Denis....I would have to disagree with your last post. asking someone
about the weather is not necessarily an intellectual activity in my
opinion. The gist I got from your post was that talking becomes an
intellectual activity when new information is exchanged or when the
communication serves more than just the social need to communicate.
Could it be that talking about the weather, when done as a purely
social interaction (i.e. I don't really care about the weather, but
feel the need to reach out to another human being) and becomes an
intellectual activity when done to find out information (i.e. I'm
going on a trip and knowing what the weather is like may be helpful in
my planning)? I've done both. Sometimes asking about the weather
serves no other purpose than to reach out. I might as well be asking
about the football game (I'm not a football fan, so asking about the
game, for me seems to ALWAYS be a social activity - i don't care who
won). However, when I have an outdoor gig, I ask about the weather
because the INFORMATION I might receive would be beneficial.
I'm confused when you discuss the difference between social and
intellectual regarding conversation. The take I get from what you
wrote about is that everyday communication (how are you? how's the
weather? etc) isn't purely social (but mostly social) because the
topic may veer off to something beyond the purely social need to
communicate. Could it be instead that communications such as "how's
the weather?" are static until they veer off to something else? (at
which point they could veer to another static area or we could trip
into dynamic land) and could the reason that purely social
conversations die off is because they are not dynamic. once they veer
off, they have the potential of becoming dynamic and therefore stay
alive. don't know if i'm phrasing this all very well (it's late) but
it seems that conversations are ruled by the same static/dynamic split
that everything else is. those conversations that are static are the
everyday chat we do to socialize and then there are those
conversations we have that challenge us, inspire us, motivate us -
dynamic conversations.
a side note....years ago, a room mate of mine did an exercise for one
of his psych classes. for a week, whenever someone asked how he was
(generally a purely social activity - i mean, how often do we REALLY
want to know exactly how someone else is doing when we ask that?) he
would tell them. exactly how he was. in detail. he got some very
strange responses. people seemed to resent the information (don't get
me wrong, he wasn't going on ad naseum, he just let them know exactly
how he was). imagine telling a store clerk all about your day when
they ask "how are you today?" (a social nicety)
well....bed calls. be good and live responsibly.
Shalom
David Lind
Trickster@postmark.net
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