Mortimer Adler ★ How to Speak and How to Listen. The wisest person I have ever seen.

These skills are essential liberal arts skills that are not present in our schools today Repetition of composition can become a deadly conversation and falter and fade People participating in it are unable to convey from one point to another What the ultimate goal of any good meaningful conversation is to produce a meeting of minds. Welcome to this

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and learn program packed with useful information. This session is designed to dramatically increase your knowledge on the topic and give you ideas and knowledge that you can put into practice immediately as with In all

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We've structured the show to be under 45 minutes, which our research shows is the optimal listening period, so we won't take too much of your time away. Of course, we can't hope to present

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ything there is to know in a short session like this, but we will give you all the important highlights so that you have a good overview when you have completed the session to learn more. listen to the message at the end of this cassette ok, let's begin let's listen, learn and enjoy Mortimer J. Adler has a doctorate from Columbia University since 1928 he is a philosopher, professor, lecturer, author of 29 books, president of the editorial board of the Encyclopedia British, as well as founder and director of the Chicago Institute for Philosophical Research dr.

Adler's years-long concern about the importance of the untaught skill of listening well and effectively prompted the writing of his useful new book How to Talk, How to Listen, as well as the material for this cassette in this program dr. Mortimer Adler

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s to a live audience Forty-three years ago, in 1940. I wrote a book that became an overnight bestseller and has sold steadily

ever

since. That was how you read a book. I wrote it because I knew him very well and because he was in the educational business. and teaching profession for many years at that time, if young people are not taught to read in our school, not even in our universities, I also felt that this could help schools to better teach reading, as well as allow adults who had not received instruction in the art of reading in schools to develop that skill for themselves and their adult lives.

Of all the books I've written, I've written about thirty, wasn't Sunset the most rewarding experience of my entire writing career because I paid the cost of the forty-three years since that book was published, I've heard it all the country and abroad books translated into 11 languages ​​how much it has benefited people how it has helped them in the reading business and reading important books I should have continued this many years ago in the book I have now written , published a month ago, how to

speak

and how to listen because the four arts the four arts of using language the four skills and the use of language for communication purposes of all kinds are so closely related writing and reading are a pair speaking and listening another I think I postponed because of the difficulty of saying useful things about listening if all of these to write read speak listen the most difficult thing that if any skill is listening and you still know how poor listeners everyone is if you don't consider yourself poor.

I think you think all your associates don't listen well, but I show you that we are all guilty of not listening most of the time. which we seem to be listening to in a moment. I was going to give the book a title by thinking while listening. I decided not because most people think while they listen, but not about that, what they are listening to in centuries before ours, perhaps the At the beginning of the century, certainly, in the 19th century and before, these basic skills were taught in school, in fact, these skills are the essential liberal arts skills that are not present in our schools today, for example, reading is taught and elementary school is taught. level up to the 4th or 6th grade and not beyond the city writing degree, we have rudimentary composition courses and when composition is taught in high school or college it is not the type of composition that makes much sense, it is writing creative, I mean the one thing that should be taught to children is creative writing, what they should be taught is simple expository prose how to write a letter how to write a document be read to understand but reading and writing are taught more than to speak and listen.

Of course, some speech courses, but very few, and the only subject that is not taught anywhere in the school is listening, so obviously our students in school and you and your lives spent a good part of your time listening and yet this is the only thing in which we have the least skill sperry rand corporation these same corporations now call i have been announcing the importance in business of training those who participate in any way in communities to listen well there are statistics In this regard, they study the matter very closely, as Perry reports in one of his pamphlets the following facts that in our lives we learn to listen first in childhood and that listening occupies around 46 percent of our time and although it is obviously the predominant thing that We do, the least of all these skills we are taught to speak is to learn then. in childhood and occupies about thirty percent of our time, almost as little taught as listening, reading, which is learned before writing, practiced more frequently than writing, occupies about fifteen percent of our time, compared with nine percent of writing, but again there is less instruction. dedicated to it rather than writing and writing, which is what we like the least compared to the other three, is the one that occupies the English courses most of the time.

Let me be sure that you understand why speaking and listening and, in particular, the type of speech. listening involves a two-way conversation when people talk to each other in a conversation or in a discussion it is much more difficult than reading and writing when I write a book I write it in my study I am not in front of an audience I have an audience in mind, but there is no a direct confrontation with an audience and when you are reading a book you are in the presence of the writer, in addition, when you are reading a book or reading anything, you can make your own speed you can put the reading mounted. down, pick it up again, look at it for a while, go back, turn the pages back, read what you read before to check what you have read, but when speaking and listening think that you are listening as you did now, you have to listen in the speed that I dictate to you you have to follow me while I speak I speak fast or slow in any case you can't stop me say that we should go back a moment and say what she had three minutes ago you can't do that as you can Turn the pages back, you must listen and listening at the speed at which I speak and listening in a direct flow without any investment, that's what makes listening more difficult, I think then I read while looking at the whole talking and listening thing, I decided.

It was divided into two parts, on the one hand, there is what I will call uninterrupted speech. I am giving an uninterrupted speech and as I give this under the speech, you are listening quietly at the end of the hour, I hope. we have a question and answer period in that case it is no longer the auditor of the speech in my room silencing on his part there is a two-way conversation and a kind of forum that we will have at the end of this conference is something quite different The thing about uninterrupted speech and the silent listening and two-way conversation happens here in this room, it happens in other rooms, it happens in your offices, it happens wherever people gather to discuss any topic and I'm going to vote the first part of my time to The first section of this topic It is listening silently and uninterrupted and then the most important thing, which I think is of greatest importance to us, is

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al, business and public life, the two-way conversation, the conversation or the discussion when speaking, one has one of two purposes, the sales talk and the other. forms of persuasive speech the lecture and other forms of instructive speech now in a sense both persuasion but we normally use the word persuasion when we deal with this chain make people act in a certain way for something bend in a certain way adopt a policy change their attitudes or your feelings business a big part of someone's presentation of something is a persuasive talk of the sales talk variety is an attempt to get people to act a certain way feel a certain way a certain attitude as opposed to that If this lecture, for example, is a form of instructive discourse.

My goal is not to make you act a certain way or feel a certain way or take a certain shape, as I am trying to inform your mind. I'm trying to maybe give you something. understanding that you didn't have before gives you some knowledge and after some understanding you shouldn't before, so every speech, every speech beneath the speech, is persuasive with the goal of producing actions or changes in feelings and attitudes or changes instructive in mental knowledge and understanding and insight, let me try first and then with a persuasive speaker. I don't know how much of your business affairs are involved in sales or advertising, but as chairman of the board, it does seem that way, Tanika, I've spent a good chunk of it. from my time talking to the sales force and telling them what the art of selling anything entails, the interesting thing is that what I'm going to tell you now was said 25 centuries ago, less than 25 centuries ago by Aristotle in the 4th century.

BC wrote a book called rhetoric, which is a name for the art of persuasion, and he said that in any effort to persuade someone to sell you anything, I'm going to use that common item selling because persuasion is selling someone anything. thing or persuade him. They are five Greek words that you can easily remember because the five words are very short in the order in which they have been discussed the mind f us pathos logos taxes Lexus F us have us logos taxes Lexus FS is the Greek word for character character of

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pathos for emotions and feelings like your nice logos logic for reasons and arguments imposed for the Lexus structure for style in any form of persuasive presentation or sale those are the five factors and the first is the most important because without it nothing else happens when you try Sell ​​Anyone, anything political, commercial and a business venture, you must first establish your own character with them as attractive and trustworthy.

If I don't care for you, don't you think you're trustworthy? If you don't believe that your customers don't like you, they don't listen in a way, you should say acquiescent, so the first thing any salesperson has to do is establish the character of the speaker, make him attractive, trustworthy, a trustworthy character only after Of having done it. You turn to pathos and because you know that what you are trying to get the other person to do or the audience to read an ad is to feel a certain way, you have to awaken the emotions, the emotions that you want to use to it leads towards the goal that you want to achieve if it is a product that you are trying to sell you want to arouse positive emotions towards that product the emotional juices that flow in that direction and until the emotional juices flow in that direction there is no point in getting any argument, well, God shows up, don't start arguing first, first, make yourself attractive, second, you arouse the emotions of your audience in the right direction and only then, thirdly, you care about the arguments, the reasons came first. would not be listened to at all those are the three main points F us pathos and logos and taxes simply means a clear and coherent organization what you have to say in any presentation the order is important what you say first what you say second what you say the third must be clearly ordered and as for Lexus, which is the style in the simplest rollerball, so simple that none of us can follow it, the English critic and poet Samuel Johnson stated, he said that good writing, good speech , is simply putting the right word in the right place is very difficult to do, most people put the wrong word in the right place or put too many words where there is no place for them, so the brain, so concise and succinct, you are clearly putting the right word in the right place. place saying just that and one of the things that ruins most people's speech is that they say much more than necessary and lose their audience by returning to that great American corporate spirit.

I formulated five or six listening rules that I think of in a way through PD their rules are rules or things to avoid. The first thing to avoid that makes you a bad listener is to pay more attention to the speaker's gestures, the speech and then the substance of what is said. Secondly, manyPeople do this and we shouldn't do it. If they appear to be paying attention to the speaker while allowing their minds to wonder about something else, another thing one should avoid is allowing all kinds of distractions, the same ones that draw the speaker's attention in the speech and overreact. to certain words or phrases that provoke an adverse emotional response: one is then predisposed to be negative when his prejudice about what the speaker is actually saying and another should not allow his initial lack of interest to prevent him from hearing the speaker's explanation about why that.

It is important and it should be interesting and the worst of all is listening to a speech, listening to a statement and nothing more than an occasion to indulge and daydream and therefore not listen to anything, one of the two recommendations that I would like to make to you Your point is that in any person's speech two things are likely to happen: one is the use of some special term some private language a kind of jargon and when you listen to a speaker he used words that are foreign to you, your duty upon your duty is to explain how I did it when I used those five Greek words, I told them what they meant if I just used them and I did it without not communicating at all, but some speakers don't You don't explain their special words and your job as a listener is to notice those words and you have the opportunity to say what you meant with that word.

You can't read intelligently if you encounter a strange word. You don't know its meaning. Don't listen intelligently if you hear strange words and don't ask about their meaning and most speakers and any type of speech have hidden assumptions. Your job as a listener is to hammer home or detect the assumptions the speaker is making, and if he hasn't drawn attention to them, then it's his job to draw attention to them. There are certain special recommendations I would like to add about listening to a sales talk. Everyone who speaks must have some sales skill, but we are all being sold all the time.

We must have some skill in sales resistance. If we are pushovers in a sales talk, we are not exercising our minds properly to avoid being pushovers. To convince in a sales talk you will first have four questions in mind: What is it? the speaker is trying to sell, in other words, what he is trying to get me to do or feel, secondly, why the speaker thinks this appeal should deter me, what reasons he offers, what support he offers for his appeal, thirdly, what points What do I think are relevant, what points do I think are relevant to talking about the dimension of failure, what does he not say that could influence me one way or another and, finally, when the speaker has completed his persuasive speech, what questions are important to me.

Hasn't he answered what questions I have in mind that he hasn't paid attention to? What should I ask? Move from silent listening and speech to two-way conversation. There are a wide variety of conversations we engage in. There are two kinds. I'm not going to talk about that because one, because freshmen I think are not of great interest to you and the other I think is too difficult to deal with in a general way, the kind that I hope is not of interest to you. Cocktail talk is a social service but it has no substance, what's wrong because I have to confess that I hate cocktails.

I am forced to go to one. I find a chair in the corner and sit down hoping someone will be ignored if someone sits comfortably. go to that corner and sit with me, but the business of standing with a glass in your hand moving about in idle chatter I think is a very unpleasant thing. I'm not going to talk about conversations at cocktail parties and this often happens at dinner parties, conversations that are too playful. the kind of conversation that I assume is part of social services but has no substance, whether it's the noise of the cocktail party or even the dinner table, is great, but I often say yes or no to questions I haven't heard, but the other guy.

From a conversation to a conversation that I can't stand because it is so different for each individual is what I call a heart to heart conversation. I remember my parents when I was acting out as a teenager and they would say to me my father I would like you to come into the living room I want to have a heart to heart conversation with you you knew something was going on at that moment and sometimes husbands tell their wives and wives say to their husbands or lovers they say to each other I want to have a heart to heart conversation and they use the word heart to heart.

I think significantly heart to heart conversation is enough for them, a mind to mind conversation, a heart to heart conversation is where the emotions of both people are expressed. They are involved and want to talk about those emotions and deal with them openly and honestly, which I think varies from person to person. There are no general rules. I think the only thing that can be said about heart-to-heart conversations is that one should be as honest as possible. what one can about one's own emotions and the understanding is what one can about the emotions that others are trying to express, which leaves what I am going to call serious conversations of my mind and they are as in the In the case of persuasive speech related with action or in the case of the instructional space related to understanding and changing mindset, here are some general rules that I think are applicable to both types of two-way conversation, all the conversations that we have in an era, I think.

You recognize how much of our time is spent on everything in business in two-way conversations with our associates and therefore being able to get it right. I think it is of great practical importance. Here are some rules of thumb, first choose the right place and occasion for a conversation that provides enough time to continue and is free from the annoyance of distracting or distracting distractions. I'm sure everyone has had the experience of making an appointment with someone to have an important conversation. you walk into his or her office and discover that he or she has not told the secretary to cut off the phone calls you said that your calls come in an interrupted conversation he or she makes a call or answers our call and that is not the way to conduct a conversation the simple decency of politeness means having a conversation, everything else would be ruled out for the moment, unless it is a Dyer agency matter, you should know in advance what kind of conversation you are carrying on Is it a two-way persuasive conversation?

I tried I should say influence of the other person's actions or attitudes Are you trying to give them some kind of information or instruction? with all of them I have learned, for example, when I am involved in philosophical discussions, not to discuss philosophical topics with religious topics or theological topics with people who I know have closed minds on the subject, there is no point in doing so if you believe that the person you are with whoever is speaking is not going to change their mind, there is no point in talking to them and yet we often engage in such fruitless conversational activities, plus certain topics are indisputable and therefore one should avoid discussing them from the two types.

What should never be discussed are the facts. If the question is a matter of fact, don't discuss it. Go to the dictionary. Also look for another word. Go to the encyclopedia to find out that the fact is really being considered, but spending time discussing the facts is a waste. Most of the time to determine the facts discussion is not the means and the other thing that is indisputable is purely a matter of taste. I have heard discussions between peoples, whether it is French cuisine or Italian cuisine, whether it is French cuisine or Chinese cuisine. It is better there is no better where it is good it is better if you like it and when something comes down to personal likes and dislikes that is not a topic of discussion.

I might be interested in asking what you like and you tell me that's all. I should try to persuade you not to like it it doesn't make sense that in any conversation don't listen to yourself alone I'm sure we all have the experience of conversations that proceed as follows brown brown speaks while Jones remains silent without listening to what he says says Brown, that just wait, wait politely for Brown to finish, at which point Jones enters the conversation with a statement of something on his mind that may never have much to do with what Brown just said as Jones speaks.

Brown politely alters the weights, but he does it. He doesn't listen when Jones finishes the round and then he expands and what he said before or something else is in his mind and the conversation is like two turns one person as if neither had heard the other both just seemed to be listening while thinking what they wanted say the following when you get a chance to talk that's not conversation at all this is the worst kind of fake conversation closely related that's the rule for answering questions I do every summer I've been doing it since 1951 executive seminars in Aspen are very few minutes of studies in Aspen and in those seminars sent by their corporations are the top executives of this country president of the board senior vice president executive vice president knows one of junior rank at all these are men of mature age and I am at the top of the ladder in business and yet I have to tell them on the first day and repeat on the second day until the end of the third day that they must listen to a question before answering it, most people answer a question. as a signal to speak and say what they think regardless of what the question was asked and while taking the questions if we are a bell rating and the bell says when the softest bell speaks and they say what they think if when that happens at an Aspen seminar, tell them I don't think the question can.

I repeat the question and sometimes I have to repeat the question two, three or four times before someone answers the question on the third day of the seminar. seminars listen to the question and realize that they do not say what they think when asked the question like a bell with someone, an action on their part, but rather they have to pay attention to the question and repeat it, people usually answer questions They don't understand very important rules to say if you don't understand the question, could you repeat it again? say it another way. There is no point in answering a question that is not fully understood by the speaker.

It is important to use energy and in questions, most of us are lazy, we ask the question carelessly and wait for an answer. I tell you from experience that asking a good question is the hardest thing you have to do and you may have to ask the question three or four different ways before you capture the other person's mind. Don't dismiss the question hoping for an answer. You may have to repeat the question in several other forms of expression with different examples to achieve this. answered question if there are questions and answers in the conversation, the loss of time is enormous when the questions are not answered and when the questions are not understood and this requires a lot of attention on the part of both the listener and the speaker.

I don't think I can overemphasize the importance of actively and carefully using a mind in this matter while saying that, let me say another thing that I should have mentioned before, one of the reasons why most people don't listen and, Often, they don't read either. although they may think that they are doing both, since they consider listening and reading to be passive, while they consider speaking and writing to be active when one writes, what do I have to put a pen to paper or hit a typewriter, when should I use your muscles and when. one speaks I am physically active when I speak but you can sit there while you listen and that is why you think it is passive I assure you that the task of listening and reading is writing and speaking or speaking and writing in that order exactly what is catch and the diamond baseball to throw if the catcher has no skill and catch the baseball battery is not good, the receiving end of the diamond must perform as well as the pitcher, now he often cannot catch the ball. four pitches for a wild pitch, but his ability requires him to be as active as possible.

Now listening and reading are as active as speaking and writing. I've never read a book that I think is important to read. I'm going to talk about the books. I go to bed at night to go to sleep as soon as I can put the books down I think it's important to read them I'm a storyteller but without a pencil in hand either making fun of the book or making fun prepared taking notes and you can't listen well either without taking notes now they're obviously done in quick exchanges one does not take notes better by listening to anything you want to understand or remember or pay attention to what you have to be intellectually active and that intellectual activity has to be expressed physically in some way form of drug to do it it is important a rule that I violate everything time I have to confess you should not interrupt the other person while they are speaking I interrupt because I am impatient I think I know what the pressure is to say although I do not want to wait from the end you see that it is a very annoying habitfor my part and I have tried to correct it but impatience is part of my nervous system and I find it very difficult not to interrupt but it is wrong, it is wrong, no matter how slowly the other person speaks, how much time their moral obligation requires, their civility, wait until they're done before entering the conversation, don't be rude by engaging in a side conversation with another person while you should be listening to the person. whoever is speaking, on the other hand, do not be too polite, one should always be polite in the tone and way of expressing oneself, as excessive politeness should not prevent them from saying what one has in mind again.

People are too polite, they don't do it at all. They express what they think and have not performed correctly, they hesitate to say what is on their mind because they think it might be offensive, but obviously, if it is on your mind, it is important that you find a way to say it civilly, not in a rude way, but anyway saying and Not quite, if any of you have ever been in a business meeting and acted as chairman or chairman of said meeting again, politeness gets in the way of how I have

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poorly conducted business meetings because the chair leaves too much free for everyone The duty of a chair is to run the meeting, keep it to the point, keep it on point, say that, so I'm sorry, what you're saying is not relevant.

Blessed table, if we could have the opportunity to return to it. Not doing it because we don't want to step on someone's toes again is ruinous. The purpose of meetings to discuss business and consideration is surprising and therefore strict observance of the rules of relevance and order should not be feared for excessive politeness if we suppose that your business meeting lasts half an hour per hour. It must have a beginning in the middle and, again, business meetings are often run poorly because the agenda is not well prepared the meeting is not open with the right point it does not progress as it should and it does not reach a conclusion that is the conclusion that must be reached in that meeting in all forms of conversation, beyond these simple rules, there are two more types of rules, rules for using the mind effectively and rules for controlling emotions, let me try with the rules for using mine, if you want. you are an active participant in the discussion conversation your first obligation is to focus on the question to consider what the problem is to resolve the issue to resolve the issue to explore if the issue is complex there are a number of relevant components that involved in the conversation should think about dividing it into its parts label them and put them in some water this is equivalent to saying let's go back to this first after we have solved that let's move on to the second point and then let's move on to the third and last point that we want to consider that type of order is again very useful very practical is terribly important again we all fail is if the topic of what is on the table is clear we should stick to it not talk about something else not be irrelevant it is not that our conversation deviates in other directions, on the other hand, it is very important , even if we stick to the topic, not beat it to death, sometimes it is discussed too much and this repetition on the same point takes time instead of seeing that the topic has already been solved. discussed they move on to the next point they keep going around the same point the repetition in the conversation can become deadly the conversation can falter and fade away if the person is involved in it they cannot move from one point to another one of the most obvious fallacies we can commit I think the two I want to draw attention to is your authority sighting and ad hominem argument you may have read in a book by a famous author something that you think is relevant but think you are winning the argument by citing authority. of that person it is wrong that the authorities do not have to wait thinking indecently what has weight is what is said about the person but not the name of the person who said it, we often try to win an argument or make our point relying on the, say, honorific character of the name whose authority we mention the other mistake we make is to argue that in holman we make irrelevant references to another person's origins or their political affiliations or their businesses Whitaker associates his occupation or his personal habits with aspects of your life that have nothing to do with the topic being discussed, all of these tactics are examples of the type of argument called the ad hominem fallacy of arguing against the person instead of talking about the topic.

By the way, one way of this is that when I call a bedfellow argument you tell someone else if you say you should agree with Hitler as if that settles the matter if they discredit the point you are trying to make. Hitler may be a disreputable person in the eyes of everyone present, but that does not mean that Hitler was necessarily wrong about everything. I take the extreme case of Hitler, but that sort of thing of associating the person you're arguing against with someone you think will generally be despised by the people involved in the argument is not a relevant argument.

People who engage in conversation often resort to taking the vote, say how many of you agree with me, well, let's say our five people present and four people agree with you and one doesn't, it doesn't matter, that doesn't matter. weight, I mean, when already, yes often one can be right and the majority of six can often be wrong counting noses in the discussion is not a way to resolve the point at issue now if it is a practical matter and if the person in charge of the meeting has made a decision and the person is involved in the meeting our response would be to make the decision, then the decision needs to be made, we recognize why you are voting, you will never decide a theoretical point, however, between truth and falsehood , but sometimes to get the kind of decision that is imperative if action must be taken, let me back away from this to the emotional aspects of an argument, I think probably most of us are at fault here, most of us are willing to I confess my own faults here and it is terribly difficult to correct them, but I think we should try.

The first recommendation is to pick up on yourself or the other person getting angry the signs that this is happening in many you or he starts yelling at you or becomes repetitive by raising your voice with each repetition at the same point you or he becomes too positive. expressing this by stacking the table by other forms of gesturing, any of these physical manifestations indicate that your emotions are getting out of control or that you can do something else, you cannot hit the table, but you can allow yourself to be sarcasm, make fun, provoke the other to Let him get the lair, or you can resort to one form or another of ad hominem argument if he indulges in sarcasm or tries to make his opponent laugh or his staff by jumping on unimportant mistakes he has made.

Are you a common one? I think it will make your opponent lose his temper too and if he resists all your attacks, stays calm, it will probably make you even angrier when an argument gets to this point, turns into a battle of net collecting and low blows, stop be a sensible or meaningful conversation that continues and we certainly should. To understand that conversation and discussion at the speech level is not aggression, if we allow it to become a matter of indulging in our aggressive impulses, we have ruined the season of calm and have not conducted it well.

I think it's important for everyone. We must be aware of these emotional disorders on our part. Sometimes I'm not sure what I say about myself. You will find it true in yourself. Sometimes I find myself suppressing certain points for emotional reasons or I find myself not giving in even though I think the other person has made a good point by not acknowledging it for emotional reasons. For emotional reasons, you may suddenly refuse to admit that you are wrong when you really know that you are wrong and there is certainly no point in winning. When you know you're wrong, we often think we've won a victory, but no, that's an empty victory if you actually know you're wrong, the emotional satisfaction of walking away having won the argument is entirely afterwards. one totally empty of what the ultimate goal of any good important conversation is.

I'm going to use a phrase that you have all heard. It is producing a meeting of minds. We all have our own minds. We start a conversation so that our minds meet. It's not just an exchange of words, it was just an exchange of words, the exchange of words is empty, the comment somehow put my mind in contact with yours and yours in contact with mine, and that can only happen from two ways: reach an understood agreement, which is the ideal of course, and the second best option after that is an understood disagreement, in other words, these are agreements that I have not understood, that a person thinks they agree if they don't understand each other. is an empty achievement and even as bad is a disagreement that they don't understand me understand when you agree with someone you must have a common understanding of what you agree on when you disagree you have a common understanding of what you disagree on, otherwise Otherwise, there is no real disagreement or real agreement.

I believe that of all the things you and beings do, conversing with one of them is the most characteristically human. I believe that it may be, in the long run, the only human activity whose performance will ultimately preserve the radical distinction between humans and brutes and between men and machines computers will never engage in conversation there is some semblance now that human beings talk to computers and computers respond it's just a superficial appearance and not a real reason for that is this human conversation if you ever engaged in any period of time on a trip with someone long vacation with someone you know how unpredictable absolutely unpredictable that turns off the conversation even if you are On a long plane trip you start a conversation with the person sitting next to you on the plane and it lasts for hours and the cost of those four hours the conversation revolves around this and you couldn't have predicted from the beginning where he was going now.

The only thing people forget about computers is that they never do anything unpredictable, you can't program the unpredictable, everything that is programmed happens in a predictable way, therefore if computers automatically depend on being programs, they will never engage in conversation in the sense that we humans, I really believe that humans are the only animals that communicate with their own kind, other animals send them signals. each other like birds do like chimpanzees do like bottlenose dolphins but they don't communicate where communicating means having something in common. I truly believe that other animals are absolutely isolated from each other even though they signal to each other communicating their rudimentary sense. we are only human beings we can share each other's minds share one literally have sympathy and understanding something in common and without anything in common you have no community and therefore the human community, whether it is the family, the city, the state or the world , it depends On this issue of communication, let me address marriage for a moment.

To find out how high the divorce rate is now that divorce laws have been relaxed. Why do marriages break up? There are many reasons, of course, but in my opinion one is often the least noticed of all sexual reasons. attraction sometimes fails or weakens or diminishes, but I think that's not so much, it's the fact that the two people have nothing to say to each other, the conversation dries up, we live together in the same way that two animals would live together, but it shouldn't be the way we relate. live together one of the things that we have done, we have asked you, for example, in the last 10 years of our 30 year experience that we have had the corporation pay not just for the corporate executive, maybe a man or a woman But we pay for the weapons coming from the corporation and their spouse to come to the seminars and actively participate in the seminars.

The corporation has recognized that this is terribly important for a pair of people living together as husband and wife. They have a common set of ideas. reading some common topics some come seem to talk about others apart from the weather the children the rent I'm sure you've had the experience I've had in restaurants always fascinates me and it also makes me very uncomfortable sitting unpaired or and everything about the couple, what did they do and did they sit there eating in silence for an hour and a half with almost nothing to say? Something strange or... that's a terrible situation.

The same thing happens with parents and children, as well as with husbands and wives and the terrible thing about adolescents' illness that opens up and is completely cured is that the conversation breaks down when the generation gap becomes a real communication block. It stops the way you know it heals, isn't it that it's past adolescence and grown up? As much as you can, talk to your children again about events familiar to all of you, and yet,I mentioned it to point out how important it is that the conversation flourishes easily, the communication takes place. What I just said about our private lives is equally true for business and even more true in our political lives.

I guess if you took the 500 largest corporations, United the Fortune 500, and you took the top executives of those large corporations, they would have been told how many hours a week of your business time you spend at conferences. each other would be between a third and a half of their time, but they're not at their own desks to sit around the conference table, so you said, what's your guess about how much of that conference time is wasted on tasks? efficient? You may not recognize it, but I guess it would be half that time again and if we left the sheet of paper on your combined hourly compensation, you would discover how expensive and inefficient the inadequacy of business conferences turns out to be. simple rules on how to conduct a discussion, a good chair, everyone listening carefully and speaking relevantly and clearly.

If I move from business to our political life, I must draw your attention to the fact that in what we call a republic and we live in a republic is the word republic in Latin this public career that means public affairs the public affairs of public only if are discussed publicly. The interesting thing is that there are three words that have to do with speaking that indicate how politically important it is to speak. In the Greek word is an agora in Athens and in Sparta and other of the cities that had hilltops of which there was a open temple place called Agra where citizens gathered to discuss Agra was a place for this similarly the Roman place was called forum and we have taken that word forum from the actual place in Rome where citizens gathered to discuss and continue the discussion We say that after this you and I are going to have a forum, a forum is indispensable like agar is indispensable for the life of a republic and the other third word is the French word Parliament Parliament the French word parle to talk about Parliament It is where the representative people gather to speak and listen Those three words indicate how important discussion is without discussion there is no democracy life does not have a constitutional government We often think of peace simply as the absence of struggle, but that is not the case, that's the negative aspect of peace, the positive aspect of peace, you have peace in Illinois, peace in the state where you come from, peace in the United States.

United States because we have the machinery in these places within our civil society to resolve disputes I spoke instead of by force when conversations cannot resolve the dispute when the machinery to resolve differences between serious differences between people their disputes things also do not can be resolved by speaking nothing left but strength in the fight in both World War I and World War II foreign correspondence abroad was returned to their American newspapers conversations are rapidly deteriorating conversations are rapidly deteriorating diplomats foreign officials They are talking but the theory of the conversation when the final cable arrives the talks have completely collapsed, you know, the next hour, the next day, the armies will march, the Daviess will set sail and bombs and weapons will explode, so the conversation is the essence of peace, as well as a civil government and a republican and democratic society at last.

Let me draw your attention to the role that conversation plays in the private life of every individual whose ample free time is devoted to leisure activities, activities that contribute to learning and the moral and spiritual growth of the individual. Lygia is about learning not It has to do with fun, play and relaxation, leisure is not play, most Americans misuse the word leisure, so to speak, synonymous with free time, that is, free time, which which means that free time leisure is not an adjective to apply time, leisure is sleep wisely work play play leisure what are you going to do this afternoon well I'm going to take a nap and then fundamentally it is a verb it is a form of activity when we talk about Leisure activities Leisure activities We refer to all those activities that are not always active here in life, but activities through which we learn to grow mentally, morally and spiritually, leisure activities can be done alone or social, reading, writing, are often solitary leisure activities, thinking. do anything, from creative work to a solitary activity, but I think that the most important of leisure activities is conversation, discussion, serious, good conversation, that has substance and meaning.

If you ask me, as a final question, what are the main and most universal forms that such continuous learning is also involved in adult life because no one can be educated in school. I mean, one of the worst mistakes anyone can make is to simply assume that school is the place where when you complete an education, it is impossible to become a school-educated person because youthful immaturity is a very bad obstacle to becoming educated. , no one can be educated, while the education of young people takes place in adult life after proper maturity. Sorry, I have to tell some of you who are younger, but there's no one really there yet.

He once claimed to have been educated until he was 40 or 50, that's a long time. I would have said myself, but I became an educated person after passing 60. It takes a long life of learning, reading travel experiences to become an educated person. What I want to make clear is that it is not simply reading or traveling or experiencing the look back on my own life and I think you will find the street, it is only if after having read something I have commented on what I remember. someone else would read the same book. I think reading alone is as bad an addiction as drinking alone.

One should drink with others and one should also read with others because you don't do it when you find out what you have done with your mind unless and someone else, your wife or someone else, your friends have read the same book and you and they discuss it. so I would say that in the course of adult life a function of discussion of conversation on serious topics books that read parts of what is new that is

seen

in the world Common experiences between you and another person were discussed seriously and well. It is the most fruitful of all reforms by which one grows and hopes to become educated at the end of one's life.

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