When its about you, its called Marketing

Anita tells me about how most conversations she's in is about an endless ramble, centered around the others person's life. Its always about them and what they do. She admits to going nuts and she thinks this oft-repeated scenario could spawn an industry where all one's got to do is to cultivate the patience to listen to another, of course for a sum.

The truth is, such industries exists. Its in fact every Business-to-Consumer industry. Every product and service that's a success story is because its an outcome to the act of marketing. And marketing is about the other person, the consumer. Its about responding to that person's ramble (read, desires centered around the self) in the form of products and services. The business of products and services is the business of fulfillment. Fulfillment of consumer needs, expressed as wants.

At the heart of being centered around one-self lies the act of 'dependence'. As Scott Peck writes in his classic, 'The Road Less Travelled',

'One of the aspects of dependency is that it is unconcerned with spiritual growth. Dependent people are interested in their own nourishment, but no more; they desire filling, they desire to be happy; they don't desire to grow, nor are they willing to tolerate the unhappiness, the loneliness and suffering involved in growth. Neither do dependent people care about the spiritual growth of the other, the object of their dependency; they care only that the other is there to satisfy them. Dependency is but one of the forms of behaviour to which we incorrectly apply the word 'love' when concern for spiritual evolution is absent.'

Note that most conversations will almost always be about the other, as most acts are about oneself. Dependency is what ensures that conversations will be about oneself, as much as it ensures that the act of purchase will always be the act of fulfilling one's needs.