## Colophon date: title:: What Conversation Can Do for Us type:: [[literature-note]] tags:: url:: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/20/what-conversation-can-do-for-us status:: [[bean]] ## Notes > Conversation was once an end in itself; now it is the stuff of self-help gurus and business-school strategy. — [view in context](https://hyp.is/L_almMq5Ee2gFQcJncC-Ug/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/20/what-conversation-can-do-for-us) > something deeply appealing about her commitment to conversation. In its ideal form, it involves no audience or judge, just partners; no fixed agenda or goals, just process. — [view in context](https://hyp.is/TGh3usq5Ee2ptD_560WGkQ/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/20/what-conversation-can-do-for-us) > Conversation is casual; it isn’t a chat (too noncommittal), a debate (too contentious), or a colloquy (too academic). And yet the cachet of conversation, with its connotations of open-mindedness and open-endedness, also encourages an overly broad application. — [view in context](https://hyp.is/WLJYzsq5Ee2FnNsZraqu5Q/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/20/what-conversation-can-do-for-us) > Obama seemed interested in trying to solve a problem inherent to conversation: its tendency to devolve into argument. A few years ago, the literary theorist Stanley Fish wrote that “the state of agreement that would render argument unnecessary—a universal agreement brought about by facts so clear that no rational being could deny them—is not something we mortals will ever achieve.” — [view in context](https://hyp.is/qBxUZMq5Ee27e28Id5bomg/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/20/what-conversation-can-do-for-us) > Competitive debate is a flawed model for civic discourse—it’s a world full of rules, time limits, and decorum. Contestants draw their assignments at random, and they are sometimes required to argue for positions or policies with which they disagree. — [view in context](https://hyp.is/765aUsq5Ee206N_UXGhlXg/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/20/what-conversation-can-do-for-us) > In “Good Arguments,” Seo offers a set of rules gleaned from his years as a debater and as a debate-team coach. For example, avoid an abstract word when a concrete one will do. To describe our educational institutions as “failing” might lead us to any number of solutions, maybe even existential questions about the nature of institutions writ large. But to call them “underfunded” draws a line between problem and solution. For Seo, precise language produces clearer sentences, and a better-defined “journey” for listeners to follow, furtively delivering them to the destination that you’ve already chosen for them. — [view in context](https://hyp.is/TptyNMq6Ee2-jMtM8eG4zg/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/20/what-conversation-can-do-for-us) - Annotation: This shows the difference between arguing/seeking to convince and policy analysis where you would not presuppose the solution (unless you've arrived at it empirically)> Good arguments are products of elegant and intelligent design; although they invite others in, their conclusions are meant to feel inescapable. — [view in context](https://hyp.is/Y4KILMq6Ee27ApMo_mE3Uw/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/20/what-conversation-can-do-for-us) - Annotation: Perhaps good for the argument, but not for discourse.> We might share Cohen’s vision of a good conversation as endorphin-releasing, something akin to the warmth and contentment of slowly experiencing love. But we live in the age of the amygdala, aiming for outrage. Even if political discourse took the form of Seo’s idealized debate, the dynamic might still disserve us. In a debate, we aren’t trying to find common ground with someone else; Seo’s rules are not for winning over strangers but for defeating opponents in tournaments — [view in context](https://hyp.is/qp0v5sq6Ee2N3_vd6kVCJg/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/20/what-conversation-can-do-for-us) - Annotation: Validates my previous comments.> It’s telling that social-media platforms, like Twitter, characterize themselves as serving a public conversation, and yet the presence of an audience turns online conversations into performances. A politician today is more likely to dunk on some random hecklers on Twitter than to court them. — [view in context](https://hyp.is/wBaJOsq6Ee2ckxNj2c5InQ/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/20/what-conversation-can-do-for-us) - Annotation: Apt> Giridharadas depicts a world so fractious that many people have given up on the possibility of debate, let alone rangy conversation. His book tells the stories of progressive organizers, politicians, and activists. Like their counterparts on the right, they struggle to reach the other side. Some of those he interviews point to the election of Trump as a moment that destabilized their sense of what could be debated or discussed. — [view in context](https://hyp.is/8wU8nMq6Ee21XLd-iRUNyA/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/20/what-conversation-can-do-for-us) > Deline eventually helped start the New Conversation Initiative, which aimed to train people in “non-judgmental” voter outreach. “What we learned is changing your mind on something is about navigating a sea of conflicting emotions,” Deline tells Giridharadas. — [view in context](https://hyp.is/N4JW1Mq7Ee2gHOeAdG6BkA/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/20/what-conversation-can-do-for-us) - Annotation: Non judgemental is key> “Our society abounds in bad conversation,” Cohen writes, in part because it makes for more entertaining content on the Internet and television. People would rather regurgitate “predetermined positions,” she fears, than wrestle with ambiguity. No spaces seem safe for the frictions or disagreements that make conversation go — [view in context](https://hyp.is/PtoUlMq7Ee2916t_mxFrow/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/20/what-conversation-can-do-for-us) - Annotation: Prevalence of bad conversation.> We can’t be confident, either, that our splintered public sphere is a symptom of conversational collapse. There has never been a time in human history when the average person has had access to the sheer volume of conversations that technology makes possible today—all those takes, tweets, threads, text chains, posts, and articles. Then there’s the world of podcasting, where people readily listen to hours of freewheeling, sometimes thorny discussion. — [view in context](https://hyp.is/d6ygtsq7Ee21XsOizwdQCQ/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/20/what-conversation-can-do-for-us) - Annotation: So important, there was no 'ideal', just different.> The character bears witness to great suffering; he finds himself unable to adequately “convey his thought to others just as he himself understood it.” At one point, Bezukhov realizes “the impossibility of changing a man’s convictions by words, and his recognition of the possibility of everyone thinking, feeling, and seeing things each from his own point of view.” Yet Bezukhov persists. He continues to share his thoughts and to listen, remaining, as Cohen writes, “alert and receptive without feeling that a definitive answer must be found.” — [view in context](https://hyp.is/kMI47sq8Ee2N7atIMOhdyw/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/20/what-conversation-can-do-for-us) > It’s the imperfections we offer one another in dialogue that make such endeavors worthwhile. We keep talking, knowing that it brings us closer to one another as it simultaneously casts us apart, and that the conversation is never over. — [view in context](https://hyp.is/mAVs1Mq8Ee2v61MxZzCLIg/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/20/what-conversation-can-do-for-us) - Annotation: Fin