The Inspector-General of Misconception

by Frank Moorhouse

  Butter curls and the Japanese slice

  In our childhood, there was a thing called a butter curler which, when drawn over a slab of butter, produced a curl of butter sufficient for a slice of bread. It looked professional and had a hand-created aesthetic to it which those ugly little one-slice butter foil packets definitely do not have.

  Nor is the amount of butter in those foil packets ever sufficient and the packet becomes litter on the table (this Office detests them even more than it does soap with glued-on labels).

  While on the matter of bread and butter, we are increasingly bewildered to encounter in breakfast cafes something known as the Japanese Slice. A double thickness slice of bread. This is too much bread for a slice. We agree that the pre-sliced bread is often not enough but this is going too far. How about an Australian Slice somewhere in between?

  Ruling: Wish to see butter curls again served on ice in silver dishes, with butter knives.

  THE STATE OF CONVERSATION 1: NEW WAYS OF TALKING

  The internet has thrown up what appears to be a wholly new form of communication which is at present described as ‘chat’.

  It has made possible anonymous chat groups where anything can be said, and where roles can be assumed, and where no one can trace you, touch you, sue you, or tell on you.

  On the net you are disembodied and released from many restraints which are present in ‘identified’ conversation (telephone, mail, face-to-face).

  This could very well be a ‘paradigm shift’ in the human condition.

  A note: Why are paradigm shifts never as dramatic as we might hope them to be, nor as frightening as they sound, nor as refreshing as they could be?

  A claim: ‘While parents fret on the fringes of technology, their children venture fearlessly into cyberspace creating an underground electronic youth culture which an older generation can barely begin to understand,’ says a Sydney Morning Herald writer.

  A quibble: When, we may ask, have children believed that their parents ‘understood’ them.

  A proverb: ‘It is a wise father who understands his child.’ This proverb exists because so few parents, if any, have this wisdom.

  The proverb should say, ‘It is a wise parent who acknowledges that they do not understand their child.’ And vice versa. The child, of course, does not (nay, cannot, in the nature of things) understand the parent.

  It is not in the nature of things to understand one’s children. Children are in a conspiracy against the adult world to get their ways, and vice versa.

  A Minor Ruling: It is rarely necessary to ‘understand’ youth culture because youth culture and childhood culture are designed and created to exclude adults, so as not to be ‘understood’ by the older people.

  How else could young people whinge about being misunderstood?

  We digress.

  The appropriation by computer culture of the older ‘folksy’ terminology of bulletin board, neighbourhood, village, club, coffee shop, to describe computer-based exchanges is worth noting.

  There is much talk of the cyberspace ‘communities’.

  Whatever they are, they are not a ‘community’.

  And we read in the Australian that Claudia Karvan, actress, whose father once ran the Sydney nightclub Arthur’s … Ah the days of the nightclub. Now that was conversation. We did deals. We formed liaisons. We plotted. We danced. We banqueted. We wept. We brooded.

  We digressed.

  Claudia Karvan says, ‘I’ve never used the internet before but I like how you can use it to talk to people. This seems more intimate than just chatting on the phone, but it can become addictive; I met a girl at a party recently who worked at an internet cafe – she’d get home at 10 pm and surf the net until three in the morning … Occasionally she’d meet someone she’d talk to on the net. I guess it beats chatting up some guy in a pub.’

  We may return to the notion of ‘chatting up’ as compared with ‘chat’ at a later point.

  And, Claudia, what is so abhorrent about chatting up a guy in a pub?

  But it clearly seems that the computer is qualitatively different to a telephone.

  Computer conversation is not only fully anonymous, the computer is itself also a remarkable mask.

  A quotation: ‘Give a person a mask and they will tell the truth,’ Oscar said.

  On the net people feel that they can change gender and age, although we know people who do this in ‘real life’ when the situation demands. But we won’t go into that.

  You can change anything on the net except your prose style.

  We have a new conversational form taking place in ‘uncontrolled space’. At last we see an end to shyness and sexual inhibition.

  Let’s examine the nature of old-style conversation. To be frank, face-to-face conversation has problems.

  We have to control our mouths, our smiles, our eyes, our hands, our body language, as well as worry about the people at the other table who are listening, and so on. And our clothing ‘speaks for us’ also.

  We spill food on ourselves while talking and wonder what that ‘says’ about us.

  We worry about what we have ordered and what that ‘says’ about us.

  Face-to-face life is all too alive and too formidably rich in meanings. Too intense. As with the sun, we should stay out of it as much as possible.

  THE STATE OF CONVERSATION 2: THE BOREDOM OF ‘TALKING TO WIN’

  Our Inspectors report that Australian life has a low-grade infection of conversational disorders.

  The protocols of conversation in ‘real life’ need to be restated somewhat.

  Turn-taking

  There are reports of a collapse of the courtesy of turn-taking. Under the older protocols of conversation, a person may have their say but they were then obliged, we’re afraid, to let the other person have a go.

  And there is a lamentable lack of ‘Message received and understood’ courtesies.

  After a person has spoken, it is good form to indicate by some movement of the head or eyes that you have heard it.

  A signal that you are awake might help.

  It is even better form to say something in response or to express interest through questioning the speaker.

  The single polite question is not enough either.

  Our Inspectors have observed that some people feel that they can regain their ‘turn’ in a conversation by paying only one Question of Interest to the other person.

  Interest in what the other person has said should be pursued for the conversational distance of at least three questions. Who knows, you might learn something and the conversation might go in a direction more interesting than the one you are harbouring.

  But there is another conversational disorder related to turn-taking – it is mechanical or trained turn-taking, especially prevalent in the United States.

  It is a mechanical questioning which sounds as if the other person has timed their talking and will now grant equal time.

  This practice creates the desire to say to the other person, ‘Stop asking me polite questions in return and talk about yourself for a while. Have a good go.’

  Turning-taking is not about programmed ‘fairness’. It is about abandoning oneself to the random, sinuous meanderings of good conversation found only in responding to the Other Person. Sorry.

  Galloping in, overriding

  Women, especially, complain of being overridden towards the end of the sentence.

  Sometimes it is because the listener has understood or thinks they have understood, and is in a rush to say something that has occurred to them.

  More often than not, it is that the ‘listener’ has not been listening at all but has been secretly ‘harbouring’ something witty or tangentially relevant, or sometimes, has developed what they see as a delicious statement of response to something said much earlier. They ‘hear’ the characteristic inflexions of a conversationalist coming to the end of their contribution and leap in.

  Advice: Learn to say, ‘Excuse me, I haven’t
finished,’ in a firm, fair voice and proceed without waiting permission or concession.

  Being doctrinaire

  This is arguing from a set position regardless of the evidence or data presented – to hold onto one’s position regardless of the cost to your intelligence.

  To paraphrase the English political philosopher, Isaiah Berlin, a doctrinaire person is one ‘… who during an investigation or in the course of argument is liable to suppress what he may, if he comes across it, suspect to be true but which is against his position.’

  There is a book by Mark Lilla called The Reckless Mind which looks at the ways which intellectuals and fine minds become enthralled by totalitarian and fundamentally anti-intellectual movements such as communism and fascism.

  He looks at the temptation of intellectuals to join such movements when they are flattered into thinking that they can ‘shape the future’ – the flattery of power and the desire for an intellectually planned world with themselves as one of the planners.

  This leads intellectuals into the world of polemics. Owen Harries, former editor of the National Interest, wrote a smart piece on polemics (see Commentary, September 1984).

  In it he pointed out the following: Forget about trying to convert your adversary; preach to the converted to keep up morale; but never forget the uncommitted.

  That is the world of polemics not the world of inquiry.

  The real lesson of the Harries’ piece is that there are very few companions lounging in the bar of inquiry.

  Of course, there is a place for indignation. We are sure there are people around wanting to hear our indignation. Sharing indignation is not a bad thing now and then. Just be sure that it is actually shared before you launch it. Okay?

  And yes, yes, one cannot stay forever in the quiet and studious mode of inquiry. Go on, be irrational for a few hours.

  Yes, we all want to have sessions of self-confirming rant. Make sure all those in the rant agree with you.

  Conversation is a wide spectrum of intercourse.

  However, ultimately, the most delicious conversation has these following characteristics:

  It is inquiring and sharing rather than talking to win. It is heretical in that it challenges the accepted views of the group. It is shameless, in that it does not worry about good or bad taste. It has good humour and irony.

  Most of all, it is urbane. Relaxed.

  So who’s perfect?

  Anyhow, with deep pessimism we continue with our mission against ego-parading, evidence-inventing, verbal-strutting, adversarial conversation.

  Coming to the aid of one’s opponent

  This is the obverse of being doctrinaire.

  The obligation of intellectual life is that if you can see a good point that your opponent is not making in his or her case, you make it for your opponent.

  Can’t remember when we last did that.

  Maybe too big an ask of the human condition.

  Stating one’s position too often or compulsive disagreeableness

  We wish to say that it is not required by the rules or ethics of intellectual rigour to always express felt disagreement in the course of a conversation.

  Believe it or not, one can listen to a position with which one does not agree without going for the throat.

  One may wish to signal doubt or disagreement in a mild conversational way (which does not include the making of a vomiting sound) while permitting the other person to continue.

  It is not ‘cowardly’ to decline engagement or to reserve a position, or to leave a conversation without having expressed disagreement.

  There will be time to disagree in future conversations and it is highly likely that your position is well known to your conversational companions. Too well known.

  This applies especially to those who have that personality formation which is called ‘perversity’ where the compulsion is always to see merit in the opposite to that which is being said.

  Or, in its more extreme forms, it expresses itself in a need to always gallop to the defence of the indefensible, ‘Yes, but Hitler did do some good things.’

  We ask you to forbear, and limit yourself to a conversational diet, say, defending the indefensible Every Second Time, rather than Every Time.

  Although, as a general rule, we support the perverse thinker. Perversity is a slightly disreputable relative of inquiry. But at times, amusing, and can break strait-jacketed conversations.

  Drinking and thinking

  Jim Baker, a Sydney Libertarian, used to say that in the Olden Days, the Libertarians in their pubs engaged in ‘critical drinking’.

  We concede that alcohol enhances very few activities and that some people should avoid it. It doesn’t help surgery, for example.

  But conversation, dining, and travel are the human activities that it does hugely enhance.

  There is an adage about drink that, ‘It makes old friends seem like new friends and new friends seem like old friends.’

  As with the internet it can allow us to leap the obstacle of strangeness and shyness even if artificially. Through practising unshyness we may eventually learn it out of our lives.

  However, beyond a certain point of intoxication, the conversation of the intoxicated people sometimes sounds like a boringly simplified, repetitious and confused exchange.

  It is.

  But often the repetition and confusion is a sign that difficult ideas are being grappled with in company where the grappling with those ideas could not otherwise occur had it not been for the intoxication.

  And it has to be remembered that often the intoxicated person is at the same time having a conversation of some magnitude with the inner-self as well as juggling the conversation with his or her companions in intoxication.

  Further, the intoxicated person is sometimes also having a conversation with his or her Dead Mother or with God. Intoxication opens many channels simultaneously.

  Time to go home.

  Talking to win

  We have to constantly struggle with ourself to avoid the mindset described by the French philosopher Jean-Francois (there he goes, quoting one of those French philosophers) when he said ‘to speak is to fight’.

  This is the most common and most boring of conversation disorders – ‘talking to win’. By the way, Doctor Samuel Johnson used the expression and he was forever castigating himself for this failing.

  There is not enough talking for fun. It comes from not relaxing enough into the spirit of inquiry in our conversation. Not enough throwing oneself on the mercy of the conversation. Not enough trusting of the other person. Not enough conceding. Not enough willingness to be found wrong. Too much showing off. Investing too much defence of our identity into our conversation.

  Too little love of inquiry for inquiry’s sake, conversation for conversation’s sake.

  Ruling: The Inspectorate has declared that each January will be Conversational Spring Cleaning Month.

  Ask a close friend to tell you what it is that has Gone Badly Wrong with your conversation, what it is that they can’t stand (or better still, ask an enemy).

  A Generous Reminder: No one, not even the Inspector-General, is always urbane – or even civil – in conversation.

  SIX OR SEVEN NEW WAYS OF SEX AND ALL IT MEANS

  We have been urged (but not in the sense of having ‘urgings’, as in the sense of ‘groin’) to investigate the new forms of sex.

  We live in these extraordinary times when truly new things are confronting us. Or trying to confront us, as we try to duck and weave from destiny.

  As the Inspector-General of Paradigm Shifts, we are commissioned to confront these; as arduous as this may be, we shoulder the burden with a stern determination. Be warned: let no one stand in our way.

  We have been urged, then, to look at the internet and in other places to determine whether we are confronted with what might be truly described as a ‘new’ type of sexual experience.

  We are told that there are six forms of new sex and perhaps a
seventh.

  First let us look at the now, more familiar, forms of new sex.

  One is now all too sadly familiar – safe sex where all effort is made to avoid contact with bodily fluids – and needs no further examination. We argue that it is qualitatively different from sex which simply tries to avoid impregnation by using a condom. It is an attempt to avoid virtually any contact whatsoever with bodily fluids with the exception perhaps of saliva.

  We shall see that perhaps the other forms of new sex are a rechannelling of the sexual drive into safe sex routes (no pun intended). Or maybe not.

  Because of a conjunction of technology and The AIDS Plague we have now a second type of new sex – commercialised telephone-sex.

  We have had forms of telephone-sex for as long as there have been telephones (Queen Victoria had one in 1878; a telephone, that is) but commercialised sex is different.

  We direct the attention of the Inquiry to the film Girl 6 which is something of an ethnographic documentation of the telephone-sex industry, with its protocols, training sessions, counselling, professional ethics and industry subculture (and presumably it has an Annual Convention in Hawaii).

  The film documents the nature and the extent and sophistication of this form of sex.

  Now we turn to sex and the internet. Sex on the internet is called net-sex or cybersex and takes a number of forms.

  We shall use the term ‘net-sex’.

  The internet may be the only place where some people feel safe about sexual encounters with strangers.

  The third type of new sex is where you go to an internet site on your computer and share erotica – text or pictures – for use In the Privacy of Your Own Home. It is a sharing with a stranger. Quite often, the photographs are of that person.

  The fourth new form of sex is where you sexually interact, in text, with another person on the internet to cause sexual excitation in real time.

  People tell us that it is surprising how emotionally and physically powerful this interactive version of net-sex is. We would need, however, evidence of the quality of the witness’s former sex life (from their partners) and this will be presented when the Inquiry holds its session, ‘Truthtelling About Sex: Some Problems’.