TEDX Pearl River Preparations

I'm working on my remarks for the TEDx Pearl River event coming up next week in Hong Kong and getting jazzed about it.

 

I'll be speaking on the strategic power of conversation (my all time favorite topic) and am having fun reviewing all the latest on the subject.

What is not fun is considering what has happened to dialog in general.  Do you have the same impression that I have?  That there is little conversation going on...anywhere?

Seems to me that our world right now is locked in what Deborah Tannen calls an “Argument Culture.”  She says “our spirits are corroded by living in an atmosphere of unrelenting contention.” 

And she said that back in 1998, over 12 years ago!…

 

Americans right now can’t seem to find our way out of this argument culture. I’ve never experienced anything like this in my lifetime.  And it is not just in America.  The  French are—again—involved in crippling strikes all over France.  And the English have taken to the barricades, too.  And many others in countries around the globe are on strike or about to be.  I sat next to a South Korean journalist last night at a dinner in New York and he told me Koreans are furious at their parliament, and at each other.  He says people there are screaming in the tabloids, cursing each other through emails and on websites and on television—everyone seems to be angry at someone.  Some are angry at everyone.  They are just plain mad and they utter words filled with insinuation, denunciation, repudiation. 

So It’s happening from New York to rural villages in China.  This argument culture is spreading all over the world, I guess. 

Plutarch told us that “anger is worse than undiluted wine in producing undisciplined and disagreeable results.”

This is the winter of our discontent, as Shakespeare said in Richard III. 

 

In this discontent, when we let anger take the lead, we render conversation impossible.   No progress can come from such undisciplined argument.  And what a pity, because not only can conversation solve problems (virtually all problems, in my view), it is downright pleasurable.  One of the great pleasures of life.

Sigh.

Comments

[Terrence Annamunthodo]

Dear Susan,

Thanks for a great presentation on the weekend. I planned to thank you in person but couldn't find you. The decline of public discourse is worrying. You should be on the airwaves reminding us how to engage and listen. There is too much eagerness to get our own point of view out without listening to that of others.

[Susana Ferrão]

Hello Susan,

First its a pleasure finding you, next sorry for my bad English.

I´m Mozambicane - Africa, but Im descende from Portuguese...

I´m a HR consultant where I find this problem to.
I ´m working on it on my coaching and it´s nice to year someone that think about that to, even so far way. we really need to improved the way we communicate, more and more... because is not getting better.

we are a growing word, but we are unhappy people, like you said. we have more ways to communicate but we are communicating badly, in my country its a way of being... in the society, the government, in the street, everywhere I dont know if you already ear about Mozambique.

I have a 7th daughter and in her school its the same, and Im talking about one of the best schools in Moz.,,, people don't respect wish other, they cant communicate and the children are growing in this, even the parents in the school reunion dont respect, don't talk correct, its incredible. I´m in the parents association and the president she dosent ear anyone, its crazy she´s there to help and just don't ear anyone, she should be our way of communicated with the school.

I dont know if that is cultural, I think so, but I really thinking about´t, I reading about, Im changing my coaching and leadership lessons to trie to speak about and make a difference in my clients way of work, but I don´I know if I can really make a difference because I fell i´m fighting with a wall, our word are seek.

And I believe we have wall to change, and we have to start that from the way we teach our children ate the school at the university etc etc we have to talk louder about that problem in the world., and everything starts from the respect for th others, culturally, socially, etcetc...

I´m happy to finally find someone that speak about one of the biggest problems of the humanity actually, because everything starts on that, the way we don´t communicate, and the reasons above, why... and what we loose on this process.

Hope you understand my bad english words...

Regards,

Susana Ferrão