Dr.Armstrong, thank you for your warm-hearted comment on my previous post.
In communicating, it seems to me of paramount importance how much common knowledge we(participants in conversation) have. I seem to remember I read some book (maybe on ragmatics or something)that defined communication as the process of making deeper our understanding of each other with the help of information or background already shared. The information or back-
ground functions as a reference point here.
Now that I mentioned it, when reading books, background knowledge helps us understand the author's ideas more cleary then we would without the help of it. That occurs quite often, I believe. If we subsume reading activities in communication, that is, if we consider it some form of communication, that seems to me quite reasonable from the above argument(?).
Getting back to our original theme, it is the shared information (including interest, hobby, plan, etc..)that counts greatly in communicating, I believe, and it is almost automatically concluded
that it is one of the qualities that I look for in good human relations. This is not to say that it's meaningless to try to get familiar with those of different backgroud, of course.
Maybe Dr.Armstrong's comment "my best friends...are interested in the arts and culture." has something to do with my opinion.
