On the Risk Involved in Conversation
During a conversation with a coworker today, she mentioned the fact that people can’t grow if they aren’t speaking with people who are different than them. But the use in being in conversational circles with different viewpoints isn’t just about growing as individuals, it’s also just more fun.
It’s not all that entertaining to sit around and talk to a group of people who all think the same. And, if you wanted to overcome an opposing viewpoint, the best way is by talking to someone who has it, so you can find the flaws in their logic once you fully understand it.
But conversation is tricky. There’s an inherent risk to it, not only because we live in a politically sensitive climate that’s quick to react if you say anything disagreeable, but because conversation opens you up for judgement or disapproval that isn’t even of a political nature. The words you say could even be used against you in the future if you’re talking to an especially sinister person.
And conversation is contextual. There’s the means to an end sort of conversation that’s more common at work, and there’s the end in itself sort of conversation that’s most common with someone we’re close to. Though both of these forms can actually show up in the opposite location, with an open ended dialogue for the sake of problem solving at work, and an end to itself conversation with someone that’s close to you.
Philosopher Roger Scruton shares the following on the differences between these two styles.
“I might speak to someone in order to give a message, to strike a bargain or to convey a command. Such speech acts fall outside the normal bounds of conversation, since they involve a goal that is prior to the act of speaking. In a normal conversation, goals emerge from the conversation and can not be easily defined in advance of it. If a person talks to me in ways that make it apparent that his interest is entirely subservient to an agenda, that he has some purpose in mind that, once achieved, will bring the encounter to an end, he is not in fact conversing. Conversation is a form of reciprocity, in which each of us can influence and deflect the other’s goals and interests, and in which no single goal governs what is said.”
It’s a beautiful summary. That “in a normal conversation, goals emerge from the conversation and can not be easily defined in advance of it, and that “conversation is a form of reciprocity, in which each of us can influence and deflect the other’s goals and interests, and in which no single goal governs what is said,” are approaches that both apply to our personal lives and open ended problem solving at work.
These are different stance than we often take to conversation. We often ready our turn to shout out our ideas at the first chance we get. Or we’ve assumed who a person is based on aspects of their identity, and once assumed we approach the conversation like we’re talking to a character of a type of person rather than a unique individual.
Conversational nuance seems to have lost its touch in the age where we lack political nuance, where we hear one opinion from another and decide we know where they’ll take a stance on everything. If only conversation were that easy.
That assumed risk is something we unfortunately have to lean into. To get at the core of a conversation at work or in our personal lives we have to have skin in the game. We have to be willing to get uncomfortable, learn an unpleasant truth, or hear an unpleasant opinion.
Scruton said the following, which influenced my thoughts on conversational risk, and I’ll share it at great length because of how well it’s articulated.
“Risk-avoidance in human relations means the avoidance of accountability, the refusal to stand judged in another’s eyes, to come face to face with another person, to give yourself in whatever measure to him or her, or to expose yourself to the risk of rejection. Accountability is not something we should avoid; it is something we need to learn. Without it we can never acquire either the capacity to love or the virtue of justice. Other people will remain for us merely complex devices, to be negotiated in the way that animals are negotiated, for our own advantage and without opening the possibility of mutual judgment. Justice is the ability to see the other as having a claim on you, as being a free subject just as you are, and as demanding your accountability. To acquire this virtue you must learn the habit of face-to-face encounters, in which you solicit the other’s consent and cooperation rather than imposing your will.”
But conversation is also hard. There’s plenty of times where I’ve played through how a conversation will go in my head, or coached myself on how I’ll say a difficult thing, only to realize that once I’m in the moment and real people and emotions and consequences are involved, it all feels overwhelming.
It’s a learning process and there’s always a curve. If I’m fortunate to be married and have children, my conversations will only get more difficult. As I get older and solidify some of my views of the world — and if 2019 is a trend of the future of United States politics — those conversations will get more difficult. And as I grow in my career, there will be more at stake in conversation.
In these approaches to conversation, I’ll leave you with one last dose of Scruton. This dose is the type of conversationalist not to be. He says, “In all the respects that I have so far mentioned, conversation fits the bill of a free association which is subservient to no purpose but itself, and which is destroyed by the bossiness and urgencies of the planner, the utopian, and the rationalist.”
