Leading UK psychologist and accomplished author and TV and radio presenter, Ros Taylor, ponders the art of conversation
With Alex Salmond’s launch of his national Conversation about the future of Scotland, it is worth pondering on the state of conversations generally. When asked recently if I felt as a nation we are talking to each other less, my immediate response was yes. When travelling on the shuttle to London, I would in the past while away the journey and delays with enlightening conversations with neighbouring passengers. Not any more. They are usually asleep before take-off or if awake, they work.
However, on further reflection, perhaps our conversations have just changed rather than diminished. We email, blog and have internet conversations but just perhaps less face-to-face contact. the trouble with this reliance on technology is that it leads to special interest groups speaking to each other but without the cross-fertilisation of differing ideas and input. This leads to silo thinking and in terms of purposeful conversations, it is not as fulfilling.
So why are conversations of any sort good for us? The obvious is that speech makes us human and allows us to make contact and bond with each other. But are we speaking about a chat or a good blether over the fence? I think a conversation is more than that. It is mental stimulation, an expression of sameness or difference, an exchange of views.
I was recently on a 17-hour flight to meet a delegation in China. not a journey to contemplate with equanimity especially, dare I say it, on Air China whose stewardesses’ idea of customer service was to shout at you. however, sitting next to me was Maria from Belfast. She was an acupuncturist who was going to work for six months in Beijing. I knew nothing about her specialty but after a 17-hour seminar, I certainly had a clearer idea about Chinese medicine and a cured headache by her doing something interesting with my thumb. Clearly it is this kind of quite profound conversing rather than mere chatter that is on the First Minister’s mind.
Are us Scots good at such conversations? A YouGov survey about community revealed that Scots were more likely to know the names of neighbours and have neighbourhood involvement (31 per cent) than the British average (14 per cent)
Are us Scots good at such conversations? A YouGov survey about community revealed that Scots were more likely to know the names of neighbours and have neighbourhood involvement (31 per cent) than the British average (14 per cent) 
. However, when it comes to striking up a conversation with people we don’t know then the percentage drops to 12 per cent. So we are good at talking to people like us, not strangers. So the implication must be that we enjoy speaking only to like minds.
A common conversation I have with taxi drivers in Edinburgh is when they ask where I have flown in from. When I invariably mention London, the normal response is ‘you’ll be hating that then’. When I dare to reply that au contraire, I rather like the combination of Edinburgh and London in my life, the conversation ceases.
So there is a paradox that exists in conversation. We like to talk to people like us who share commonalities and those that we well....like. And yet for deep public conversations, it really requires us to listen to those who do not share our opinions and to whom we might not readily cleave. How can that be done? It isn’t easy. At a wedding in New York recently, a woman at our table commented at how well George Bush was doing as President. This was greeted with complete silence till one by one, guests from as far afield as Australia, Italy and South America, disagreed. As more people joined in the argument, it was clear that this poor American was outnumbered. Did those at the table ask her why she believed he was a good President or even suggest she give details of his successes? No sirree. They grew more vociferous and bullied her into submission.
Could she have held her own in the debate? I think if she had claimed to be the only indigenous native at the table and so was more likely to know what she was talking about or if she had used the famous broken record technique, where you reiterate your point three times till everyone shuts up then perhaps, we might have listened. But the incident did reveal to me the dislike that people, even intelligent ones, have for the opposing view which must be demolished rather than
considered.
Perhaps we get this from the very architecture of politics which in Britain especially is adversarial. This has spilled over into the media and even ‘good’ programmes like Newsnight take an aggressive stance and delight in destroying people and opinion.
So is there another way?
I was in San Francisco a number of years ago at a conference and met a former American diplomat who had negotiated the Salt Peace Treaty with the Russians. The negotiators all knew each other as the cold war – and the negotiations - had gone on for some time. This particular bout of talks was taking place just before Christmas and traditionally, they would batter the opposition till some small point was agreed and vice versa. Both parties would then retire to their respective rooms to brainstorm the next set of demands. During a particularly lengthy and abortive session, an American voiced his displeasure at missing yet another family holiday. ‘Why don’t we work out what the Russians want for a change, we know them well enough, make sure we get our core demands, give the rest away and get home for Christmas’. So they listed all the things they believed the Russians wanted. It came to 98. Of that list, there were two major issues that the Americans wanted to address. I can’t remember the details but it was something like arms proliferation and underground nuclear testing.
On returning to the discussions the Russians said, ‘we have 98 demands’ and the Americans replied, ‘yes, we know and e are giving you 96 of them’. Well that changed things! Both sides went on to talk about the two core issues and all went home for Christmas. The diplomat suggested that this was the reason that Gorbachev and Reagan were suddenly signing accords on the White House lawn. This technique of moving to the other side to see another’s point of view is now called the Harvard Negotiation and has been used by negotiators round the world, most notably by De Clerk and Mandela for South Africa. Apparently during their discussions when nerves were frayed, they would both point to a banner that read: Do what’s best for South Africa’ and back they would go to negotiate.
So how can we do what’s best for Scotland? How can we step to another’s side to see differing points of view?
I am not sure that blogs and emails, podcasts and internet sites fulfil that proposition. My feeling is that they sustain polarity. Am I old fashioned to believe you need to meet people to hear diverse views to be able to carve a way forward? But where should that be?
Samuel Jones of Demos when looking into putting conversations at the heart of the public domain concluded that people are not talking about public affairs less but they are engaging less frequently in the means by which such conversations become public.
When the Royal Society of the Arts wanted to raise conversations about community they went to Starbucks to utilise their coffee houses. I took part, helping to facilitate one of the community challenges. Amongst the many ideas to emerge that could diminish litter was a designer bag to replace plastic for the local market. This was long before queues for the Anya Hindmarsh variety. So there were tangible outcomes.
The Electoral Commission also discovered that Britons who take an interest in political issues were more likely to discuss them in the local pub than at a political meeting. So pub and coffee shop are perhaps where such discussions about the future of Scotland should take place - somewhere comfortable rather than a draughty hall and somewhere we all meet to chat anyway. The Sunday Times recently ran a piece about a rise in community spirit in England as a result of the flooding. Suddenly people were talking to each other, running errands and inviting neighbours round. I like to think that Scots don’t require a natural disaster to talk. They just need the presence of another person. But the conversations do need to be made public to move the nation on. Perhaps a conversation co-ordinator can inspire conversations to take place and outcomes recorded; a kind of formal informality.
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