At least, if you’re trying to have a conversation…
Dave Nadig, Substack, August 12, 2024
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about rules.
My Metaphysics veers on solipsism, but once I jump into the narrative and start playing the character I’ve adopted for interacting with all y’all in the wonderful and weird ways humans do, there are rules, and as a rule follower, I try and figure them out.
Frustratingly, most of the important rules don’t seem to be written down.
Take going to a Broadway show. One of the few inviolable sins that still seems to exist across cultures and political boundaries is that you don’t talk in a theater while the show’s on. Maybe you whisper to your spouse once in a while, but if somebody actually starts just yammering during the show, as if they were having coffee with their neighbor, every head in the place will turn and look with disdain. But there’s rarely a sign over the theater saying “Quiet Please.”
But once you get out of the theater, there’s a huge variation in the rules people internally adopt, are taught, fall into, aspire to, or break for effect. In the age of the internet – which is the antithesis of small down America where I live – everybody’s got their own stuff going on. And because of (insert your reasons for the meaning crisis here), most of what passes for communication between people seems to be Rhetoric.
Rhetoric vs. Dialog
Rhetoric is great, if you’re on the debate team. Rhetoric is “speaking to persuade” and it’s a skill. I’d argue it’s essentially a weapon. If you approach every conversation from a place of rhetoric, you’re walking around with knives out, looking for a fight.
Rhetoric is what dominates virtually all political and financial media. Nobody turns on the Halftime Report to hear the hosts say “Yeah, I got nothing.” Everyone has to have a “take.” Everyone’s trying to win. It’s a game I understand, and know how to play, when that’s the game everyone agrees we’re playing.
But mostly, I’m not interested in Rhetoric I’m interested in Dialog. Neoplatonic scholars like John Vervaeke are trying to resurrect the big fancy version of dialog, and I suspect he’s on to something with his sort of meta-modern version:
Dialogos is dialogue that affords a reciprocal flow state, also found in sparring and jazz, that foregrounds a collective intelligence generating shared and emergent sense-making, just as sparring and jazz train skills and perspectives one cannot generate on one’s own.
These are the kind of conversations that I have been blessed to have off and on for most of my career at places like Camp Kotok – an annual trip into the woods of Maine I’ve been taking with Cumberland’s David Kotok for years, at the conferences I’ve had the pleasure of speaking at and helped build over the years, or even in most of the companies I’ve worked in.
Learning is what gets me fired up. Dialog is learning together.
But I’ll be honest, I’ve never read any “rules of dialog.” I don’t have a poster I can put up that will keep a room from veering into Rhetoric and argument.
Oh there are *some* rules. At semi–private events like Camp Kotok, there are “keep people out of trouble” rules that get said out loud: The Chatham House Rule asserts that folks not quote, report, or even say who was there without permission. The Jackson Hole Rule says that by participating, you agree to walk away and “unhear” any information that’s clearly not intended for your ears. But those don’t ensure dialog happens.
But in talking to the charismatic leaders of the two most functional “dialog” groups I’m blessed to be part of – David Kotok’s Camp Kotok and related Global Interdependence Center events, and Ben Hunt’s Epsilon Theory community – I think I boiled this down to one idea.
Respect born of humility.
Respect is why you don’t talk in a Broadway show. It’s also why there’s not a lot of argument about it. In that environment, one person’s actions are clearly to the detriment of every other single human being in the room. So the loud-talker is a universal turd in the punchbowl.
And in that environment, those being disrespected generally will do what they always do: remove themselves from the situation or remove the disrespector from the situation. Which outcome happens tends to be based on the majority.
Here’s how David put it:
Criteria one: respect the other person, until they give you a reason to no longer respect them. You can disagree with them, with their perspective. But we should always be approaching this as an epistemological question that we are asking all the time: How do you know what you know? The fact is we don’t. Ever. We think we know. If we say “I know” we’re arrogant. Shame on you. – DK
It seems almost stupid to say it out loud, but hey, that’s on brand for me. The one rule is respect.
Of course, how that actually shows up in a big group of people has some nuance, and both David and Ben had some thoughts on how respect shows up in practice, in a group full of rowdy humans. Mostly, it’s theater-kid stuff from high school:
Yes, and …
Only upvotes, no downvotes. ‘yes, and’ conversations are the lifeblood of a healthy epistemic community and make possible the occasional ‘okay, but’ conversation. If you start with too many ‘okay, but’ conversations, it’s really hard to break out of that mold. -BH
I’m believe a diversity of views, exchanged civilly, always benefits those parties who have open minds, but never does anything for the people who’ve made up their mind, and don’t want to be confused with any facts. But redemption is always possible! – DK
Bad Actors and Bad Behavior
Performers get Curbed: People who are there for the commons [the group and it’s mission] and protect the commons belong in the commons. Those who piss on the commons or don’t work for the commons’ interest shouldn’t be there. The trick is to ignore the person who wants to be noticed by acting out; they have to be negged. If you show that the way to get noticed by the leader is to show care for the commons, everyone will start to show care for the commons. – BH
We have had a turd or two in the punchbowl. But what makes this gathering stronger is the recognition that all 50 people in the room are stars. You want to go be a star by yourself, don’t come here. You want to join a club? And behave yourself? And have discussions where we are going to capital-D-Disagree? Let’s do it civilly. And let’s learn from the other guy.
Let’s respect Chatham House rule in behavior. Let’s respect Jackson Hole rule in behavior. Let’s use what we were supposed to be taught when we were children: kindness, good taste, share everything. And do it thoughtfully. -DK
Into the Woods … or your backyard
While there’s a certain magic to being off the grid in a remote location surrounded by smart people, I’ve tried to bring this kind of thinking into much more mundane parts of my life. As someone who has difficulty connecting with people in the best of times, I do what humans always do – look for models of the world I can relate to, and more importantly, look for ways of making those connections.
Which is David’s second big rule – lean into the differences.
So number one. Respect. The second, recognize that we are an incomplete species. We are on a nonlinear curve – growing, changing, learning. We can each have political qualities – left or right – but we also have more we can explore. I love music. My music choice might be Mozart. Yours might be Beyoncé. Beyoncé gives me a headache. Mozart bores you. So let’s talk about that. That’s the whole issue … it doesn’t have to be about finance or economics or politics. Economics is a social science, not a mathematical science. -DK
That’s my commitment, as I emerge from a hot summer of re-evaluating everything: respect, curiosity, and an open mind. Or, as Ben Hunt says all the time: