What are you passionate about?

What are the most interesting discussions you've ever had? Are there any common characteristics for them? And what are the opposites of these? I started thinking about why I can sit and have an endless cup of coffee (nicely emulated by refilling a finite cup over and over, mind you...) with some people and with others I just have an immediate reaction to move on. What is exactly going on here?

My working hypothesis is that it has something to do with passion. Some people are very passionate about something, and with these people the discussion is often interesting if you allow yourself to get immersed into the topic. Others will say that these are annoying people as the ramble on and on about something. But have you actually taken the time to think about all the fascinating aspects of what the other person feels so strongly about? Probably not. And the opposite case where a topic isn't discussed deeply and profoundly, chances are that time just won't fly by. Well, that's not entirely true, of course. There are also the conversations which just seem to fly despite the fact that there isn't any specific passionate topic at hand. Maybe the passion is then for witty remarks and rhetorics, which enables the conversation to flow onwards in an interesting way.

But are there people who aren't passionate about anything? Superficial empirical evidence would suggest so, but I'm not truly convinced. Another argument might be that everyone is passionate about at least one thing and some are passionate about more than one. Perhaps the problem is then about communication, which may either imply that some people are not able to clearly communicate their passion and for reasons unknown choose simply to not engage in a discussion. The other alternative would then be that they may have learned the hard way that others may not always be willing to listen to you or immerse themselves in your interests. I have to admit that I'm not always that keen on immersing myself e.g. on the latest Big Brother setup (which appears to have recently ended, judging by the tabloid papers). But that's something that I should work on changing in myself.

From this then emerges the question of when does the passionate discussion lose its passion and why do some discussions slowly die and become tedious? It might have something to do with relativity: perhaps the dynamic is the same as human satisfaction which appears to be defined as the delta, or the change in something. If you're not moving, you're not happy. Or so it would appear to be in the contemporary western world. Is the analogy then that if the discussion around a certain topic does not constantly attempt to push the boundaries forward and venture into the unknown that it then stagnates and dies out? Sort of like how sharks must keep on swimming lest they want to live.

Maybe this is again one of those topics that would need more thought. It's already clear in the 15 minutes spent to write this entry that the implications for this may be very wide.

Collisions

I wonder if much of the perceived problems in education and employment might have something to do with friction between planned systems (education) and emergent, free market systems (employment). Hayek might have something to say about this.

Data visualization