"Are we listening when we are composing what we will say in reply, in our minds, during the speaker's speech?"
...ah... but is my mind's behavior as easy as a listen/speak switch. There are times that the words or scenes trigger such sudden memories or responses, that it's a challenge to "wait to be heard"...
...so, often, in informal conversations, there are interruptions and speakers talking over each other. As we grow older, we might learn to wait for the subtle pauses, indicating not that the speaker has said everything but rather that they have said enough to "clear their brain", for the moment...
all just a bit of conjecture, mind you...
how does communication spark processes in the brain? is art effective when it drives home a single, pervasive image? ...or would art also evoke a myriad of patterns, each keyed to the unique pasts of each person that the art is presented to?
Does a story have to have a neat conclusion - a point or a moral, if you will? Or can some stories be left dangling in their own private limbo, while other experiences intervene? I would hold that life is not pre-determined, that the sequence of events that it be made of need not be causal... each event leading to the next.
one of the pitfalls, if you will, of modern science is the search for a grand unified theory of everything; or the belief that everything has a purpose, or that we are so inter-connected. When our timelines cross, we can attempt to compare notes on where we've been... but we can not assume that our past lives were able to influence each other. There may have been a very real limit caused by the speed limit of our communication. I would argue that is not the speed of light, but rather how long it takes to describe my past, however painful, to another, and then... they in turn to another (with some inherent distortion caused by second-hand stories)...
I do not believe that I can relate all of my past perceptions to one person in one moment (because the relating would play out at the same speed as the experiences happened?) I am left with casting fragrments, and hoping that they are enough to fit together into your own experiences, so that you may build a reasonable facsimile of my life by using your own life.
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