Conversation: It’s better than television.

So, in a conversation about rethinkingourselves, the woman I was talking with said: “Well, I’m easily influenced.”

I thought about this.

I think the process goes like this: First you’re easily influenced, but then you read and listen some more, and then for awhile you declare that it’s all crap, and you don’t trust anything. But then you read some more, or listen some more, and then you start realizing, hey, you know, some of these things make sense to me, and they fit a pattern, and over time you start to realize what you truly believe in. And then you read and listen some more and refine your ideas, take some new ones on, throw out some that don’t fit anymore, and your opinions get clearer and better fitting. Wash, rinse, repeat.

And then there’s this thing called the Socratic method, which I understand to be basically a bunch of people sitting around talking and discussing something, and bouncing their ideas off each other and arguing with each other until new ideas are born. And if no new ideas are actually created, well, in the meantime a whole lot of information has been disseminated and chewed on and hopefully digested.

Conversation: the art of sharing ideas and figuring out new things together.