I planned to send this to my son when he told me with excitement of his dinner with an old acquaintance of mine. The following was notes from reading a book on conversation.

Too bad I forget the author of the book, but I remember the book quoted extensively Montaigne’s writing. Montaigne invited people to attack his ideas as “agreement is boring and intellectually deadening.” Montaigne would be a total alien at my workplace.

Then, again, Montaigne found few people worthy of being his opponents, because most people were not up to his intellectual level. I laugh out loud. Yes, try working here in Kansas and you would be completed isolated.

He disliked “pretentious conversationalists who parade their learning” or those people “awaiting their own turn to hold forth.” So terribly and pitifully shallow.

Here’s an interesting observation made by Montaigne. “Just as our mind is strengthen with vigorous and well-ordered minds, so it is impossible to over state how much it loses and deteriorates by the continuous commerce and contact we have with mean or ailing ones.”

According to him, the main reason conversations were unsatisfying is that people “get defensive when their views are questioned.” This is so fun. “Most people, when their arguments fail, change voice and expression, and instead of retrieving themselves betray their weaknesses and susceptibilities by an unmannerly anger.” I am not aware of any mannerly anger.

Montaigne was so interesting that I was very much eager to get hold of Michel de Montaigne’s original writings, in French. Wish me good luck!