DEBATE
September 21, 2004
I recently joined a couple of Yahoo groups for the purpose of engaging in some conversation. As Hemingway once observed (in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize), the life of a writer is a lonely one, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to get outside my own mind a little, sort of get some fresh mental air. I also thought (to be perfectly honest) it might be a fairly good way to engage in a little free marketing. There is always the opportunity to introduce yourself to quite a few people and let it be known that you're a writer, even invite the participants to visit your website, possibly even order a book, and so on.
I can only give mixed reviews of my adventure, if you can call it that. I really should have known better. But it's a little boring wandering around inside your own head all the time. In fact, it's probably unhealthy. You need to get outside of it once in awhile. So I can't say I'm sorry I did it.
But I still feel (almost) as if I pretty much wasted my time. The only sure thing I can say about it is that it confirmed some suspicions I'd already had about debate, which is essentially what real conversations ultimately turn into.
The most important suspicion that was confirmed was simply that you can't change anyone. I remember the first time I heard someone say this. I was in the Air Force, maybe twenty years old. And I don't remember what the conversation was about. I only remember someone erupting forth with, "You can't change people. I've never known anyone to change."
Needless to say, coming from the religious background I had come from, where we were always trying to change (i.e., convert) people, I had never heard anyone say something like this before. It really impressed me, which means, in a way, that his words were undone by virtue of the fact that they changed me, although not in the way he was suggesting.
From that day forth I paid more attention to everyone I knew. The idea that people never changed prompted me to look at them in a different way. I would notice it when I was away from them for long periods of time. Several years would go by, I'd visit with them, and clearly notice that, except for the aging, they were exactly the same as they were the last time I'd seen them.
At my job I would engage in conversations with co-workers and present my (usually offbeat) ideas and notice their reactions. I worked with the same people for years and I honestly can't say that I truly influenced any of them. I left the exact same individuals I had met, except of course for the aging. This reminds me of something else I once heard, this time when I was very young, like an adolescent. It had to do with the the Catholic church, and their claim that if they could get their hands on someone until the age of seven, they would have them for the rest of their life. From time to time you hear of someone converting (either way), but for the most part, this also seems to be true.
I have to be honest and tell you that I'm not exactly sure where I'm going with this, but I think I know. It has to do with our early childhood. It's almost as if we become set in stone during those years. Barring extreme conditions or circumstances, what we are at five or six years of age is what we are. Anything after that is baubles and trinkets. You can converse or debate, or whatever you choose to call it, till you're blue in the face. It doesn't matter. Most people have pretty much already decided what they believe and don't believe. They may go through the motions and pretend they've changed or believe something different, but chances are they haven't changed at all, and don't really believe anything other than what they've become comfortable with.