Humane Arts: Conversation

tonight's subject is conversation and this goes actually to a certain degree along with the last one so there's a bit of an internum so remember we talked about the art of letter writing it's important in self-expression and how our education system sort of systematically disables us from being able to write letters uh because of the emphasis on other aspects of Education rather than self-expression uh clear and free writing and easy thinking um so conversation will be a in in a similar vein we'll talk about uh why it's important who's who it's been important to uh what it is and then where we are today um in a society as far as conversation goes which is to say not a very good place uh and and what that means so uh conversations what is conversation first it comes from the a Latin which means basically to live with uh literally it means to turn over with but it means to live with to share with to commune with conversation needs most importantly to be understood as a sharing of thought and an exploration of thought um conversation is is unique in the Humane arts and the history of letters if you look at it we think of writing and reading letters um all the know painting all the plastic Arts conversation is unique in that it's a shared undertaking you cannot Converse alone or at least you're not supposed to converse alone that's not not really the point uh you you you converse with somebody else it requires a group it's a Cooperative Venture uh the idea of conversation is to cooperatively explore ideas emotions feelings and to arrive someplace or to have realization that you otherwise would not be able to it actually requires other people to help build something or create something which on your own or on the other the other participants own they would not be able to arrive at it's a way of externalizing cooperatively so it's a very tricky and difficult skill talk about why that is but but this is the key it's a Cooperative undertaking it's about exploring and discovering and building with other people um and it's it's about sort of the new okay I think exploration is maybe the best word that we have in English to approach this if you look at the history of ...