Definition of “deipnosophist”
Collins English Dictionary. Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers
(daɪpˈnɒsəfɪst) – noun rare
a person who is a master of dinner-table conversation
The Greek title Deipnosophistaí (Δειπνοσοφισταί) derives from the combination of deipno- (δειπνο-, “dinner”) and sophistḗs (σοφιστής, “expert, one knowledgeable in the arts of ~”). It and its English derivative deipnosophists[3] thus describe people who are skilled at dining, particularly the refined conversation expected to accompany Greek symposia.
Wikipedia
The deipnosophist concept originally emerged through my need to connect with people meaningfully. As someone who doesn’t particularly enjoy small talk, I find it exceptionally taxing to hold conversations with people who have seemingly nothing to say other than exchange pleasantries about the weather. I suspect, not because they have nothing to say; it’s mostly because there’s simply too much that begs to be expressed and the overflow of constant thought has stultified us into believing that we’d rather not even try. How would we begin to even start expressing all we need to, when our brains are constantly bombarded with information that “we MUST know” or else we are left behind? As a human being, I’m somewhat disheartened to see that we all, at some point or other, resort to the facile “fast food” expression of TXT SPK/pop talk that has restricted our ability to formulate thoughts and ideas into logical and coherent patterns with proper sentence structure. We condone spelling, grammatical and syntactical errors as a matter of courtesy, without realising that we are doing ourselves a disservice – present company included!
The only way to express ourselves is to stop being passive consumers of the information so readily available and so urgent in exhortation and to JUST START! Start talking, start writing, start singing, start painting, start dancing… Start without an agenda. Start without thinking how your experience can be monetised so you can retire at 25 – although admittedly, no one would frown upon this, but you would be missing out on innumerable valuable encounters with life.
Start with the urgency that comes when everything is lost and the proverbial flood is hitting the gates, forcing you to make a move.
This is your move —
Whether what you express is purely your own or not is immaterial. We are mostly an amalgam of everything we’ve ever been influenced by, so our expression will, by definition, reproduce part of these influences. Recognising this will save you a lot of trouble in a world that forever seeks novelty or charges you with the burden of proof with pseydo-scientific persistence: prove it or it isn’t true (even worse – you’re a liar or you don’t exist – vide “cancel culture”)… Understand we can agree to disagree and still find points of convergence and, even more shockingly, confluence!
So, I would suggest you start by asking yourself this pivotal question: WHY?