Monologues aren't dialogues

March 28, 2025

I was an eternally curious child. I was always keen on learning. Or at least, that’s what I to this day tell myself. Learning, getting to know more about the world is something I like, something I would not want to live without.

This doesn’t mean, however, I was always a good learner. Or rather, there were times I was a better learner than usual. Those time were the times, I knew I was acquiring knowledge that most people could understand without needing a specific knowledge base, but that most people also didn’t know. In other words, knowledge that could easily be taught to most people, outside of the usual learning environments. The effect of being a better learner, when you’re learning to teach it to someone, is known in psychology as the protégé effect.

One of the few things which is about as fun, as learning is for me, is teaching.

I like teaching stuff to people.

Lately, I was talking to someone, who I didn’t know much about, but as they had always seemed very nice from the outside and because I realized they had similiar interests as me, I wanted to get to know them better.

Personally, I like to think of the outcome of conversations about a topic based on the familiarity with the topic both parties bring to the table.

For example, if both parties are very familiar with the topic at hand, the type of conversation you’ll generally get will either be small talk on a very common topic like the weather which both parties know about, or you’ll get a very good discussion on high level, if two “experts” in a field meet.

When talking to said person, at some point in the conversation I got reminded of something, and started teaching them something, they didn’t know a thing about. (sidenote: Specifically, I told them the story of how the U.S. military at one point lost 4 hydrogen bombs right off the coast of Spain. I also talked about the function of said bombs.)

After a while, when my story was finished, the other person told me something. They told me that they prefer deep, personal conversations, where they get to know the other person better. This statement had me realize something, something that might sound a bit obvious, but something I had seemingly forgot or had maybe never realized in the first place.

As naive, as I was, I felt like I had just told them something personal, when I had really just told them a factual story. The reason for this difference between my perception and reality is - as for my best guess - that I deeply enjoy teaching and that I poor my heart into each “lesson” I give. So, it felt like a personal conversations to me, while it obviously wasn’t.

Very personal conversations arise, when party A is very familiar with the topic at hand, because they are talking about theirselves, and party B is unfamiliar with the topic, as they know what party A thinks, which is usual, as one never knows what other people think.

With the same arrangement of familiarities, when party A is very familiar and party B unfamiliar, the conversation can, however, also become an introductiory lesson to a topic.

So, I realized that given the same arrangement of familiarity two very different conversations can arise. So different, in fact, that one conversation could be flourishing dialogue, while the other would be a static monologue, but…

Monologues aren’t dialogues.