LIFE

Do We Really Need To Have This Discussion?

Avoiding intellectual pitfalls at draggy dinner parties

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It was another packed weekend with one serious event after another centered on a forum. The grand topic this round was on good governance, culminating in a hall filled with think tankers and distinguished members of society with expertise from all directions. I used to drown in a metaphorical death when I was younger at these events. In the last two decades, to numb my pain, I’d hold a glass of wine like a life support machine. A few sips here and there made me chatty, perhaps even witty, but the danger was always to drink more than necessary to escape the dullness of everything around me.

I used to joke with friends that the reason I drank so much at soirees was to escape the realness of the conversations. “People get too serious,” I start sipping, “but we’re not at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, are we now?” In the end, it was all the same. I believe it was the great Woody Allen who said, “I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It’s about Russia.”

The problem is, there are folks who insist on dissecting War and Peace.

Now that I’ve been sober for years, lucidity rules the game — I needed a new playbook. Social soirees…