How to Ruin a Great Conversation
A Guest Essay by Brian Daskam
For the past 20 years or so I have had the privilege of living in close friendships with people who are willing to talk about things that matter. We have developed the habit of meeting together, mostly in living rooms, to talk about what it means to live well as human beings. In our years together we have enjoyed searching discussions and lively debates. We’ve also learned several ways to ruin a great conversation. Here are just a few:
Replace curiosity with curiositas.
Treat therapeutic self-disclosure as the zenith of intellectual intimacy.
Assume that talking about great books is the same thing as having a great discussion.
Allow your conversations to become sclerotic.
Focus on the form of your conversations to the neglect of the content.
“I mean, look at it, Q: look at all those culs-de-sac, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning th…