears the inscription: “Music is the Cup that holds the Wine of Silence.” Isn’t it true?