Why do people have the desire to talk?

Another way I could ask is: Why do you have the desire to talk?

In recent times I have been asked on more than two occasions and in an around about way - what are the right questions to ask? After much contemplation my mind brought me back to a conversation I once had and I thought it would be better to first establish an answer or “pattern from answers” to the following question:

Why do people have the desire to talk?

With an answer or “pattern from answers” to this question in mind we can then possibly begin to establish a few ideas on what the right questions to ask are.

When looking around the Internet for an answer you are to be met with disappointing results that deal with the practical nature of talking. He we are looking for more introspective answers that some sort of pattern can be built from.

It has been suggested to me that at first it sounds like a practical question and that surely I have received all sorts of replies about the nature of communication, socializing as well as information exchange. It was also proposed that we skip this and assume I mean the desire to talk beyond the notion of exchanging information or to establish some social bond by the exchange.

I was further advised that it is possible then that we’re looking at - as well - excessive, meaningless, obsessive, compulsive forms; including of course social media exchanges with images and chats, tweets and all that.

To reword some text given to me: Now with a vague question, we’re bound to get vague or varying answers. Unless perhaps we were asking it in a Zen type of fashion in which case, potentially I or the ones replying to me will have to engage in a lot of talk, elaborations or even disagreements on the topic.

It was additionally propounded that “Perhaps the desire to talk, deep down, is then related to this desire to question”.

Conversely . . . Underneath our ability to talk in the first place is our ability to structure information - it is in this information structure where the “pure question” comes into being. The pure question is related to the silent mind(one of them anyway) - the pure question is a question that is not structured by any natural human language but rather an innate code that resides among the mind/body(brain) conceivably including both the central nervous and peripheral nervous systems. In the case of a desire then - it is perhaps something coded into us or a learnt function passed on to us from someone or something else - perplexing . . .

Returning psychotically to what prompted the question - being another question - what are the right questions to ask? - my immediate thoughts were those that do not yet have answers however this would also include the idea of false questions leading to false answers or something alike . . . even perhaps what are the wrong questions to ask? . . .

So: Why do people have the desire to talk?

[size=85]Perchance by first understanding our own desires we can begin to derive correctness in question asking . . .[/size]

I personally have no desire to talk at all preferring writing and reading instead because they are less spontaneous and more intellectual
And I therefore keep my lip movements to an absolute minimum which is not hard to do given that I am as reclusive as I can possibly be

encode_decode,

No Man is an Island
by ~~ John Donne

No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
As well as if a promontory were:
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were.

Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

No man is an island. We desire to talk because we are basically all social creatures, interconnected with one another though at times we may not realize this. It is through the talking, the sharing, that we sometimes come to know this for the first time, each time. The desire to talk, at times, the need to talk, is spiritually/emotionally speaking, as important as eating and drinking. It is nourishing for the human psyche. If we are unable in some ways to communicate, to relate to others, we can shrivel up and die. There is a great loneliness about that, I have found. We are not island.
Then, there is talk and there is talk.

There is the more intimate kind of sharing, which is more profound and meaningful and satisfying, which allows us silly humans to feel connected on a much deeper level, where people may see us at our core, a place where we actually live and breathe that is not shared with many. Without this, many go hungry and loneliness creeps in.

lol I don’t mean to be so urgent about it.

Just as laughter soothes the savage beast, so does talking and sharing deeply.

I intuit that at times it is the sharing, the intimacy, even the every day run-of-the-mill conversations which can bring us to a further understanding of what those desires are. I think that half of the time we do not even realize them.

I do also agree with what you said above though. We can’t ask the right questions if we do not know what we are about just as we cannot ask the right questions, philosophically speaking, in a forum, unless we have an idea of what IS and what we are looking for, to know.

Did that make any sense?

surreptitious57

I will respond a little off topic - what activities do you engage in to keep your imagination healthy?

I just read and learn as much as I can which suits me fine as these are solitary activities
I have been doing it all of my life but only recently have started reading heavy subjects

Arcturus Descending

I like your answer. John Donne’s meditation is a great touch - for indeed “No Man Is an Island”.

I have in my mind the personal desire to talk and as well the social desires to talk - with social acceptance we develop these new desires that are collective and sit next to our very own desires. Some of these desires that are social require belief to come into being - I think this is the case with a lot of religion and science.

We desire the truth - and when we find something that makes sense to us we tend to lend it some belief - any institution is just a case of what makes the most sense to the most people. When we are not happy with any given institution that has become a big part of us we tend to look for answers elsewhere.

Through talk or writ people are able to produce or maintain their self and sometimes a new institution is born . . .

“We desire to talk because we are basically all social creatures, interconnected with one another though at times we may not realize this. It is through the talking, the sharing, that we sometimes come to know this for the first time, each time.”

We are indeed social creatures and our social desires are not our own - our desire to talk can be both our own and social - personal and social. When a person wants to know themselves they are trying to remove the social noise from their internal environment.

The overproduction of reality was a problem that I was facing at a simpler level and I think that through communication we are somehow able to deconstruct these overproduction’s and store these results mentally as some sort of reference/s that propagate both ways to what is being referenced and to the reference/s.

“The desire to talk, at times, the need to talk, is spiritually/emotionally speaking, as important as eating and drinking.”

Our emotional state then becomes a type of “it all OK” or “its not all OK” flag. When all is OK then the white flag is raised and when all is not OK then the battle flag is raised. Talking becomes the medium to help each person ascertain their social state.

“It is nourishing for the human psyche. If we are unable in some ways to communicate, to relate to others, we can shrivel up and die.”

So as we continue our exploration we encounter many other things that are related to our desire to talk. From here we start developing abilities to ask the right questions - the right questions are related to our own desire and what is socially acceptable to ask. When we ask the wrong question our ability “to relate to others” becomes diminished. It also follows that for the answers - if we do not offer answers when asked questions then our ability “to relate to others” becomes diminished.

:-k

surreptitious57

These solitary activities must help you to define yourself. What is your favorite heavy subject?

Arcturus Descending

“There is the more intimate kind of sharing, which is more profound and meaningful and satisfying, which allows us silly humans to feel connected on a much deeper level, where people may see us at our core, a place where we actually live and breathe that is not shared with many. Without this, many go hungry and loneliness creeps in.”

Our desire to talk is strongly related to our want of feeling connected. This connection then becomes a new topic of conversation - in what way do you like to feel connected?

And within a society obsessed with the notion – and upkeep – of a personal self and the freedoms related to that self, one needs to keep propagating it: self survival! If needed, indeed even through silly, void conversations.

“there is talk and there is talk”
“I intuit that at times it is the sharing, the intimacy, even the every day run-of-the-mill conversations which can bring us to a further understanding of what those desires are. I think that half of the time we do not even realize them.”

I think you might be correct. I would say that we have many desires but our desire to talk is closer to the primordial. By bouncing topics of conversation off each other we are then able to come to realize our desires - providing we can filter out the noise of an overproduced social reality - in which case meditating on interactions is a useful tool to separate out ourselves from our social interaction.

“We can’t ask the right questions if we do not know what we are about just as we cannot ask the right questions, philosophically speaking, in a forum, unless we have an idea of what IS and what we are looking for, to know.”

“We” how ever is not limited to just “oneself” but a group or many groups of people. To feel complete as an individual is what most people are trying to achieve one way or the other. One of my friends once said to me “within each one of us is a little bit of dictator”, immediately I laughed but I do see some truth in it - his perception of reality.

More than you probably can guess - harmony on the other hand would rely on the pair of us coming to a complete understanding on the topic - given subjective reality we could never truly know whether that has been achieved or not. Is red the same to you as it is to me? How could we know?

:smiley:

The simplest words spoken to make us feel connected: You are my friend. I understand. I get where you are coming from. et cetera.

Never complete but hopefully sufficient.

I am defined by my social isolation and emotional detachment from other human
beings and as a consequence of that I am as free and as open as I have ever been

surreptitious57

Well I like it mainly because it somewhat presents the flip-side of the coin.

Some of us enjoy the connection and some of us do not.

:-k

In essence some of us like to define ourselves through our social isolation and some of us like to define ourselves through our social connection.

Emotional detachment on the other hand is a very useful tool even in a social situation - when applied correctly of course.
Our emotional detachment can help us to maintain our sanity in certain situations.

Emotional detachment is more vital in this digital age where everyone has an opinion about everything all of the time
I observe it and keep my participation to a minimum and refuse to be offended at anything that anyone says anymore

Part 2

We seek to define for ourselves an identity - we separate ourselves whether in isolation or in connection. We confine ourselves to our own ideals and feel threatened or enlightened when these ideals come into question - we then desire to talk, argue and agree.

What I like about this kind of question is that the answers provide insight to answers from similar questions and by that for example; Why do people have the desire to think/learn/like/hate? Indeed why do people seek connection over isolation or vice versa?

Most of the talking you’ll hear is due to ignorance. Generally people are more so ignorant as they were when they were a teenager - going through that period where they thought they knew everything. Talking is just one of the ways in which people seek to quench desire, or satisfy longing and lack. It also serves as a form of ego propagation. Unfortunately we were not handed a manual for informing us of our true nature. So we make an exploration to discover our true nature. A part of this exploration is communication.

If desire or aspiration was not present to bring you here to post that which is correct according to you, then what brought you here?

Desiring to say what you are is not necessarily related to the ego - it is the experience of bringing forth, in words, the entirety of the causality of the moment (the truth) of your life or existence in this moment - having an approximate estimation on how it will affect the reader or hearer of your words - being aware of this estimation helps us to determine our next statement whether it be a question or not.

Too strong an attachment to our desires can bring us much pain and suffering; “To deny the human condition of desire is foolish, but to consider it a permanent state is equally as foolish” and it is beneficial to address the experience of desire as it governs every aspect of our feeling (of attachment) to our world and social situation or lack there of.

:-k

Part Three

If we are to contemplate the worldly life then it is here that our desires lead us to much pain and suffering - usually it is because we feel we need something when in fact we can live without it. Not rocket science but then neither is living happily.

“Sometimes our experiences of enlightenment seem to come at unexpected moments, often when walking or reading.”

Gloominary speaks of Essentialism:

To deny life’s essentials is also foolish as they are truly the most valuable things.

I speak of Confinism:

Confinism is: “the philosophy of dealing with our limits”. It is a measure of our maturity . . .

Our limits are the very reason why we feel like asking questions that begin with the words:

Why . . . ? . . . How . . . ? . . . When . . . ? . . . What . . . ? . . . et cetera . . . ?

Confinism is the very reason why we ask questions at all.
The reason we ask questions is because we do not know the answers.
If we knew the answers then there would be no reason to ask the questions that we ask.

In many cases it comes down to knowing when to let go . . . when and how to let go of answers that we may never receive . . . or in fact never need . . .

Why? Because sometimes we do not really need the answers - all we really need is the essentials . . . however the brain is able to help us eat and drink and breath . . .

The brain also helps us determine what is poisonous and what is not - so from the essentials then there is some soft psychological needs . . .

We can read from a book what is poisonous - the same information used to be given to us by tribal elders - and now we have the internet - yipee.

A small leap of imagination tells us that we need others to survive - to be born - to learn and to live - through communication to hopefully be happy . . .

:-k

The desire to talk or communicate then most certainly comes from our tribal/pack/social nature of looking out for each other - to flourish - our desire to talk was built into us a long long time ago - when you think about it many flock/pack creatures communicate essentials to each other like - DANGER/FOOD respectively - some sheep make a noise to find out where other sheep are.

Note the use of the word “vital”. If we attach ourselves too strongly to our desires then our vitality is diminished. Emotions are tricky little beasts . . .

The same Wikipedia article that I quoted also contains the following text: “While desires are often classified as emotions by laypersons, psychologists often describe desires as different from emotions; psychologists tend to argue that desires arise from bodily structures, such as the stomach’s need for food, whereas emotions arise from a person’s mental state.”

The same Wikipedia article that I quoted also asserts that: “Desire is a sense of longing or hoping for a person, object, or outcome. The same sense is expressed by emotions such as “craving”.”

The question is whether “desire” and “craving” are fundamentally the same thing.

The paradoxical features of reality are what makes existence interesting.

[-o<

I contend that first there was emotion that our emotions serve as the foundation of our thoughts, then our thoughts spring up out of these baseline emotions and meld together these emotions and thoughts to become refined into actions, pursuits, such as our will, our desire or craving. Is this all a closed circuit loop though that becomes almost indiscernible for scientists to see that our will is intricately forged by our emotions? Are we beings anything beyond, separate, from our emotions? Or do our emotions define our essences which we project via this human form?

Aaron,
Am I veering off topic? As for the OP question, no being can survive solitary confinement. As a being I need other beings to measure the worth of existence and without other beings, existence would be worthless.

WendyDarling

Even though moderately detailed, I feel my response does not do your post the justice it deserves.

I genuinely respect your feedback and find synergy with it . . .

What we are, is at the very least partially defined by the concept of essence, that you have brought into this discussion. The emotions certainly help to define this essence. I have often wondered whether we can feel our true essence like that of our spirit - it is like we have a sense of it being there.

That is a whole new direction for me to think in, thank you. Until now I have been treating things in a logic first way with a theory that logic and emotions are somehow equal. This makes sense to me given that instinct and intuition are coming into play here.

I will pursue this line of thought more thoroughly. My thoughts in the last 17 years is that science has been unintentionally trying to strip us of our essence/spirit. I am going to make a more thoughtful response in the not too distant future.

I don’t think we are separate from our emotions but I do wonder if there is more to us than we are willing to admit.

I like the use of the term essence - I would have to exercise at least two lines of thought here. The emotions are proving harder to grapple with than logic. While I contemplate this I am going to consider very thoughtfully the idea of essence; one of the clearer things here is that emotions help shape our personality which I believe is one of the facets that leads to our personal identity(or our self-concept).

No you are not veering off topic. I would say you are right on topic - we are covering some uncharted territory here.

I believe this to be correct. Being is something more than just survival. A machine can survive until it is worn out and/or unable to be powered but for us there is more. Of course we wear out too but we are socially self sustaining; I mean that without each other we would not be able to be born and navigate the treacherous waters of life - here we are talking beyond the physical essentials too.

Exactly . . . Do you like how a lot of people try to dodge this? I am being sarcastically rhetorical. Being alone is terrifying - for me more terrifying than the threat of physical harm from a dangerous wild creature. At least having a dangerous wild creature to evade would give me the purpose of evasion.

Let me be off topic for a small but significant moment:
[b]
Existence is cut like a gemstone . . .

. . . in that it is multifaceted . . .

. . . Love is the most important facet of our existence . . .[/b]

Humanity’s true face should be one of love.

:-k

I know me and my essence has not changed since I can remember. I have tempered my essence and my behaviors inspired by it to be fair to others, to not shortchange anyone who comes into my sphere of being, but that is a whole lot of work, sharing warmth is harder than sharing the cold.

At the top of my hierarchy is peace…

peace = love & joy blended in equal amounts…

however, all facets of emotion are necessary for discernment of one from another

One of the old moderators here, named Abstract, wrote: “Love is the gravity of the soul.” Beautiful, isn’t it?

WendyDarling

I wish I could pinpoint my own essence like you have. I agree that we should be fair to others. Sharing warmth is especially difficult these days.

I sense that your hierarchy is superior to my own.

Precisely.

Metaphorically speaking: Absolutely!

:smiley:

Ah Aaron, still looking forward to the rest of your more in-depth thoughts…no rush though…newness takes time to cover.

Part 4

We can get so wrapped up in different conversations and communications that we forget why we started half of them in the first place. At this point our self-concept becomes diluted amidst the pool of social activity. We feel connected but we feel without self. It would seem that a person who understands the desire to communicate is more able to understand the self and the self’s need for connection thus maintaining self-concept and being able to avoid the corresponding emotional suffering associated with fear and anger of being rejected and in turn becoming despondent.

Desire can be likened to bondage or being a slave - this bondage takes place when our self becomes diluted among the social matrix of our own semi distinct reality. Just as maintaining a connection feels important so does knowing our place in the thick of the network and thus understanding our very own true nature. Do we only live for ourselves or are we selfless - I suggest there is health to be found in between - being connected and being self. To not become ruined by our personal or social desires but rather enhanced.

If our desire to communicate is in line with the true essence of our being instead of some illusion that only swings one way or the other as has become evident in many philosophies of the past then true happiness is evidently in requirement of some ongoing maintenance - when you seek the easy way out, whatever that may be then it could be a sign that your mind is in fact just at disease or in a state of disease.

A part of the reason we desire to talk/communicate is because it helps to bring us purpose and it helps us to maintain that purpose - we are able to become ourselves and a member of the larger group of selves. We are neither truly distinct nor fully connected - quite likely the real mission is: how to work out why this needs to be the case.

:-k

One thing that you can know in every case is that whatever the desire, it is the result of a perception of hope and/or threat. And since every individual perceives at least a little differently, his incentive will be at least slightly different than others.

In the case of the desire to commune with others (by whichever means), there would be a perception of hope instigating the desire. That perception could be any number of things and a little different for every person:
[list]* companionship
[*]useful information

  • ego support
  • yearning for a life
  • social influence
  • sense of social acceptance
    .
    .
    .
    [/*:m][/list:u]