[HN Gopher] The Lost Art of Conversation (1899)
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The Lost Art of Conversation (1899)
Author : DamnInteresting
Score : 56 points
Date : 2022-09-16 14:29 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.saturdayeveningpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.saturdayeveningpost.com)
| pygy_ wrote:
| Complimentary sound track by The Divine Comedy
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MVESWB1CBg
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| "We are reading ourselves into a silent race."
|
| If only!
| eficek wrote:
| Reading twitter posts and facebook walls, maybe.
|
| I wonder though, if the same thing was said for email and
| instant messaging when it was first popularized.
| lanstin wrote:
| Even writing: https://newlearningonline.com/literacies/chapte
| r-1/socrates-...
|
| But there are still plenty of book clubs, I was in one for
| years, and I read a lot of books and talked about them. Books
| I wouldn't have picked in a thousand years but were none the
| less fascinating, and easier to finish what with the group
| effort.
| [deleted]
| gardenfelder wrote:
| This url [1] seems to work
|
| [1] https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2022/09/the-lost-art-
| of-...
| simple10 wrote:
| Reading old newspapers is an intoxicating cocktail. One part
| smugness of hindsight and one part affinity for the common
| struggle.
|
| My favorite random book purchase was from a multi-generational
| bookstore in San Francisco. Like many, it had succumbed to the
| pressures of rising rent and declining interest in musty
| parchment. In their going-out-of-business clearance pile, I
| happened upon an oversized binding of newspapers from Manchester,
| England. Partially water damaged on the edges but perfectly
| legible. Upon opening the book, curiosity quickly escalated to
| bibliophilic euphoria. This collection turned out to be from the
| early 1940's during The Blitz when the Nazis were bombing the
| shizer out of England.
|
| The best part... the Ovaltine ads. Apparently, Ovaltine used to
| be sold as a health elixir to calm your nerves before bed. I'm
| not sure how a chocolate malt drink aids sleep, but they must
| have sold well because the half and full page ads were in every
| paper. I've never had the pleasure of speaking with someone who
| grew up in Manchester during that time. What strange association
| they must have for Ovaltine. Comfort or terror? Hard to say.
| balutdev wrote:
| The article in its current format is almost unreadable.
|
| The art of conversation is unknown to many. I attempt to explain
| to others that conversation is a volley - not a match. Serve up
| softballs, allow others to answer questions, and then return the
| favor by asking a question.
|
| Conversations with the iPad generation are almost worthless.
| Conversations with strangers are often fruitless. I am silent for
| the most part because people cannot speak in a manner that would
| suggest they have any interest outside of their own pleasures.
| eficek wrote:
| I'm a very young millenial, probably a year or two older than
| the other Gen Z replier. As of late I've really been able to
| resonate with feeling as though other people, especially those
| at my age range (the "ipad generation"), struggle to converse
| outside of the "stuff they like" - their comfort zone. It's
| very frustrating, and it makes me feel as though I can't relate
| to others as easily. I've often wondered if this mindset is
| brought on by reliance on social media to only feed you more
| content that is "stuff you like."
|
| I've also come to feel, though, that conversation is not at all
| a human instinct. It's a skill to be honed like any other, but
| it isn't clearly valued on our society. Guitar, painting,
| writing blog posts, or any other skill which can be used as a
| personal medium of expression are almost completely cut out
| from the education system in favor of only presenting common
| core topics which are mostly inapplicable and unhelpful to the
| average citizen.
|
| Humans want to express themselves, but I feel as though we're
| rapidly running out of unique ways to do so - or at least, ways
| that feel unique in a world of billions. When people are
| talking about "stuff they like," I feel as though it's a
| symptom of them not having the skills that they need to express
| their humanity, and to understand your own. It's not even
| really their fault... no one taught them, they just haven't
| figured it out on their own yet.
|
| When there's no guarantee that humans kicked out into the world
| at 18 will have any idea of how to relate to other people's
| human experiences... how can you expect them to be any good at
| conversing with you? All we have is our soul anyway, as
| Socrates once taught us, so we each stand to benefit from
| knowing how to talk about it.
|
| If you feel like you're too good at [the guitar] for your
| [band], bail. If you'd feel even better enabling them for a
| lifetime to express themselves better through [music], then
| pour your heart into teaching them. But there are many other
| people out there who are very, very skilled at [making music],
| and if [making great music] is a true driving force for you,
| then you have to go and seek it out.
|
| Mix and match the words in the brackets for advice on any skill
| you can only practice with other people, especially
| conversation :3
|
| That's my experience and philosophy at least, and I think it's
| really been helping me through some agonizing feelings as of
| late. I'm sorry that you've had such frustrating experiences
| just trying to relate to people, I know the feeling and it's
| totally soul-sucking.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| I'm old Gen Z, and admit that I don't have the time or
| perspective to really compare past and present, _and_ despite
| how often this sort of take is reasonably dismissed as grumpy
| cynicism: I am inclined to agree.
|
| I've made a priority of improving the way in which I
| communicate the last few years, and think I've made genuine
| progress. Stuff like actively listening, avoiding interruption,
| making peace with someone explaining something I already
| understand, etc...
|
| But after all this, I've come to realize that I wasn't as
| relatively bad at conversation as I thought I was when I
| started. So many of my peers struggle with this. There is so
| much _showing_ others this thing or that, always
| asymmetrically. There is a pervasive fear of wasting the other
| persons' time - I think this has to do with us growing up with
| instant dopamine available in our palms. There is so much
| anxiety in communication. There is a fear of being wrong, or a
| fear of speaking without trivial qualification. And most
| importantly: _there is a failure to understand the effort
| required to listen well._
|
| This is just my experience, and my own analysis as it relates
| to my life. I'm aware that it comes across as cynical, but
| thought it might be worth sharing here. We need to get our
| attention back, and see the value (without forcing) of relating
| to others.
|
| It makes the gems stand out even more, but I wish the art of
| conversation was something people actively considered when they
| thought about their own personality, or when they examined
| their anxieties.
| lanstin wrote:
| Too much screen time makes people bubble over with the desire
| to speak which makes it hard to have normal conversation till
| that need subsides. Even pre-computer, I had a term at a
| college once with basically no:friends or social
| acquaintances, ended by one of my best friends visiting so we
| could tour around. I talked at my friend for like two days
| before taking a breath and asking how he was doing.
|
| And yeah, developing the ability to listen to what people are
| saying without getting overwhelmed by/your internal stream of
| thoughts makes listening a lot more interesting and more
| useful. Much misunderstanding can be avoided and many
| interesting things to ask about are only subtly hinted at the
| first time.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Really well put - thanks for extending my point. The
| experience you described in the first paragraph is very
| similar to the one that led me to realize how necessary it
| was for me to become aware of the way I communicate
| (conversate?) w/ others.
| plugin-baby wrote:
| Converse?
| dbtc wrote:
| To add, the platforms which make this instant dopamine
| available are marketing platforms, and they encourage
| (reward) a social posture of self-marketing.
|
| So not only do us 'users' become products, but we are
| rewarded for selling ourselves.
| conor_f wrote:
| > There is so much showing others this thing or that, always
| asymmetrically. There is a pervasive fear of wasting the
| other persons' time - I think this has to do with us growing
| up with instant dopamine available in our palms.
|
| This really resonated with me. Thank you
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Cheers, glad you saw some value in my perspective. It's
| based strongly on both my own missteps and those of others.
| lanstin wrote:
| Do you have kids? My very most favorite thing to do is to
| converse with my kids, 17-25, and my second is to somehow
| overhear them discussing things amongst their friends. Language
| styles have surely changed, and they have a lot more media and
| comms savvy, but an exchange of propositions intended to
| elucidate an issue more clearly seems to be alive and well.
|
| And as far as people your own age, perhaps you are encountering
| the sad truth that most of adult interaction is not like
| collegiate exploration of reality, nor even the semi good
| natured posturing of high school, but the out and out war of
| junior high school.
|
| Seek out small groups with interesting concerns and you can
| find open, inquisitive minds.
|
| Also, those dumb strangers, probably they all have at least one
| interesting story in them, try a strategy of adjusting your
| words to make what you wish to find more probably. It won't
| always work, but enough to make public transit a fun way to get
| around.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I'm fed up with conversations. I value altruistic softness,
| politeness and being sociable. But it's a shallow muddy game
| without the right feel or tension.
|
| Too much time it devolves on vague if not fluff talk where
| people are more focused on liability rather than honesty, fun,
| joy or thinking.
|
| Even with best efforts in seeking shared fun the stats are too
| low.
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| > where people are more focused on liability rather than
| honesty, fun, joy or thinking.
|
| You have to find people who don't give a fuck. They're way
| more fun to talk to.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Partly true, you don't want totally free radicals either :)
| p1esk wrote:
| You must be fun at parties
| dcow wrote:
| But, do you have fun at parties?
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| Emojis may be the worst thing to happen to conversation in
| history.
|
| They are the laziest form of communication on earth.
|
| It's a reply without having to think of anything to further the
| conversation.
| tazard wrote:
| They are a replacement for non verbal communication such as a
| head nod, or hand wave, or a smile. Not a way to express a
| full thought in and of itself.
| dcow wrote:
| Conversation has become a game of who can contribute the least
| by making useless witty comments.
| q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote:
| FYI: The article itself is on the top right of the pseudo-PDF
| that this link renders.
|
| After reading it, I thought it was funny to imagine "reading"
| replace with "Instagram" in the original author's invective. It
| would be so much fun to live in a world where everyone was
| constantly reading books everywhere now! But, these days,
| whenever there's an idle moment, most people reach for their
| phones and plug in to the nearest dopamine feed.
|
| Maybe this is just how it goes. In 25 years, maybe everyone will
| just don their VR goggles while they're on public transit, and
| people will long for the days when everyone sat around scrolling
| their phones, and it was still possible to make eye contact.
| [deleted]
| eficek wrote:
| "Is a Horseless Age Coming" is the story directly beneath it...
| another story with nerve-wracking relevance if you rewrite it
| about the rapidly-progressing-and-soon-to-be-omnipresent
| technology of today as opposed to 1900.
| LoveMortuus wrote:
| I don't know... When I'm reading something that really excites me
| I usually want to tell others about it and talk about it, why it
| excited me, what I find interesting, thus encouraging
| conversation.
| supertofu wrote:
| I feel the exact same way. Except it seems that no one I ever
| meet cares a single bit about about the topics that excite me,
| and aren't polite or curious enough to indulge me 1-3 minutes
| to share the exciting things about these topics.
|
| So usually I just listen to people talk about themselves. :/
| euroderf wrote:
| Curiosity made infectious
| q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote:
| I'd love to hear about this! Anything you're reading like that
| lately?
|
| To your point, though, I live in a major and supposedly-
| sophisticated city, and one of my go-to smalltalk questions is,
| "So, what're you reading these days?"
|
| I don't know if I've become an old grump -- or if I just have
| poor luck of the draw -- but lately it's been a deeply
| depressing question. A staggering number of people will quietly
| (or, occasionally, proudly) unveil the fact that they don't
| read at all.
| lanstin wrote:
| If you like conversing about reading, and you are short of
| people that also like it, arrange a book club or join a book
| club.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| I did the same with my younger colleagues. It's depressing.
| LoveMortuus wrote:
| I recently stumbled across a website which is also an app
| called Webnovel and because I've never been huge on reading
| stuff on a LCD, due to eye strain, I've been very sceptical
| (That's why I own Kindle and ReMarkable). But I read a few
| pages on my computer and I got hooked into the story so I
| downloaded the app and now I actually find it quite easy to
| read on the phone, especially because the width of the page
| is quite small so it's easier to go to the next line while
| reading.
|
| EDIT: (Both of the stories are fiction, they're not
| scientific literature, if you're looking for non-fiction that
| had me pumped, here ya go: "Life brought to artificial cells"
| [2])
|
| The story that hooked me is: "I cultivate passively" [0],
| it's quite brutal though and at times the writing can feel a
| bit amateurish, but it still got me hooked.
|
| But the story I've been reading for the past two days is:
| "Reborn As A Dragon Girl With A System" [1]. The quality of
| writing is better with this one and the story feels quite a
| bit more colourful.
|
| Don't worry, no real spoilers ahead.
|
| The first one that I mentioned is very dark, it's about a man
| that's practicing cultivation in a sect where they put a
| thing similar to a leech or a worm into your heart which is
| constantly eating your blood and your blood qi, meaning if
| you're not eating enough the worm thingy with kill you, but
| if you are feeding yourself and thus the worm. The worm will
| grow and release purified qi which will allow you to get to a
| higher level of cultivation, but that will also make the worm
| stronger, thus eating more. So it's really a world of
| struggle it's either eat or be eaten.
|
| As for the second story, it's about a girl who's parents were
| killed when she was like 6 years old and because she didn't
| have anyone else she had to live on the streets, seeing more
| bricks than trees (quote from the story). One day she was
| digging through a dumpster when she was attacked by another
| homeless person, because she was scavenging in his territory,
| this resulted in her death, as she was dying she cursed all
| humans saying that they're all rotten to the core and hoping
| that if she ever reincarnates she would be anything but a
| human, even a bug would be better... Thus she's reborn as a
| very cute red dragon baby. ^^
|
| [0] http://wbnv.in/a/b5hBQF5
|
| [1] http://wbnv.in/a/aehBQGJ
|
| [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02231-8
| bwoodward wrote:
| The article... automatically transcribed using iOS.
|
| ---
|
| It is high time that some one with authority announced that
| reading is not the _summum bonum_ of life. The very act of
| reading is unsocial. It is a kind of melancholy barbarism. If you
| look
|
| The Lost Art of Conversation
|
| IT IS high time that some one in authority announced that reading
| is not the summum bonum of life. The very act of reading is
| unsocial. It is a kind of melancholy barbarism. If you look about
| you in a railway train, in a street car or 'bus you will observe
| that every one is reading-men, women, and even the innocent
| little children. Silent, glum, their eyes glued to book or paper,
| they sit there, like so many savages brooding in a jungle. Where
| are the jolly conversations that Washington Irving and Dickens
| overheard in the stage-coaches of the long ago? Where is the
| cheery sociability that once made traveling a liberal education?
|
| Conversation is in the way of becoming a lost art - like the
| making of mummies and the laying of the great auk's egg. We have
| such a precious deal of reading to do that conversation is out of
| the question. We have no time to talk. We have no leisure for
| comparing ideas as to the weather. It is not impossible to
| imagine a day when "How late the spring is!" and "Doesn't it look
| like rain?" will be quite obsolete. We are reading ourselves into
| a silent race. When we stay at home we read; we travel to read.
| In lonely forests, on far-away mountain peaks, aship, ashore, our
| generation wanders - and reads. At this very moment some one is
| reading in the desert of the Sahara and another is reading as he
| treks the African veldt, and Andre himself is ice-bound near the
| Pole, reading.
|
| Before long monastic institutions for the undisturbed pursuit of
| reading will doubtless arise all over the land. Reading is the
| superstition of the day. The amount of printed matter we have
| read is accounted to us for a sort of righteousness. I stopped to
| watch some boys playing baseball the other day. There was a
| duffer at the bat, and the little left-fielder pulled a paper
| from his hip pocket and began to read. General Shafter, it is
| averred, lay in a hammock and directed the battle, at odd moments
| dipping his nose into the newspapers.
|
| Conversation is decaying and we are degenerating into unsocial
| silence. This is not a negligible danger. Man's chief duty - his
| unending duty - the proper aim of life is to talk. Soldiers
| fight, statesmen plan, artists paint, poets rhyme merely that
| they may talk and be talked about. Men live nobly in order to
| have fine topics of conversation. Books are written not so much
| to be read as to be talked over.
|
| The decay of conversation is a ready-made subject for the
| critically minded man. The divergence between the written and
| spoken language is growing wider every day. We talk in a sort of
| telegraphic slang. No sane man would think of introducing into
| his conversation the phrases and words of the written language.
| Very little of the spoken language gets into print. In the end
| the books will beat the tongues. Already we exchange ideas with
| printed pages not with our fellow-men- and I foresee the dismal
| day when even our present emasculated conversation will be
| superfluous. We shall read our way in silence from the cradle to
| the grave.
|
| VANCE THOMPSON.
|
| ---
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