THE CASE FOR CONVERSATION

Something important was missing from my life. The absence felt like a lack of green salads or regular exercise. When I was introduced to a new book by Paula Marantz Cohen, professor of English at Drexel University, the deprivation became clear. Her thoughtful study: Talking Cure: An Essay on the Civilizing Power of Conversation makes the case for a frequent dose of stimulating conversation to stay healthy. She concludes that discussions in which the participants respectfully disagree are the most meaningful and emotionally satisfying.

I had forgotten that for eight years, one of the highlights of my week was meeting up with several lawyers for lunch each Thursday. We would discuss what was going on in Washington County and beyond. The venerable attorney Charles Keller, Esq. always seemed to adopt the conservative view of any topic. My close friend, Scot Curran, Esq. was a vocal liberal. Reed Day, Esq. would join in to support whichever position was losing the argument. I came to value the lively conversations that would dissect each issue. Unfortunately, our lunch gathering disbanded after several untimely deaths.

As I read Ms. Cohen’s essay on the importance of conversation, I found myself agreeing with her at every turn. Online culture has become the bane of meaningful conversation. We send short messages to our close friends that confirm our repetitive patterns of agreement. It is all “group think” with no room for dissent. We attack “the other” with no discussion of why we disagree. There are few attempts to offer meaningful support for our positions. The isolation that came with the pandemic was another nail in the coffin of conversation. The art of conversing was placed on life support.

Not so long ago, when the means of communication were limited, there was a pattern of regular engagement with others. In the typical American community of our ancestors, the major form of entertainment was conversing at social gatherings to discuss politics and local issues. As Park Burroughs, retired executive editor of the Observer-Reporter, pointed out in his Murder & Mayhem series, these local interactions did not always end peacefully. Thankfully, violence was the exception, and numerous views were expressed in lively conversations.

There are still methods to keep meaningful conversations alive in today’s social media environment. Ms. Cohen’s book discusses the art of the dinner party and how it can lead to an evening of good conversation. This observation took me back to the 1980s and my first marriage. For eleven years, we were members of a dinner club with four other couples that met every other month. The host couple would invite a guest couple for the members to meet. One of our members kept a scrapbook of who attended each gathering and what we discussed.

The conversation was always stimulating, punctuated by polite disagreements. I learned that an attorney processed information differently from an English teacher and that an accountant would bring up points an engineer would explore in other directions. 

In my present marriage, we traditionally hosted a holiday dinner in December with five other couples who varied from year to year. Over time, this gathering became a family affair that offered fewer opportunities for challenging conversations. The pandemic put a stop to this event, which we now hope to reintroduce.

Ms. Cohen makes the following observation about conversations and why we never know what we might be missing. “One can never tell how people will get along. I know a number of people whom I should logically not like conversing with whom I nonetheless find invigorating and several who seem perfect on paper whom I avoid like the plague.” She praises the French essayist Michel de Montaigne's observation, “The most fruitful and natural exercise of the mind, in my opinion, is conversation. I find the use of it sweeter than any other action in life.”

For Cohen, the mental health advantages of good conversation are clear, “We converse to forget our existential aloneness, to get out of our own heads and replenish our sense of connectedness to others.” Conversation is a social activity. The participants must be willing to show respect for each other to make it work.

In education, the Harkness teaching method offers a unique conversational approach to learning, adopted by many private boarding schools. Instead of lectures, students are seated in a large, oval configuration to discuss ideas in an open-minded environment. Free thought and originality of the individual through conversation replace traditional lesson plans.

With the Harkness method, disagreements on a point under discussion build confidence and encourage positive attitudes to learning. The teacher becomes a partner in the learning process, guiding students to independently discover meaning within the subject area. The Harkness method is the direct opposite of isolated viral learning forced upon students during the pandemic.

In thinking about this subject, I have decided that my op-ed contributions to this newspaper have become, in part, an exercise to replace conversation with writing. After all, the purpose of an op-ed is to discuss and provide arguments on issues of relevance to the readers of the newspaper.

Each week, I hope that a reader will decide to agree or disagree with my position in a letter to the editor. Sadly, most readers who have thoughtful views to share do not respond. A social media post to a friend requires much less effort.