Crucially, they have arrived having promised to stop interrupting. They have agreed 1) to start giving attention, 2) to stay interested in where each other’s thinking will go next and 3) to ‘share the stage’ equally.

Things work in context, not in the spotlight.

We need to adore difference so that we can all finally, in fact, be the same in the only sense that matters: as human beings. And what magnificence that sameness is.

So how about we walk across the road and listen? And soon ask to be listened to, too. And promise never to interrupt. Only to learn. And eventually to respect?

And then, who knows?

To love?

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.

If I become interested in your view, I will have to adopt your values, and so I will stop being me; I will be an inferior person.