Nihal Arthanayake (2022) Let’s Talk: How to Have Better Conversations.

Nihal Arthanayake’s premise in Let’s Talk is we increasingly live in a polarised world (guilty as charged, anything and everything about the moron’s moron, Trump infuriates me) but we need to put aside our differences and reconcile ourselves to change. We need to talk.

Technology drives change (discuss)?

Nihal Arthanayake believes like many others, including Professor SherryTurkle, our smartphones make us dumber and lonelier (for example https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/may/07/the-crux-of-all-evil-what-happened-to-the-first-city-that-tried-to-ban-smartphones-for-under-14s)

The answer then seems simple. Put our smartphones down (I get smug here saying I don’t own one, but try going through passport control without one, loser).

I spend lots of time reading and some time writing (stuff like this that nobody reads, but that’s another story). Ego entrapment? If a definition of narcissism (don’t mention the moron’s moron) is ‘attention getting trapped in your own ego’. Then what I do doesn’t seem that much different from other people with their ‘stolen focus’ (Hari)? Who’s stealing my own focus but me? But not everything is about me. Solecism. Reading is the art of entering other’s worlds. That would be my argument. Reading makes you more empathetic? Research seems to suggest a correlation between empathy and not huddling into our own fixed groups. Our own tribes.

Arthanayake speaks to those he admires for taking that step into tribes that our not our own. Talking to people that hate you. He talks to President Mary McAleese who talked to paramilitaries from the other side. This is something I’ve done too. Monty, from the Falls Road. He’s a bitter Orange Bastard that supports Rangers. But boy can that boy talk. I wish to fuck he’d shut up, to be honest. But to be honest, I don’t really mind him that much. We’re very much alike in our upbringing and beliefs. Recognising sameness rather than differences is a good starting point.

Lessons from a Hostage Negotiator, John Sutherland, made me think differently about what happened about 40 years ago. The police shot Pieman in a street not far from me. Pieman had gone from the Park Bar to his girlfriend’s house with a gun.  

Reading Sutherland’s account of his technique: ‘My name is John. I’m with the police. I’m here to help you.’ Opening gambits.

Contrast. ‘Put the gun down or we’ll shoot you.’

‘No.’

Pieman dead.

I don’t know how that went down. I do know the tenement close was evacuated. Pieman’s mum and sisters were willing to talk him down. They never got the chance. Overkill? Aye, I’d say so now.

What would Christ do?

Arthanayake suggests good conversations are not about talking but listening. Listening and not talking.

Curiosity. Asking questions.

Don’t mention the moron’s moron that already believes he knows it all and you can’t tell him anything he doesn’t already know, but you can simply confirm what he already knows for sure.

One of the funniest things in having conversations with children is their worldview. One little girl, aged six, told me she no longer needed to go to school because she already knew everything. But this wasn’t an egotistical observation. This was just the stating of a simple truth. She did. It takes a lifetime to recognise what you don’t know. To realise the truth about you is just fart and wind.

Art recognises Arthanyake’s worldview that those most likely to read his book are those least likely to read his book because they don’t read and they’re not curious. I’m both of those things but not a better conversationalist. Read on.

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