Too often, in a conversation when you are exploring an issue, you find yourself saying something that you immediately realize is ill-conceived, worse still, utter rubbish.
Your conversational partner picks up on it a little more quickly than you and starts to attack you, and you cannot help but go on the defense, and the dynamic of the conversation is killed.
More and more, I find myself using these words in such a conversation.
"I'm thinking out loud here, so what I might say could well be a pile of rubbish, please bear with me."
Then when I'm told, I am talking rubbish, I can quickly reply, "I told you so." and laugh.
The conversation can then move on and is even energized by the exchange.
Jordan Peterson explains why it is crucial to talk rubbish in this video on the importance of free speech.
Paradoxically, it is through taking rubbish that we make sense of the world.
