Abstract

This essay begins by demonstrating how conversations can end before they have a chance to authentically begin. Conversations are stultified by patterns in the human ecology. The first pattern identified is “self-obliviousness” in conversation. “Self-obliviousness” is then tied to patterns of both radical self-assurance and self-diminishment. The underlying idea and argument is that adequate self-awareness is a necessary condition for conversation and this condition is only met as human beings recognize their own selves as relational. The argument then turns to remedies to the pattern. Metacognition as exercised in relation to literary art can reveal the conditions for identifying and recognizing the damaging patterns. By the end of the essay the conditions for creativity in conversation are conflated with the formation of empathetic dispositions and these are only possible through understanding the self in equal relation to other selves. The arguments and examples are from contemporary United States Culture, but the damaging patterns can easily be recognized as elements of the human condition generally.