Those of you who know me personally know that I’m not very good at small talk, the light and fluffy conversations about the weather and other inconsequential matters. I’m not terribly fond of Facebook or Twitter for the same reason – there’s really not any opportunity to actually have an in-depth conversation with anybody.
But in terms of the in-depth conversations, I’ve found that there’s two major categories they fall into; ignorance halved, and ignorance doubled.
If you talk to someone and you learn something new that expands your view of the world, makes it more interesting, weird, complex, beautiful, awesome or amusing, if you come away having glimpsed a different view of the world, these are good conversations. Ignorance halved.
If you talk to someone and it’s all about confirming biases and assumptions, about seeing people in a more negative and cynical way, and the world seems more mean, predatory and selfish, these are not good conversations, they’re ignorance doubled.
It’s occurred to me a little while ago, though, that I’ve been having far too many of the second kind of conversations, and not nearly enough of the first. I know that I’m a better, happier, more creative and more productive person when I have lots of the ignorance halving type of conversations. I need to do something about that.