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I respect and appreciate this exchange very much.
When people speak to one another, it seems to me we often move, quite quickly, up and down a scale towards more thoughtfulness, vulnerability, and open engagement with difficulty and joy, and then towards more defensiveness, pretense, and the pressing of one another into service/subjugation through social stories of hierarchy, winning and losing, and scarcity (competition for limited resources).  Up and down, up and down.  I'm interested in how different forms of social organization, different participant structures, facilitate each way of speaking, and inhibit each.  Interpersonal relationships that create spaces for individuals to explore their thoughts and experiences can be generative of reflection, and of a move beyond beleaguered knowing, or defensive speaking.  I think people can also bring this consciousness into broader social arenas and support its emergence in other people.  This dialogue has that effect on me!