Conversational Traffic Signals…Redistribution of Voice - 7 minutes
Sharing an unedited excerpt from the upcoming book
Connection between Traffic Signals and Conversations
Introducing Conversational Traffic Signals
Global Examples of Experiments in having better conversations
Obvious, known, familiar, used to, mundane, taken for granted…are all things that do not raise any alarm to us. They don’t threaten our survival. Hence, we seldom hold them in awareness. One of the aspects of contemplative practices, is precisely the idea to take these and see their nuances and deeper connections. Sometimes they evoke gratefulness, sometimes awe because of the myriad complex parts that come together and miraculously produce the ordinary, sometimes they lend us new insights. The devil lies in details and so does angel.
For now, let us turn to traffic signals. Traffic signals have some interesting mix of the mundane and the teething. Why do we have traffic signals?
After all, we can all individually have our own freedom of movement and no one can take that liberty away from us.
Hmmm! Sounds intuitive. Sounds liberty.
But! But, let us just look at what are the various options when we move in public spaces, in vehicles. For starters, we have cross-roads without signals (let us call them non-signaled crossroads). And that can be easily compared to crossroads with signals (and let us call them signaled crossroads).
Each of us has an account of how it was ok or easy or difficult while navigating each of these two options. We have accounts of how sometimes it was smooth getting past them. We could also have accounts of traffic jams in each of them.
The thing about signaled crossroads is that it takes away some individual liberty to move from each of us for a specific tiny duration (when we are made to stop), and then distributes it in a structured manner to others (allowing some to pass the signal). And because there is this abstract concept of taking away from each, and then structuring it and giving it back to each, we have a feeling and experience that it works in a certain manner. That even in this process of sacrificing some of our liberties, there is some sense of equality to it (ahmm! VIP movement excluded). But, when there is chaos and traffic jams, we feel cheated or uncared for and unserviced. Because, even in the equality of the experience of being in the jam (with many), it doesn’t work for any of us. Meaning equality may work sometimes and may not work sometimes. Of course, there are several nuances to this. I have deliberately oversimplified to communicate a point.
Coming back!
Having worked with traffic police in Mumbai and Thane through our social experiment, Thank You, India, and having followed briefly the excerpts of the works of 200+ Traffic PhDs (Yes! Internationally there were 200+ people from different disciplines trying to make sense of traffic in various ways) , we know that traffic is the proverbial nightmare of the day.
Imagine if each of us had to individually negotiate (through our vehicles), about moving ahead, past the other and before the other, it could get chaotic and chronic. We do have several examples of these mutual-negotiations. For example, during the distance between two signals, we are on our own. Negotiating with other vehicles. And we know that not everyone is fair and safe around. We do know the fallacies of mutual-negotiations.
Another example could be when we mutually negotiate non-signaled crossroads. They best serve in scenarios where there is some form of not-so-dense traffic. And when people aren’t tail-gating or rage-driving, or in other words courteous. But when the traffic reaches a certain tipping point of density, risk and efficiency-load, these non-signaled crossroads become problematic.
I believe that human conversations have reached that traffic tipping point, where we need signals. The tipping point to have newer conversational traffic rules. And the need for it comes from various factors.
The rise in complexity (dealing with so many differentiated parts and concepts that have non-linear relations with each other, giving rise to emergent properties),
the intangibilities that conversations handle now, as they are becoming crucial to not only attention economy but also opinion economy and conversation economy. And this has bearing on political and social spaces.
the inter-subjectivities involved in interactions,
the power dynamics
the variance in personality types who participate in the conversation,
and so on.
We also have personal experiences of so many conversational accidents. Conversations that hurt someone, hurt a relationship, flare up hatred or distaste. Conversations that become manipulative and maladaptive.
Of course, it would be naïve to say that traffic signals are the same as conversations. There are both similarities and differences between the two. The idea is to evoke the erstwhile unreflected aspects of conversations, and see what we can do, by learning from different metaphors and analogies. For example, this written matter that you are reading, does follow some rules of grammar. It has various punctuations too. They are the signal equivalents, i.e., following common rules. Or take for example, a person shouting angrily. Even that person tries to be grammarly correct even as at times, the person may appear to be uncivil.
Conversational Traffic Signals can restructure individual freedom of speech. It is important to note that we can all go into the forest all alone, and talk to anything or animal or shout. We don’t have laws against it. The point is that freedom of speech means and assumes that it exists amidst the onlooker and the on-hearer and the on-reader. Meaning it exists when we are contexts to each other. Each of us is a context to the other. And it means that the freedom of speech intersects with other person’s freedom of speech, freedom of wanting to hear or not, freedom to respond, freedom to protest and so on. Freedom of speech is an inter-mesh of various other freedoms. And given where we are, seeing the quality of conversations in public offices, in social media, in relationships, and so on, there are already experiments happening across the world to address these (read holacracy, sociocracy, Theory U, Non-Violent Communication, Conversational Intelligence, Reinventing Organization; debates like The Munk Debates, Intelligence Squared; or various interesting podcasts like The Portal, Making Sense, Dark Horse, EconTalk; or circles like Alcohol Anonymous, The Awakin Circles, Human Library) . These are examples where they conduct their main activity through conversations. And each of them does it with some tweaking.
But we need to exercise caution. The thing is that both the status-quo (of how conversations are happening now) and the change-demands (of how conversations ought to be) can be equally weaponized. Now, it may come from an unintentional space or an intentional one. And it can be adaptive for some group and maladaptive for another. Hence, a deeper and continuous #SearchDialogueAction is warranted.
Such approach can examine aspects of human conversations through #Interdisciplinary lens. Look at the various kinds and purposes of conversations. Who gets to speak, when, how, why and so on. And then #Reimagine and restructure it … by taking away some of what and how we speak now, and then giving it back to us in a more fair ways …
rest in the book …coming soon
