3 kinds of Men

Been reading Cryptonomicon for the past few days, and stumbled upon many insights along the way.

Men who believe that they are accomplishing something impressive by speaking (viz. Brian Frank) speak in a different way from men who believe that speaking is a waste of time once the point has gotten across (viz. Jon Wyler). Obviously, belonging to the first class, despite being more confident and fluent, aren't necessarily more intelligent, or even more educated. This is just another way of saying that there are people who talk for the sake of talking, and there are people who talk for the sake of communicating.

But there's a third, much rarer class. Men of the first category, who typically talk as if they have a bunch of stuff figured out, are often frustrated with speaking to men of the third class, who think in terms of questions rather than answers, who does not speak impressively and are in turn less likely to be impressed by impressive speech. Men of the second category, who speaks with agendas in their heads and mentally checks off boxes as they go, also get nowhere with men of the third class, because conversations with men of the third class don't typically have desginated roadmaps and, as are typically the case, go nowhere. People of this third class, more often than not talk for no particular reason at all.

Everyone think of themselves as the exception to the rule, I am no exception. Despite that, every once in a while, I find myself truly belonging to this third class. I don't speak in order to be listened to by others (because I don't talk impressively), or in order to be heard (because ideas that sound interesting to me are better conveyed through writing), or in order to hear myself (I hear myself much better without speaking). I speak as a way of making up a bunch of new shit as I go along, and generally hope that someone'll join in, which no one ever does, at least in any satisfactory manner.

Often, after I've been blabbering for a while, people ask "So what's the point?" Asking this question is an indication of completely missing the point of my blabbering, which by design have no point. However, the pointlessness of my blabbering is precisely the reason why I blabber them--so that the point can be found via a joint effort, which is the point of having a bi-directional conversation in the first place.