So much of what passes for conversation today is degraded. It's either about one-upmanship, or dreary trivia. Even the cut and thrust of wit and bons mots is a form of bedazzlement designed to stop conversations dead rather than broaden them.
Interpretation
Modern conversations often lack depth, focusing instead on trivialities or competition.
The quote by Theodore Zeldin critiques the current state of conversation, suggesting that many discussions are shallow, centered around competitive banter and meaningless topics. Instead of cultivating meaningful dialogue, people often engage in conversations that serve only to impress rather than enlighten, thus limiting the potential for genuine interaction and understanding.
In practice
This quote can be used to start a discussion about the quality of conversations in a public speaking event.
Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits. When minds meet, they don't just exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, engage in new trains of thought. Conversation doesn't just reshuffle the cards: it creates new cards.
We think of speaking as something we do naturally, without any effort. But like playing music, it requires attention and knowledge and practice.
It is in the power of everybody, with a little courage, to hold out a hand to someone different, to listen, to attempt to increase, by even a tiny amount, the quantity of kindness and humanity in the world.
I think one of the most important changes of our time has been our attitude to fear. Every civilisation defends itself by keeping fears out and saying 'we protect you from fear'. But it also produces new fears and throughout history people have changed the kind of fears which have worried them.
Conversation creates a new kind of network within organizations. Current networks are used for competitive advantage, but conversation is focused on encouraging people to realize their potential.
However fascinating you may think you are, there is a limit to what you can know about yourself.
All communication involves faith; indeed, some linguisticians hold that the potential obstacles to acts of verbal understanding are so many and diverse that it is a minor miracle that they take place at all.
All that has been integrated into NVC has been known for centuries about consciousness, language, communication skills, and use of power that enable us to maintain a perspective of empathy for ourselves and others, even under trying conditions.
A talk is a voyage. It must be charted. The speaker who starts nowhere, usually gets there.
Despite all the technical improvements, it still boils down to a man or a woman and a microphone, playing music, sharing stories, talking about issues -- communicating with an audience.
Years ago, I tried to top everybody, but I don't anymore. I realized it was killing conversation. When you're always trying for a topper you aren't really listening. It ruins communication
Listening is not understanding the words of the question asked, listening is understanding why the question was asked in the first place.
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