Who are we talking to?

I tend to examine myself more closely recently, in respect to how I behave and act toward others. The reasons that lead me to this are irrelevant, but the outcome is a tight process of self-observation and reflection that I feel I try to maintain. (Sound a bit arrogant, I think).

One thing I can I noticed about myself as well as about my environment, as that the conversations I have with people tend to be very egocentric and selfish. By that I don’t mean I don’t care about others, and I’m definitely others don’t care for their friends and colleagues, but that the way we talk to one another and our process of thinking (I can only testify for myself) are rather self-centered.

Whenever I converse with someone, and they bring up some experience that they had, be a dream, a funny incident or a tragic occurrence, I primarily compare that to my own domain of experiences. I search for a similar or a contrasting memory of my own, and usually just wait for my companion to end the sentence in order to start talking. I do, however, ask and inquire, but is that out of genuine interest in the other? Hardly so. It is probably (And again, I speak only for myself – that is called irony) because I’m displaying a kind image, knowing that the other person would like me to ask them more and react, because of good manners, or because I’d like to know more so I can think about myself more specifically.

Kundera talks about this in his book “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting”. He describes how we often respond by saying “That’s absolutely the same with me! I….” (or something similar. We tend to take what we were told, process it, agree with it or deny it, and then move back to our own realm. He constructs a character that has an amazing ability to listen to people, which many indeed use. She has this ability only because she totally cancelled her own self. She’s not interested in herself anymore after escaping her home country and the death of her beloved husband. She doesn’t have any archives of memories to go into, because she lost the individual interest in oneself. Maybe the good listeners amongst us are the ones that are not concerned with themselves. Sounds like a good hypothesis, but I think I have more faith in some people I know and trust.

Thinking about this gave me the feeling that we are going around uttering our own monologues. This is an absurd image, of course. I don’t truly think we don’t listen. But there’s something about the way we communicate that makes me think of superficial, un-bonding, shallow way of talking. While contemplating this, I bumped into some writing of one named Martin Buber, A Jewish socialist philosopher. Buber argued a case of two different relationships one has with the surrounding world. The I-It (Ich-Es), that is the monologue, the information and the ideas one receives from everything around; And the I-Thou/You (Ich-Du) relationship, the dialogue, a deep connection between the subject and the object. In this relationship Buber finds God.

To man the world is twofold, in accordance with his twofold attitude.

The attitude of man is twofold, in accordance with the twofold nature of the primary words which he speaks.

The one primary word is the combination I-Thou.

The other primary word is the combination I-It;

Hence the I of man is also twofold.
*
Primary words do not signify things, but they intimate relations.

Primary words do not describe something that might exist independently of them, but being spoken they bring about existence.

Primary words are spoken from the being.

The primary word I-Thou can only be spoken with the whole being.

The primary word I-It can never be spoken with the whole being.


When Thou is spoken, the speaker has no thing for his object. For where there is a thing there is another thing. Every It is bounded by others; It exists only through being bounded by others. But when Thou is spoken, there is no thing. Thou has no bounds.

(from the book I and Thou)

Buber goes later to talking about the nature of the two separate relationships. I might not agree with his convention of the Thou being a transcendent entity, but I definitely find his distinction between two kinds of communication appealing. I cannot hold thinking on how all the conversations I have are but monologues, but I also find comfort in knowing that some connections are not as shallow and much more profound.

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No man would listen to you talk if he didn't know it was his turn next. ~E.W. Howe

Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of a witness. ~Margaret Millar

Two monologues do not make a dialogue. ~Jeff Daly