the art of blather

What I was wondering about in conversation is why people would generally prefer to talk than to listen, inasmuch as when you are listening you are learning something, but when you are speaking you are just hearing the same stuff you already know.,Wouldn't evolution have favored the listeners because they would learn more and be able to survive longer and bear more children etc etc?

Old Dog has pointed out that when we speak we are putting our thoughts together and therefore constructing a more cogent map of the world in our mind.  I think there is a lot of truth in that except that it seems like most blowhards are just saying the same thing over and over.

I suppose we talk at different times for different reasons.  I was mostly talking about like bar talk.  I will enter the seminar tonight with a few tidbits of news, I imagine Old Dog will also have some.  If one of us goes on too long about something the other one isn't interested in, the other one will find a way to change the conversation.  Beagles has a point there where if I want to talk about my cat, I'll ask somebody how their dog is doing and let them blab on about their stupid animal because I expect when they are done they will ask me about my adored Mr Fluffy, and then I will get to go on and on,.  Some people never get around to responding that way and they drive me nuts.

I don't know that interruptions are more common now than they were a decade ago in my regular conversations, but they have gotten out of hand in political talk shows.  I blame it on the Foxies, that was their habit whenever they invited some unaware liberal on their shows and then they would shout over him, and they got to like it so they shouted over each other, and then when they got invited onto other tv shows they shouted over the people there, and then the other pundits also took up that behavior.  I don't know why they don't take up the time honored Chicago way of turning off the blatherers microphone.


You know another irritating thing about sooper dooper phones is that suddenly all the attention is on the idiot blip blipping those tiny buttons and you have to sit there twiddling your thumbs while they do whatever they do and that doesn't work so they try this. that's why it's good to have more than two people so that the others can just move on and leave the blip blipper behind.

Old Dog I don't know how good conversation is at conflict resolution, it seems as many conflicts get started by them as get resolved by them.

When I was in Austin in 1986 they were celebrating the sesquicentennial of the Alamo.  Mexico had a cannon that they pried from Davy Crockett's cold dead hands, and the Texans wanted it back, but the Mexicans were all like when hell freezes over.  I was in the habit of eating breakfast in a cafeteria in the basement of one of one of their government buildings and when I went there one day the place was filled with Mexican soldiers.  Oh my God, they're coming back for more cannons I thought, but it turned out that they were only eating breakfast.