Father shifted his weight so that more of it was on the lad. “Second question, why do men unhesitatingly act as though they are absolutely convinced that other people want to hear what they think, (on matters of no essential interest)? With no encouragement whatsoever from anyone, if a group of people are talking about baseball, someone will, pertinent to nothing being discussed, suddenly quite seriously inject: ‘I can’t stand The Green Socks! That whole team makes me want to throw up!’ There will be a momentary pause; someone may tilt their head slightly, indicative of nothing certain, or shrug non-committedly, and then the conversation will pick back up as though the comment had never existed. It will then breeze along until someone else in the group makes another such expression of their personal likes and dislikes, which plainly are of no interest to anyone else.
This is so interwoven in man’s every day, minute-to-minute life that no one appears to notice it. But, if they were asked to specifically do so, any sane human being would easily observe the obvious fact that other people are not interested in your likes and dislikes, nor you in theirs, and that the constant expression of such is apparently tolerated only for the sake of social calm and everyone knows it.
Suppose movies were the topic of conversation, and the automatic verbal activity in your brain causes you to suddenly blurt out: ‘Today’s films are far too violent for me!’ All you have to do is, just for an instant, put your inner noise on hold, and let your infallible, nonverbal instincts reconnoiter the scene, and you will be instantly aware that no one who heard your comment found it at all interesting, not even a little bit – zilch interest.
They know this, and the speaker knows, yet within minutes, the roles of speaker and listener will reverse themselves, and a previously disinterested hearer of your expression of your personal taste will now express his, with you having the exact same, total lack of interest in his. Yet all human conversations throughout the world and throughout mortal time, are continually replete with these sudden outbursts of people saying what they think about this-or-that, in the perspicuous midst of rampant indifference thereto. ”
“Why, my little grappler? Why?”
J.