Spooky

I spent Sunday at Speakers Corner once again. I always find that I learn far more than I teach on these occasions.
So here are my discoveries in no particular order.
1) The audience at Speakers Corner is generally more interesting and intelligent than the speakers. There is far too much religion and meaningless point scoring between the religions at the corner. One man stood on a box and simply repeated 'only Jesus saves' for approximately an hour. He drew a larger audience than I did which I found rather depressing.
2) The audience is made up of approximately 80% tourists and 20% regulars. The regulars are generally middle aged or elderly men who have become socially isolated. They never speak publicly which is a shame because they have some original observations to make. These men are victims of the current order and may be reached by us.
3) Most people like the familiar. The most successful speakers are careful not to say anything new or tax their audience in any way and the moronic quality of 'debate' is beyond belief.
4) Men I meet are astonishingly open about their feelings. These are the 'sensitive' men that women say they want- but most of them have problems with women.
5) Most young men know something about game. I drop jargon into my talks as a sort on in-joke.
6) It is possible to tell a persons personal history simply by looking at the way they stand and feeling their 'presence'.
I was talking to a a pastor in an African church about children and he told me that he could always tell the children who came from broken homes because they could not sit down or concentrate. They squirm around on their seats and are always bored. It suddenly occurred to me that the same was true of adult women. To my right there was a woman who had already impressed me with her ability to listen to what I had to say without flying off the handle. He has a very 'solid' and secure presence that was the opposite of every feminist I had ever come across. I told her that I thought she had an exceptionally good relationship with her father and she told me that this was true- she glowed with pride as she told me about him. She then asked me what she would be like if she did not have this relationship and I told her that she would not be talking to me. She would have blown her top and stormed off a long time ago and not had the patience to understand the message.
There was also a Scandinavian man who asked me to interpret his presence. I felt that he was fluttery, introverted, and a little un-masculine. He told me this was exactly how he felt but then suddenly he changed and became far more masculine. This was because his thinking changed as we were talking. I was able to pick up the exact moment when his thinking transformed. Spooky.