The art of casual conversation made us a nation. While we are no longer separated by distance and poor roads, we are most certainly isolated by earbuds and screens. Can you run a complex society in which nobody talks to each other? Especially in an election year?
In the back of an Uber the other evening, crawling through traffic to reach the Auckland CBD for Glubb’s farewell bash, I broke a rule of modern etiquette and fell into conversation with the driver. We spoke about his young family, the absurdly large cut of my fare kept by Uber and his day job as a French Teacher. He sighed as I explained, twice, “the pen of my aunt was still on the table”.
I did not glean any dazzling sociological insights from our conversation, but it stands out as unusual. Most Uber journeys pass in near silence, induced either by a language barrier or perhaps by the suspicion that any attempt to initiate unwanted conversation by either party will result in a sub-five-star rating.
A recent study reported in The Atlantic magazine found that the number of words we speak every day is declining from 16,632 in 2005 to 11,900 in 2019. It is not hard to guess where the missing words have gone. I order a chicken wrap from the local Tank store, on a screen, and then wait to be handed it by a member of staff. “G?” “Er, yeah, thanks.”
Tapping on to the 379 to Papakura with my Gold Card, the bus driver is unreachable behind his Perspex screen. In Countdown, conversation extends to some automated sneer about my misuse of the bagging area. Even in courtroom conversations the virtual meeting room reminds me of my isolation: “You are the only participant.” True that.
Social interaction is good for your brain, so declines in conversation have prompted concern about social isolation and cognitive health. But this gathering silence is also changing our society.
If there is such a thing as a “social fabric,” these conversations are the small threads out of which it is woven. It is a historical fact. Human beings, anthropologists tell us, are a tribal species. Empathy for our families and immediate “in-group” comes naturally to us. Empathy for strangers requires conscious cultivation. The urbanisation of western countries at the end of the 18th century and the increased social mixing it entailed was an important force in the creation of modern liberal societies.
Courts are schools of tolerance. They provide a form of what you might call “stranger exposure therapy,” offering repeated small collisions with different people. Our towns and cities are the same. Snatched conversations in shops, taxis and restaurants represent valuable incursions across the lines of class, culture, and race; each one a needle puncture to the social membranes that separate our human tribes.
My interaction with my Uber driver briefly humanised a part of country life that can easily seem anonymous. Such conversations can be banal in themselves, but these things add up. A complex modern society can hardly function without some shared sense of humanity on the part of its citizens.
A country that does not mingle will find itself more easily divided. As an immigrant, you are unlikely ever to be given a comprehensive speech laying out kiwi values. It is through trips to the shops and talking to the bus driver that the character of the society you have joined, and kiwi culture, reveals itself to you.
When considering the problems of declining social trust and increasing political polarisation we should bear in mind the value of the human interactions that are being stripped out of society in the name of efficiency or equality.
These may seem extravagant claims for casual conversation, but comradely fraternisation between upper-class officers and working-class troops in the First World War is often cited as a factor in breaking apart the rigid British prewar class hierarchy. An Edwardian gentleman exchanged many more words with his butler or chauffeur than his modern descendant does with an Uber driver. Today, many of the very rich are more socially marooned than even their prewar ancestors, commanding only an anonymous servant class using mobile apps to fetch and provide their gin and tonic from Uber Eats.
While we are no longer separated by distance, we are most certainly isolated by earbuds and screens. The gathering silence is a danger. It risks fracture lines across communities that were once joined by only degrees of separation. Can you run a complex society in which nobody talks to each other? Especially in an election year do you feel as if anyone is talking?
In it with you
G