Communication
 

I grew up in an environment where you either needed to:
a). shout at the top of your lungs to be heard even momentarily,
or
b). discuss the situation at length and ad-nauseum with little closure.

Standing around in parties, I noticed the bulk of all human speech fell into certain catagories....most of which did not actually exchange actual useful data and information. It was all blah, blah, bla, blah, me, me, me, you, you, you, they, they, they.

Never mind emotions. Data and information is what benefits other humans.

What say ye?

What?

It's obvious to me that the OP has no clue how to communicate...

I know what he's talking about.

"Standing around in parties" is, many times, one of the worst places to expect linear, logical discussions to take place, because as people consume more alcohol, most times, they will say whatever minimally relevant words come to mind, whether it contributes to the topic or not.

Y'all know what I'm talking about. You have mentally/silently asked a person who blabs some irrelevant crap, "did you even run that thought past your brain before letting it come out of your mouth?"

Say a person just walked up to the discussion and heard somebody say, "...and since he had been looking for a nice sports car with a good drivetrain for over a year, he figured this had to be the one, so he bought it."

Their brilliant response: "My brother had a really nice MG when he was in college, but he wrecked it one night. He wasn't hurt much, but the car was totalled and he was majorly bummed out about it for a really long time. Have any of you owned a sports car?"

I knew what he was talking about. I just wanted to say "What?". :)

Training. The first 18-22 years of our lives, the bulk of our communication experience is lecturing and instruction - we're told information and trained to retain it, we're told rules and expected to follow them, we're told what to believe and expected to adhere to those beliefs, we're given instructions and told to follow them. We're given problems, but we're told the only accepted ways to fix them.

Mostly, those early years, we're trained to respond in a manner that says "Message recieved." Yes, ma'm. No, sir! I hear that, girlfriend. Right on, man! "What do you say?" "Thank you."

We're rarely asked "what do you think?" And so, very few do. Even fewer, after they see what happens to thinkers in human society.

"better to keep one's mouth shut and be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt"

Jim

My mom came from a large family (dad too for that matter), and it used to be a hoot at T-giving or Christmas gatherings. Just kick back and observe a roomful (say 60-70) of "talkers" all going at it at the same time :).

There are some people who are genuinely interested in others and learning about them seems to be useful to them in some way. They enjoy the mindless babble and are actually energized by being in a room full of people, all talking about nothing. Go figure.

Yes you said it right...
 

Including epbrown who said "what do you think". Many of us but not all thankfully are egotistical and are only interested in what we say. Those are magic words and rarely used, "what do you think". If I am out for a walk and meet somebody and if all they do is talk about themselves, after five minutes I say I have things to do. The way I see it is if I ask somebody questions I can actually learn something because I sure dont pretend to know everything. A salesman knows if you want to be liked you get the customer involved by getting the customer to talk. The customer should walk away and say ,"wow what a nice guy!" I should shut up already, I have been talking too much. What do you think?:eek:

It's been all downhill ever since those old EF Hutton commercials went off the air...now folks just don't know how to listen :).

ps: Mi, mi, mi, mi, mi, meeeeeeeeeee

Spot on. Finishing the case of beer at 3a.m. was not the optimal time to bring up a complex subject. My appologies.;)

Let me start that over.....

At many parties, I've noticed the bulk of many conversations to not contain any actual exchange of useful information. They compose soley of questions and statements of emotional "fillers" (I guess that would be the best discription), which serve only to establish or maintain a social hierarchy and arouse communal energy.

Long ago I had the idea about bringing tape recorders, recording every conversation, then putting those into a voice recognition program, then analysing the methodology that conversations take over time.

There are actually many companies and government websites that take agragate internet conversations off the internet servers to analize them en mass for keywords/etc. and predict global trends in political and economic movements.
I'm sure the defense department has programs for individuals as well.

Thinking about that party example a bit more, I've come to the belief that some of the most positive and sucessfull people are those that you want to have another conversation with. They leave others feeling like they are interesting.

There's a scene from Pulp Fiction that was cut from the released version, where Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) interviews Vincent Vega (John Travolta) before she accepts him as her dinner escort. One was "In a conversation do you listen, or wait to talk?"

The line is: Do you listen or think of what to say next?

That's a great question to ask sometimes.