MAIN IDEA:

This book is about communications, and here is the author’s definition of its main idea: “This book, then, is an attempt to explain why communication goes awry and what we can do to make it better. At its core are a handful of key ideas. The first one is that many discussions are actually three different conversations. There are practical, decision-making conversations that focus on What’s This Really About? There are emotional conversations, which ask How Do We Feel? And there are social conversations that explore Who Are We? We are often moving in and out of all three conversations as a dialogue unfolds. However, if we aren’t having the same kind of conversation as our partners, at the same moment, we’re unlikely to connect with each other.”

There is also a graphic representation:

MY TAKE ON IT:

I like the idea that there are different types of conversations, and communication difficulties often occur because participants perceive that they are in different types of communication than they really are. For example, one side believes it is in a Decision-making conversation and seeks a way to resolve a problem, while another is in a Social conversation and seeks to reaffirm its core beliefs. I think many problems, not only at the individual and small group levels but also at the international level, occur because people do not understand that the other side is in a completely different conversation.

A good example is the most enduring conflict of our time between representatives of contemporary secular Western Civilization and traditional theocratic Islamic Civilization. The leaders of the West believe that the conversation is about some specific problems, such as the Palestinian State, grievances from the history of colonialism, low level of economic development, or some other resolvable problem. They are in a Decision-making mindset conversation. The leaders of Islam believe that the issue is whether they are the one and only legitimate representatives of the true God or just one of many religions that different people come up with. If their beliefs are correct, their god should make them dominant in the world and give them the power to conquer and dominate over everybody else. If such conquest fails, they are wrong, and their core understanding of themselves is invalid. They are in a Social mindset conversation, seeking to assert their beliefs about who they are.

The possible outcomes of this conflict are either Islamic theocracy established all over the world or changes in the leadership of the Islamic populations, who eventually arrive at the same downgrading of their god that the Christian population went through in recent centuries regarding their god.

I think that the first outcome, Islamic dominance, is unfeasible, and the second is inevitable. However, due to Western leadership’s lack of understanding of what kind of conversation they are in, the road to this will be much more complex and bloody than it should have been.