What we talk about and how we talk about it matters. Honest, energized conversations are the way to change the world. That's how it has always happened.

15.1    Scientific Advances

Whenever talented people are thrown together, ideas are born and grow. Almost 500 years ago, informal conversations sprang up in London in new coffee houses where men met to discuss the future of society and politics. Their influence became so powerful that they were shut down for a while in the eighteenth century when the government of the day felt threatened. Conversation has always been the crucible for new thinking, and many new ideas emerged from coffee house discussions, including the founding of the Royal Society, a great supporter of innovation. At Royal Society gatherings, a fascinating cross-section of famous thinkers, including Benjamin Franklin, Isaac Newton and Karl Marx, discussed ideas of the day.

Some of the most important recent discoveries in science have come about through conversations between different disciplines, both in funded ventures and outside formal channels. The discovery of DNA resulted from conversations between Crick, a biophysicist, and Watson, a biologist. MRI scanning became possible through the coming together of an American chemist, Paul Lauterbur and an English physicist, Peter Mansfield. The whole area of cognitive science – combining psychology, linguistics, computer science, philosophy and neurobiology, with the help of medical PET scans and CAT scans – is a huge conversation between scientists from different fields. Interdisciplinary research is now given prominence in many universities.

Conversation is about connection in more than one sense. When two or more people connect in conversation, they often make intuitive creative connections that spark new ideas.

15.2    Political Change

History shows us that political conversation has power. We read of battles and wars, treaties and taxes; but, as Hilary Mantel points out in Wolf Hall, change happens through conversations: “The fate of peoples is made like this, two men in small rooms. Forget the coronations, the conclaves of cardinals, the pomp and processions. This is how the world changes.” An empire collapses, a war is averted; a new nation is born without bloodshed; behind many of the extraordinary changes in the world lie private conversations between people of influence or even private individuals.

15.3    Voice of the People

When nations allow democratic conversations, change is inevitable. No wonder free conversation is the first thing to go in a dictatorship. Maybe it is impossible to silence talk completely. Cicero claimed that conversation, being so transient, was impossible to censor and the essence of free speech.

The American Revolution was simmering away in sewing-circle chat across America well before the War of Independence. The principles of the constitution were created first in committees of correspondence that grew up organically across the continent. In France, revolutionary fervour in Paris grew from conversations outside in the cafés and inside in the salons well before it exploded into popular revolt. Listen to the conversations of today and you can predict tomorrow.

In our own day, conversation has gone global. For the first time in history we can create conversations about issues at the heart of our human existence and they spread at high speed around the planet. While politicians in their parliaments are often still posturing and sticking to party lines or vote-winning arguments, passionate people across the globe are creating important conversations using new technologies. They are listening to each other, touching and influencing each other, and joining forces to create a better world.

Every great environmental campaign or social change starts with a conversation between a very few people. The conversation opens anywhere – in people's homes, in offices, cafés and pubs, or in virtual space. As a result of the conversation, people come together with passion and more people join in to create change.

Such conversations are possible when they adopt the best aspects of face-to-face conversations – becoming curious about each other, listening actively, speaking with courtesy, allowing vulnerability, seeking to connect and understand. If we wish to avoid the violence and massive inequality of our century, it's of the utmost importance to keep the conversation going – to overcome our fears and keep the channel open between us; to be willing always to engage in dialogue.

Online discussions are gaining momentum due to social media. One powerful example is the Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking, which has brought together 12 different human rights organizations in the USA, who are able to work collaboratively partly as the result of social media. Another is Avaaz, a global web movement with more that 28 million members, bringing the voice of ordinary people to political decision-making everywhere. TED Conversations, linked to the highly successfully TED Talks, provide a social media platform for online conversations with a time limit to keep them focused and meaningful. Currently they have more than 15 million monthly users.

The world has always changed through conversations between people who care and think something matters enough to take steps together to change the status quo. This applies to climate change and world peace and it applies equally to family harmony and children's happiness. When you get to know someone personally, through conversation, you are forced to recognize your common humanity. It's the opposite of drones, a deadly technology that obscures humanity.

Conversation is all about connection, and we connect most easily when we speak at the level of heart and soul. At the level of places, possessions and activities we live in vastly different conditions and do many different things, but we're all human; all experience human feelings and share human values. Bridges can be built through common aspirations.

Through connection with each other, we make creative con­nections and spot opportunities and explore possibilities. “Only connect,” said Margaret in E. M. Forster's Howard's Way, referring not only to building loving relations, but also to joining up the dots, using both “prose and passion” in our relations with each other.

15.4    One Personal Conversation at a Time

In the final analysis, it doesn't really matter whether it's a conversation with a son, mother, friend, with a dying person or for a cause large or small – it's the nature of a conversation that counts. In the end, there are no small conversations – everyone has the potential to increase understanding and connection. Everything becomes possible when I see your humanity and you see mine and we appreciate that we are the same. Every conversation of ruler and ruled, boss and employee, partner and partner, mother and child, teacher and student, stranger and stranger – every single conversation has huge potential.

Potential needs time. When we meet someone, most of us have a strong instinct to say something or do something, and we rush outward to meet the other person in words, or rush inward to wonder what to say. But conversation is more about being than doing. If we allow space – to breathe, to look, to feel, to think and to be – the connection and conversation come to us in the silence without any conscious effort on our part. Knowing that, we can choose to open our eyes and see. It's fascinating how, as our conversation changes, so the people around us change, and then the possibilities change. We become attractors for a different kind of person and a different level of dialogue.

And the world changes – one conversation at a time.