First, be more attractive. Second, earn more money. Third, accrue more power and/or fame. Whatever the strategy, try always to convince others that you hold the higher-status position in every interaction. Then, naturally, they will listen. Fail and you'll find yourself browsing self-help titles in a bookshop at the other end of town. Or reading this blog post in incognito browsing mode, placing all your hope in the effectiveness of strategy number four: be more philosophical.
Here is how.
Step one. Remember that fear is the quintessential human emotion. As Hermann Hesse might put it, fear looms large over the life of man. Everyone is afraid, paranoid or anxious more or less always. There are two broad categories of fear. First, there is the fear of sheer bad luck - plane crashes, house fires, cancer, old age. It stems from our awareness of the Universe's majestic indifference to human affairs and our susceptibility to accidents, disasters, illness and the melancholy passing of time. Second, there is the fear of people. This is at heart the point of Halloween, a festival celebrating our deepest darkest fears: that everybody else is a monster and that at any point they are liable to turn up at our doors, unannounced, demanding things under the threat of repercussions. Worse still, we need the little gremlins because we have evolved to require affection, love, validation and esteem.
Step two. Realise that the knee-jerk reaction to fear is control. Every superhero story ever is at its core a form of power porn. It is our number one fantasy: that we control our environment, that we exercise agency and self-determination, and that those we love behave how we expect them to. We have evolved a whole sleuth of psychological tricks that enable us to exercise control upon one another: shame, infatuation, intimidation and so on. There are two broad categories of control. First, there is control by seduction. By attempting to seduce people, we inadvertently attempt to control them: to make them be nice to us, stick around, offer us their time, attention, energy and genes. If this person is infatuated with me, the logic goes, then I have some measure of control over them; and if I can control them, then they can't hurt me. This also applies to lesser degrees of seduction, such as when we merely attempt to make ourselves liked or popular. Second, there is control by status play. This is where status anxiety comes in. Earn more money, accrue more power, gain more fame and, the logic goes, people will do what you want them to. They will offer you love, affection, validation and esteem, or leave you alone, or listen to you without interruption. That is the high-status strategy, though it is worth noticing that a low-status strategy can be just as valid: if we look frail, insecure or poor we may obtain the desired outcome by signaling that we are happy to concede the high-status position, or that we are happy to receive love, attention etc as a form of patronage, or are not worth troubling with and ought to be left alone. High-status people might be better respected, but low-status people are better liked. The point is only to notice in what ways we try to control people: do we try to seduce them, intimidate them, appease them?
(One method of control that I think is worth noticing, chiefly because it is so subtle yet so pervasive, is the tendency not to listen to people, or to listen to them but not take their words at face value. In doing this, we essentially substitute our own image and interpretation (read: prejudice) for the actual human before us. Instead of believing them when they say they didn't want that job or that promotion, we imagine they're lying to us or to themselves in order to avoid admitting failure. Instead of treating them like individuals, with their infinitely unknowable otherness, with a rich and deep experience of existence, we reduce them to single dimensions: their job, their social status, their accent, their family and friends, their relationship, their hobbies, their political leanings, whether they're a cat or dog person, whether or not they read the same books or favour the same ideas. Everybody does this. Very rarely, if ever, do we try to imagine ourselves walking around in their skin or feel curious about their real needs, truest values or most defining experiences. This is probably only natural, since that level of empathy costs time and energy which we simply don't have enough of. Yet we could do better. At present, it seems to me the only person whom we offer this level of empathy to is a lover -and even then for a limited period only. This I think is why most people seem to have lost faith in "just" friendships achieving anything like a meaningful connection. This is a pity. It both puts too much pressure on that single romantic relationship and deprives us of a certain richness of experience that can only come from empathising with a diverse number of people. But back to the main point.)
Step three. Become self-aware. Now that you know how fear looms large over the life of man and that the knee-jerk reaction to it is control, pay attention to yourself in every interaction. Breathe. Relax your shoulders, let your shoulder blade carry them (it is what they are for). Bend your knees slightly to remove pressure off the knee caps. Balance your head on your shoulders. Breathe again. Be aware of your body language: are you signaling high-status (body stretched into the surrounding space, neck and torso exposed, steady eye contact) or low-status (constant jerking of head and shoulders, asking for permission, apologising for no reason, making self-deprecating remarks) or a combination of both. Are you trying to seduce or intimidate? How does this person scare you? Are you secure in your own sense of self? Do you feel certain of your own values? Is imagining yourself through their eyes causing you to cringe or feel proud? Do you consider the "lense" through which they view you or the world superior or inferior to your own? And breathe. Again breathe. Always breathe. It's the only thing which will stay with you forever.
Step four. Become aware of others. How are they breathing? What is their body language signaling? Are they trying to seduce you or intimidate you? What are they likely to be afraid of? What are they actually saying? Are you listening to them and believing them or substituting your own interpretations for what is being said? What do they look like? How do they see themselves? What do you suppose they do first thing in the morning? How do they make you feel? Above all, be curious. You will be surprised how effective that is. Some of the most appalling words and behaviours can be deflected if met with curiosity - why do you suppose they are checking their phone while you're in the middle of making a sensitive point? what could they be afraid of? what might they be concerned about?
And now, for the fifth and final step, the secret ingredient to having better conversations. Ready?
Step five. Stop trying to control them. This might sound simple but in fact requires an astonishing level of intellectual and emotional maturity. To make it easier, imagine you're God: you want everyone to love you and worship you and maybe not have any other Gods besides you, but you must accept the existence of free will. Imagine you could force them into a sense of love, loyalty and awe (you are after all God), yet at the same time realise that unless they are offered willingly, these offerings would be pretty meaningless. You don't just want these people to love you, you want them to choose to love you. Otherwise, it doesn't count. Right there is the necessity for a certain level of intellectual and emotional maturity. You must bow before others' right to their own agency. No matter how firmly you believe it would increase their own happiness and bring about their own utmost good, no matter how painful to watch them mistakenly ignore you and single-mindedly pursue their own destruction, in the ideal world the only person you should ever desire to control is yourself. Not your loved ones, not your enemies, not your children. Think of it like the free-will defense to the problem of Evil, but with the nice upshot that it isn't a fallacy on account of how you are not, in fact, omniscient/omnipotent. Now, of course this is a fantasy - we will always try to control one another, that is just what members of a social species do. Yet it is a useful notion to bare in mind.
How does this lead to better conversations? Well, I think the ultimate goal of disinterested conversation (when we are not pursuing other ends) is to feel - if only briefly - connected. It is to be seen, really seen - heard, really heard - understood, really understood - and accepted. It is to escape the narrow confines of your own person. It is to feel the thrill of another free intellect focus its own independent mind upon your separate and inevitably lonesome existence and relieve some of that loneliness, even if just a little. It is to have your own sense of self confirmed and your particular experience of existence recognised. It is to feel together. Yes, it takes two to tango, but someone has to make the first step.
