“I had never in my life wanted to convert anyone else to my own beliefs. It was enough for me to make them known and be able to do so in public.”
– Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday
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“Imagine a party. The guests, from all walks of life, are not negligible. They’ve been around: they’ve lived, suffered, own businesses, have real areas of expertise. They’re talking about things that interest them, giving and taking subtle correction. Certain submerged concerns are coming to the surface and—surprise, pleasant surprise—being confirmed and seconded and assuaged by other people who’ve been feeling the same way. Then a guy walks in with a megaphone.
He’s not the smartest person at the party, or the most experienced, or the most articulate. But he’s got that megaphone.
Say he starts talking about how much he loves early mornings in spring. What happens? Well, people turn to listen. It would be hard not to. It’s only polite. And soon, in their small groups, the guests may find themselves talking about early spring mornings. Or, more correctly, about the validity of Megaphone Guy’s ideas about early spring mornings. Some are agreeing with him, some disagreeing—but because he’s so loud, their conversations will begin to react to what he’s saying…
…These responses are predicated not on his intelligence, his unique experience of the world, his powers of contemplation, or his ability with language, but on the volume and omnipresence of his narrating voice.
His main characteristic is his dominance. He crowds the other voices out. His rhetoric becomes the central rhetoric because of its unavoidability.
In time, Megaphone Guy will ruin the party. The guests will stop believing in their value as guests, and come to see their main role as reactors-to-the-Guy…
…We consider speech to be the result of thought (we have a thought, then select a sentence with which to express it), but thought also results from speech (as we grope, in words, toward meaning, we discover what we think).
This yammering guy has, by forcibly putting his restricted language into the heads of the guests, affected the quality and coloration of the thoughts going on in there. He has, in effect, put an intelligence-ceiling on the party.”
– George Saunders, The Brain Dead Megaphone
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What I share and write here is a reflelection of how I see the world.
It will certainly be different by degrees to anyone else’s view.
Good.
I don’t want anyone else to think precisely as I do.
What a bore.
Not everyone will hear my voice.
Reading gives the power to the reader to amplify of minimise the message of the words.
There’s no sales pitch here.
I have no targets to hit.
You are not a captive audience.
I endeavour to keep the tone conversational.
No preaching and leaching your energy.
I simply want the freedom to share.
And for you: to have the freedom to ignore.
Conversations With Quotations 