small talk

adding page via Jason‘s fb share saying – small talk is oppressive:

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/banning-small-talk

Small talk prevails because of the need to find a socially acceptable topic. But when it’s removed, it changes the game

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surface level small talk does not build relationships and it is not great for our happiness levels. The obvious question: if it’s not that good for us, why does it prevail?

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The basic idea is that if every individual is free to act as they please, the combination of these individual behaviours might be sub-optimal for the group.

perhaps.. but assuming ..in the world we live in now.. w/science of people ness ie: stress form money as os et al.. but if we tried a nother way.. with a mech to facil two convos.. to facil our individual curiosities.. (which we can now do.. for 7 billion people – no having to open door for 25 people and send out rules of game prior to).. like article says.. people do crave deep convos..

them asked for and wanting more rules.. is like.. to me.. a kid in school excited about an hour to do whatever.. happy to abide by little rules.. just to get that.. but that’s not freedom.. that’s a breather..

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So what should we do? We could add co-ordination and create a new set of social norms. What if companies told people that email will only be delivered during just three pre-specified times? This would set the expectations of the senders, and reduce the need of the recipient to continuously monitor their email.

so what should we do…? we could coord hosted life bits.. and truly create a set of new social non-norms..ie: idiosyncracies of 7 bill that io dance…. beyond how to do email.. right? we don’t really want to know how to do email better.. do we..? perhaps it feels like it.. for a breather.. but if we had no strings attached.. were free in the city.. as the day.. we wouldn’t need/want rules/expectations.. for how to do .. email..

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In situations where individuals normally have freedom, social co-ordination in some areas is likely to have surprising benefits

again – true if not 7 billion people truly free.. true if we assume .. science of people ness.. which Ariely seems to ..

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The School of Life (@TheSchoolOfLife) tweeted at 5:30 AM – 24 Oct 2016 :

That there is simply no such thing as an inherently boring person or thing is one of the great lessons of arthttps://t.co/PwNEXXD8uQ (http://twitter.com/TheSchoolOfLife/status/790515792446103552?s=17)

We babble inconsequentially to the world because we lack the nerve to look more closely and unflinchingly within.

The person we call interesting is in essence someone alive to what we all deeply want from social intercourse: which is an uncensored glimpseof what the brief waking dream called life looks like through the eyes of another person and reassurance that we are not entirely alone with all that feels most bewildering, peculiar and intense within us.

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The School of Life (@TheSchoolOfLife) tweeted at 6:30 AM – 6 Oct 2018 :
What to Do at Parties If You Hate Small Talk: “The confident conversationalist knows that the small themes need only ever be the first, understandable and never insulting steps towards the sincerity and intimacy all of us crave at heart.”
Read more: https://t.co/iFXcxeSdx3 https://t.co/Gr3gsKvyJk (http://twitter.com/TheSchoolOfLife/status/1048551056278523904?s=17)

we are perhaps misunderstanding what small talk is for and how we might gently find an exit from its more airless corners. Small talk exists for a noble reason: it is designed to prevent hurt. It provides us with a rich source of information so that we can safely ascertain the frame of mind of our interlocutor – and therefore gauge what more in-depth topics of conversation might safely be broached. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once darkly reminded us that we should always remember, when meeting new people, that they might be only be a few steps away from wanting to grab a weapon and end their own lives. A few moments of small talk give us the signals we need to find out who we have on our hands; it lends us time to circle intimacy from on high before determining where we might wish to land.

Furthermore, a rigid hatred of small talk overlooks that it isn’t ever the subject matter per se that determines the profundity of a conversation. There are ways of talking about death that are trivial and ways of addressing the weather that feel significant. A truly deep mind can exercise itself as much on the game of a child as on the puzzles of philosophy – and it is unfortunate snobbery (mistaking the outward label for the inner content) to discount a topic merely because it has never featured in erudite academic curricula.

The skilled conversationalist doesn’t insist that atmospheric or traffic conditions or where a person has been at the seaside are inherently unworthy of discussion. They know that what a person feels about a cloudy afternoon might be a highway to their soul or that their experiences around parking might provide clues as to their attitudes to authority or their relations with their parents. They are not put off by having to work with humble matter; they are deft enough to use whatever is to hand.

The fear of small talk reflects a worry, hugely understandable and with roots in childhood experience, that we will be unable to influence the flow of a conversation by ourselves, that we will be the victims of the obsession or pettiness of others – and that conversation is fundamentally a natural, organic occurrence which happens to us but cannot be created by us; it may at points be very engaging, at others hugely frustrating; but the outcome is not ours to determine. We can feel that when a person says something, we must invariably respond in a similar way: an anecdote about a golf tournament needs to be followed by another; if someone has a story about a booking confusion at a hotel, the other must chip in with a corollary.

We should perceive no insult in a call to glimpse the grandest themes through the lens of small talk.

An individual who is currently talking at puzzling length about an airline meal has also inevitably been disappointed in love, had bouts of despair, tried to make sense of a difficult parent, felt confused about their direction – and will be longing, at some level, therefore to stop talking about cheese crackers and share the contents of their heart.

The confident conversationalist does not take fright at small talk and others’ occasional apparently firm attachment to it. They know that the small themes need only ever be the first, understandable and never insulting steps, towards the sincerity and intimacy all of us crave at heart.