So, when are we going to storm the Town Hall . . . ?

There’s a lot of hot air in Leeds right now. A recent study by social meteorology researchers at The University of New Hunslet predicts that the ambient temperature of the city will rise by a whopping zero point zero six per cent by the year 2025 as a direct result of increased local dabbling in debate, dialogue and discussion. Leeds is set to become the Athens of the North. The recently planted urban meadows will shrivel and die, the donut of despair will become a parched and shimmering desert where nothing can live except scorpions and sidewinders, and the River Aire will dry to barely a turbid trickle. All because we witter on too much. Careless talk really does cost the earth.

Environmental impact aside, all this gabbing can’t be good for us. Isn’t it just a distraction? Isn’t it about time we all shut the hell up and did something for a change? Remember that bloody irritating advert for something or other, “It’s good to talk?” Cobblers I always thought, about as daft as “it’s good to eat” (not if your diet consists solely of cream cakes and coca cola, it ain’t,) or even “it’s good to breathe” . . . ever heard of hyperventilation? Nasty; your brain turns to suet and the backs of your eyes get so hot and prickly that you want to scrat them with badly chewed fingernails. If even something so patently positive as breathing can be overdone then obviously garrulity might have downsides too.

Most people seem to see the problem as a simple dichotomy – talk or action, words or deeds – and they places their money and takes their choice. One precludes the other. Talk’s fine up to a point, so the doing argument goes, then it’s time to toss aside the thinking cap, roll up your sleeves, and press your noses hard against the grindstone (I never did get the whole nose/grindstone thing, always sounded suspiciously masochistic to me.) The ones who are still chatting get patted on the head and politely told to put away the toys, playtime is over. Let the real business commence. Action requires experts. Experts are serious. Seriousness makes shit happen.

My own approach to the question is trichotomous, not a word I’ve ever heard in any recent Leeds debate (which in itself relies on the dichotomous.) This is perhaps because generally the first volume of the shorter OED is closest to hand and most people are naturally disinclined to stretch their arms and much less strain their minds. Trichotomous is however at least nearly twice as good as dichotomous (I know there’s some math nerd out there ready to calculate the exact percentage of my error and I look forward to exchanging equations.) A trichotomy gives more options to play with, it’s an unusual idea. and let’s come on it does sound a hell of a lot like some good salacious fun, does it not?. When you get tugged from two ends it’s hard not to fall flat on your arse in the strongest direction; but when there’s a three way pull it’s much easier to keep your balance.

The third alternative is conversation, the apex of the talk/action triangulation. Not all talk is conversation. Sometimes perfectly good conversations degenerate into mere talk, or worse, get sidetracked into single-minded sales spiels where people simply wait for you to hush the hell up so they can pitch their pet project, promote their preferred cause, or propose solutions to a problem you never knew you had. And action without conversation is simply routine, mechanical drudgery. Every enjoyable thing we do together is accompanied by the merry hum of conversation. Conversation is all the talk left over after you’ve stopped planning, plotting and preening, and quit trying to put one over on people. It’s what makes work and the general shit of life almost bearable. Often it’s derided as “small talk,” but my guess is that people who say they have no time for small talk are probably bragging. What they are really saying is, of course, I have no patience with triviality; I am too deep, too penetrating and too damn important to engage in mere verbal effluvia, I have things to do, people to see, and cities to save. There are a lot of these types in Leeds at the moment, many of them pontificating away on social media, and yes they give talking a bad name. But that’s because they are crap at conversation.

The old Game theorists of the Cold War (a seriously brainy bunch of people and still well worth reading, Thomas Schelling especially) came up with the idea that there were three common ways of dealing with difference and making social life possible; defeating, debunking, delighting (this is my wonky, fanciful interpretation, but I think it’s accurate enough.) Defeating is obviously a pretty bad and bloody idea and we don’t want to encourage that kind of nastiness these days. Debunking is a more rarified, sublimated, intellectual version of war; it’s about debate, polemic, the cut and thrust of rapier-like dialectic, and the point is to get the other person to admit defeat and put their hands up. Again there’s a lot of this going on in Leeds at the moment, lots of zealots with the One True Idea, hammering away till we all agree or get so bored we just give in. Twitter is full of people dispensing wisdom in pellets of 140 characters. Or people so self absorbed with the brilliance of their own opinions that if they get a sniffle it’s a matter for the Chief Medical Officer’s immediate attention, and if they run out of Lemsip it’s because there’s a conspiracy of SmithKline Beecham against them. These people never will get delight. Delighting as a strategy is about the play of difference and it’s about keeping the game going for its own sake. There’s no game without someone to play with, just as there’s no conversation if people are talking to win, in order to shut you up. The whole point of conversation is to keep things in play.

This probably sounds a bit airy fairy and ever so ethereal. There’s a somewhat serious point to my ramblings, however. The point is that most of the time it’s absolutely fine just to talk to each other and not have to feel obliged to do anything. Mostly, action isn’t what is important. In fact, if we all did a little less and conversed a little more the world might be a better place for it. A couple of the things I’ve most enjoyed recently have been those occasions where people have come together and just got along, without much thought about The Next Step or What Do We Do Now? Things like Bettacultcha and Cultural Conversations, both of which I suppose are at the more comic, playful end of the conversational spectrum, and none the worse for it. Cultural Conversations especially was for me about just talking in a normal, human kind of way with people I’d generally not get a chance to meet, and maybe just getting to know what they were up to and how they saw things, and not particularly about planning any kind of action . . . though if anybody wanted to do something as a result of a conversation great! An oblique bonus. And pretty much likely given the people who attended. But not something necessary to the event.

Personally I’m much happier talking than doing. I know that things need to be done and I know we do need to take action . . . but while we are busy doing wouldn’t it be nice if we had a good natter and if we knew the difference between seriousness and solemnity, and never let good natured banter turn into an ugly, loud quarrel? Just a thought . . . what are we going to do about it?