Delusion takes some doing to undo.

First, we need really to get that interrupting is a violent act. To begin with, we need to understand what interruption is. We have to recognize all of its

pernicious and artful forms.

And then we have to examine it at a ‘cellular’ level. We have to see the untrue assumptions that drive it, take them apart and start over with true ones.

Keeping the promise of no interruption is a tough job.

Tough because this promise is an unspiralling galaxy of a thing.

In fact, it is the one we have to solve. It looks innocent: it’s flashy and immediate; it rewards us; it makes us feel we are in control. It seems to be nice to us.

But it is a liar. It controls us. It does this by being an intricate, intentional, invisible, social ‘system of interruption’. We have seen how devastating our relationships of interruption are. But social systems of interruption are an even beastlier beast.

We do need to accept that the power of persuasion at its worst lies in its design to interrupt. It is supposed to interrupt us, our independent, cogent, thinking selves. And it does.

We, therefore, become afraid to hear the other person’s thoughts because to consider them would be, we feel, to betray our deepest selves. So we make sure that no idea can develop in either of us that does not fit our certainty of who we are and who they are. We stop them. We interrupt.

And so it is entirely predictable that on digital-posting platforms, including the single-dimension email platform, people say things they just would not say if they had to witness or hear the effects on the recipient of their words as they deliver them.

Of course, we say horrible things to each other in person. But there is an instant feedback loop that tells us to stop. If we defy it, we witness the painful result instantly. We know we are doing damage. And that picture of pain usually pulls us back, and eventually stops us. We see the human being we are assaulting. We see the blood we are spilling. And that does something to us.