Observations: We don’t talk any more

Siddharth Maganty
Aug 8, 2017 · 3 min read
An artist’s depiction of a teenage Japanese recluse, AKA Hikikomori

People today mistake openness for desperation. It is true, I have seen it happen. If one is open and eager to converse, one gives off the wrong impression. One is thought desperate and considered over-eager. Well, I ask you this- why is looking forward to honest conversation suddenly a bad thing?


Today, we suffer a profound disconnect from our real selves. The internet has no short supply of people you could be or even, would rather be. We have the world’s knowledge on offer through the web, and though we don’t admit it, we are overwhelmed by it.

The issue is people learn too much and try to be all that they learn. In the process, they sacrifice introspection and self-realization.This in turn means one never wholly profits from one’s experiences. Therefore, regardless of how much one learns, one is perennially engaged in a lost battle. What is the point of knowledge when it deludes and confuses? Knowledge is for one to master and employ, not something to which one capitulates.

A symptom of this is guarded socializing. One is locked in a constant attempt to build an air of mystery around oneself. Playing hard to get, they call it. This is a vacuous practice I loathe. Time has become a currency and people converse from their brains. Everything one says is planned and measured. Hunches, thoughts and sweet nothings rot in a prison for nobody lends voice to them any more. People allege that real conversation swallows their time without the decency of offering returns on their investments. What a farce! Human experience is the greatest teacher which no investment of time can ever truly justify. Don’t trust me on that, trust Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul.

Naipaul (R) on one of his trips

Although primarily a writer of fiction, Naipaul garnered global acclaim for his incisive travel writing. He is widely credited with having reinvented the genre with his work.
He followed a simple procedure. Every place he visited, he first put up at a decent hotel. Then, he made it a point to visit a few local eateries and strike conversation with his fellow patrons. Soon, he would procure appointments with them to discuss their opinions on the country. Then, he would travel the place and verify the truth behind those views, often cross-checking with other locals.
Without honest, unguarded and impulsive conversation, his work would have never achieved fruition. One could not have gained such pertinent information from books or, in today’s context, the web. Unbridled human experience and conversation are key to our progress as free thinking beings. Naipaul could not have done this by shying away from conversation and playing hard to get.

In a nutshell, mystery is a silly concept. This is a small world and we lack in time. Why create more red tape in a world already garlanded by it? As Malcolm London famously observed in High School Training Ground, social lines today feel like barbed wire. It is up to all of us, across social lines to liberate ourselves from this meaninglessness.

Sometimes, conversation humiliates. Other times, it hurts and ridicules and depresses. Nonetheless, I never fail to see the charm in it. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it magic for it is not that inexplicable. It is simple, really, and irreplaceable. For all my life, however long it may be, I intend to talk to as many people from as many places as I can. We must all try and do this. Nothing else can cure humanity of its delusions.

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