Virginia,

Often, I think about the dearth of "meaningful" conversation in both our daily lives and our country.  I believe it may have something to do with the "downer" concept.  Sometime during maturation, especially in the U.S., people "learn" that "serious" conversation impedes frivolity. The mantra of "don't worry, be happy" has been intravenously fed to our populace and subsequently, bequeathed to our progeny. Pondering an issue deeply ans slowly has become something of which many young people are ashamed and do only in the safety of their own minds, if at all.

Societies have always relied on adults to initiate youth into important practices. With both parents working eight or more hours over the last two decades to gain the trappings of "success", generation z, as current teens have been dubbed, needs more practice in deep discussions than past generations.  With parents not present to conduct meaningful conversation, this duty has fallen to those who entered the profession of education.  Ironically, during this same period, education has become driven by test scores, further pushing meaningful conversations with adults to the fringe. Hence, a society focusing on Miley Cyrus moving out at 17, who got voted off of American Idol or which movie made the most at the box office over the weekend; frivolity rules.

Sean,
I agree that there has been a cultural devaluation of meaningful conversation. And while I agree that modern's culture obsession with being #1 is largely to blame for this, I don't think it's fair to blame the super-driven yuppie mindset, created by the success-by-score mentality.

As evidenced by this site, people crave meaningful conversation, they just often lack of inspiration to engage. With the rise of constant, ubiquitous media, there's so much noise that people don't know what to focus on. The rise of noise has created a generation of people starved for simplicity. And American Idol is nice and simple.

Frivolity rules because it's frivolous. People associate meaningful discussion with strong emotions, and when you're tired, you just want to zonk off with a beer. It's kind of counterintuitive that exercising thoughts and emotions will relax you, but apparently it's true, as per Virginia's article. 

Excellent points, Sean, Anne.
You say Anne: " It's kind of counterintuitive that exercising thoughts and emotions will relax you, but apparently it's true, as per Virginia's article."
Something which surprises people who start a sportive activity is that the only way to relax your aching muscles is precisely to exercise again.

People try to rest from the meaningless of their actions by doing other meaningless activities such as Facebook and Twitter, but that doesn't give you meaning, it only makes you feel bad about yourself. It's like people turning to junk food when unhappy. Instead a good steak (or potatoes and pasta for vegetarians) gives you much more energy to confront life. (The internet does its best to supply people with as much junk food as they can swallow.)

I agree Anne that people crave meaningful conversations, but I'm not sure they understand what it is that they're craving, because as Sean said, they, or I should say we, are far less exposed to it than people used to be.