I’m absolutely struck by the intensity of the conversation between these two heroes of mine, Susan Sontag and John Berger. There is this wonderful tension simply in the manner in which these two listen to each other.    How on earth do these two great minds not roll over each other?  Where is the Nietzschean will to power ?

The cynic in me thinks: perhaps it is the performative nature of this conversation which brings such restraint. Perhaps it is the knowledge that they are actors on a stage and it is in their best interest to compliment each other’s “brand.”

More romantically,  I’d like to think that it is their sincerity which allows them to explore a topic not in primitive debate, but as socratic dialectic.  Argue to understand.  Argue to experience.  Argue to impassion.  But never argue merely to win, for that is the central decadence of our age.

How I long for an age of sincerity.