Most people seem very lonely.
I think it’s because, in part, they’ve forgotten how to argue, not only with one another, but also with themselves. Here’s an example of where the meaning of words becomes exceedingly important. “Argument” is not the kind of irrational melee in which 6 year olds, jilted lovers, and politicians engage. “To argue” means “to demonstrate or prove”. Internally, it’s the deliberation we engage in as we make decisions about what we believe, think, and do, and in society, the means of coming to understand one another through attentive, thoughtful conversation.
Many of us, have forgotten why we believe what we believe and have even lost the skills of internal argument, the ability to reason well about things, which makes rational decision-making possible. We’ve fallen into the habit of confusing “making a decision” with “a preference of taste”. A frequent “reason” given for doing things or choosing things is “I like it,” or “It makes me feel good.” Certainly there are things which are a matter of taste, whipped cream or cherries on your ice cream sundae, but relegating all our thoughts and decisions to the level of feel good or feel bad is to become merely reactive to our environment. “Thinking with our bellies” or living entirely in our passions subsequently makes us subject to whim – our own or someone else’s.
When among others, we spend a lot of time hearing the words people say instead of to really paying attention to what people mean and to why they’re saying it. And that’s a problem. Conversation, the surest means we have by which to really get to know someone, has decayed to the point where the only kind of conversation most of us have experienced is either debate – in which the objective is to be right by making the other guy wrong, or a kind of round robin exchange of opinion which leads us to assume we “know” someone rather than really coming to understand them. The result is a glut of information about each other, but no real sense of what makes the person tick. We don’t really know ourselves, we don’t really know one another, and we’ve lost the tools to fix it. No wonder we’re lonely.
But, lost tools can be found, new skills learned and practiced. Two works come to mind that are worth examining: Deanna Kuhn’s “The Skills of Argument” (1991) and Stringfellow Barr’s “Notes on Dialogue” (1968). (The latter is available online at http://www.stjohnscollege.edu/about/dialogue.shtml) They’re very good at reminding us of the need for thoughtful engagement with ourselves and one another.
Of course having written the above, all sorts of questions come to mind: How did we get into this state of affairs? Why not “think with our bellies”? Why does this make us lonely? Are there other causes of loneliness, and if so how are they related? What does it mean to think well? Is genuine conversation all we need to overcome loneliness? Don’t our passions come into it at all? Isn’t all this rather boring? Why bother?
Ahhhhh. So much to ponder, so many conversations to have; that’s what this weblog is all about. What a wonderful life!
Magdalen
© Magdalen Jago 2008
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.” Albert Einstein
