The Meaning of "Listening": A Necessary, If Predictable, Sequitur.

If you can tell by my title, I know that it is a sort of stereotypical practice of those taken by philosophy to start out by defining some basics. So I will start with the obvious:

What is listening, really?

During my undergrad, I had the pleasure of studying under who is probably my favorite professor ever now. Having no consent to identity, suffice it to say he was a medieval literature teacher, one who's changed my life. Often during his lessons, he found it necessary to go over the etymology of certain words. One of these, as you might guess was "listen." The word, he said, originated from the infinitive "to list." This is the action a sailing ship performs when blown sideways in the breeze. The ship lists, or, tilts sideways in the flow of the wind. My professor continued to explain the parallel, that when you listen to someone, you typically turn or tilt your head to hear their words. In effect, you are submitting yourself to be open to an outside influence.

This very action is the key to communication. Anyone can move a rock, splash in a river, start a fire, even kill a person. But to communicate with another person? This, in the end, requires consent. This, in the end, requires some form of listening, to at least submit to the sound of another's voice. For communication to occur, language must be actualized, received, and then understood, even if it is not agreed with.

The transmission of ideas in communication was a common theme in my professor's lessons. As any English professor worth their salt, he likened it to sexual intercourse, and claimed the poets of old thought the same. Ideas are emitted to the mind of another but, to germinate into yet more ideas, they must survive and thrive in the psychological environment of the mind and join with others.

This communication, as I see it in this current moment, can serve two inclusive ultimate purposes: definition and inspiration. Ideas that are well-received are received primarily as inspiration; they generate more ideas and push the two communicators together more tightly. By contrast, ill-received ideas primarily function for definition; the receiver is now more aware that their conversation partner has a shape, if you will, that they are not compatible with. Hence, they drift farther apart. This is most likely on a spectrum of some sort, but I think this formula more or less decides the very basis upon which we relate to each other as human beings.

In my previous post, I said that I don't think humans listen enough. For the purposes of my discussions on my blog, I would say that I would like to define "listening" as the ability to be open to this transaction, at any time, so as to try to glean as much inspiring communication as possible. This is not to say that we should be swayed by every idea that crosses our path, but it is to say that we should welcome ideas for objective criticism instead of outright oblivion, reevaluating with any new form of information.

I feel the need to provide some example here. Racism is a putrid idea. It is an obnoxiously unsupported, destructive idea that is the unfortunate reason that many are discriminated against for no discernible reason. By saying this, you may think that I am dead set in my ways, and perhaps rightly so. In a sense, I am, as there is no evidence to ever point to our morality as human beings as being flawed in that it treats all humans equally.

However, despite my beliefs that all are created, and remain, equal, I would be open to hearing arguments for racism. Now I do not, in any corner of this universe, believe, at this time, that there is any scientific evidence or otherwise persuasive argument that should ever sway my beliefs on the subject, but I should be open to listen for multiple reasons. One, there may, in the most wild and nasty dreams we could ever conceive, eventually be a genuine argument to point to racism as a normative moral choice. Two, since I don't anticipate this being the case ever, I would like to understand the mind of someone who causes such disruption, so that I can perhaps help them see truth and, almost more importantly, recognize that they are still humans worthy of respect. In this way, I listen so that I can try to see the humanity that must still exist somewhere inside them and give them the same respect that my fundamental morality subscribes to: the equality of all.

On a personal note, I believe this because I am tired of the pointless aggression that either side of this debate gives to the other every single day across my country, and any other dragged down by it. I believe it is a simple fact that no progress will ever be achieved until we can come together in a civil discussion and figure things out. No one can be easily convinced of the humanity in another when that other shows them nothing but bitterness and hatred. The world is cruel enough without assigning our fellow humans an "it" status rather than the same terms we would use with our own family and friends.

At the same time, if discussion with those of a racist bent and others like them seems to be totally futile, there is no need to add fuel to a fire unless in mortal danger. It may be difficult, but we must always remember that people we deem hopeless are still people, but they simply refuse to listen. It is sad that they shut their ears to reason and camaraderie, but our answer should never be hostility.

Finally, I hope that I am on the right track with this line of thought. The listener always opens doors and never closes them. The listener seeks wisdom and understanding through as objective a lens as possible, and continues to show compassion for those in dissent. The listener is dedicated to a life of unity, peace, and communal evolution. No human need be an enemy, unless they make it their choice. Consider the sailing ship, which rocks gently with each ocean breeze driving it forward to new things.

I love you all.

A Megapreface: An Attempt at Return

DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT HERE AS A RELIGIOUS DEMAGOGUE OF ANY SORT. MY GOAL IS TO EXPLORE SOLUTIONS TO A PROBLEM THAT I FEEL AILS MANY. I ADMIT THAT THESE ARE MY OPINIONS THAT I BELIEVE ARE BASED IN FACT. I HOPE THAT PEOPLE WILL APPROACH ME AND CHALLENGE MY THINKING SO THAT WE CAN ALL LEARN FROM EACH OTHER.

Hello, everyone. It's been a long time and I want to try to do this again. I'm going to try and do this as thoroughly and comprehensively as I can. It's been a few years and a lot has changed for me. I've learned many things, have better developed my heart and soul, and may have experienced something of a rebirth. So let's take it from the top:

The things I want to talk about are so broad and far-reaching that its hard to think about them without employing almost purely just one's imagination. I will admit, I don't know if I'm the best person to talk about these things; I will be extremely clumsy, talk about things out of order, reiterate a lot of things, but this is just to get my head on "paper" for hopefully more than one person to see. I believe that what I want to talk about is what humanity as a whole needs to survive this century. If you think this makes me sound like I think I'm some prophet, then I won't blame you if you turn your back right now. I feel these are things that must be said, and damn it, I'm an angry, lonely bastard for keeping this inside me so long.

Now As better philosophers do, I will try to approach the crux of this, knowing full well that I may change my thoughts on this at some point:

Humans don't listen.

It's true, in many ways. I don't want to shit on us right away, so I'll say quite objectively that we humans don't handle outside influence very well, sometimes even internal influence. And I understand, the idea is quite terrifying. Our hope, as animals, is to be able to stand self-sufficient, rigid and strong enough to weather any coming tide and come out on the other side just as solid, if not more so. That image of security, stability, and well-being is an attractive one that our baser survival instincts love to death, and why shouldn't they? Nobody likes pain. This is how we all should aspire to live at some point, right?

Yeah... too bad that's not going to happen.

Life, as Buddhists observe, is suffering. Sure there's fun to be had, laughs and love to enjoy, but ultimately time takes its toll. Friends come and go, family pass away, our own bodies begin to betray us as we grow old. You could be the richest human in the world, in charge of a medical science corporation that could guarantee you, at some point in our tech savvy future, something like immortality, and still time and tide would destroy you at some point. All things die; time and infinity are simply impossible foes. This is a truth that terrifies us to our very core, so we survive.

But I believe that this attitude is almost all wrong.

Memento Mori. Remember you must die. We survive in denial of this truth without taking a moment to realize that it is inevitable and that we have already discovered the best way to move forward: essentially, to listen.

An intelligent man named Charles Darwin proposed that life as we know it has survived impossible odds by way of evolution. This is to say that there was never a point in time where each organism on this planet was figured out in such a way that it could survive literally any environmental challenge and then stuck to it and lived forever. What the man said was that not the strongest, nor the most intelligent, but the most adaptable survive. Our intelligence as human beings has given us the gift of adaptability. We have only made it this incredibly far because we took the time to recognize our environment, take a more active role in our relationship with it, and use it to survive.

But we did more than that; we thrived.

You see, adaptability is like a form of listening. By submitting to the fact that we knew little, by listening to our own insufficiency, we were able to grow and enter several whole other levels of what life could be capable of. The major problem of the majority of our species today, is that we have lost the desire to listen. This affects us on physical, emotional, spiritual, communal... so many levels it's not even funny. If you genuinely think about it, this very issue is the cornerstone of why we face so many hard times now: We have a planet that is warming and flooding, nations around the world itching to point guns at each other, different colors of people that are once again eyeing each other with hatred and envy. The world focuses on opposition rather than cooperation and I am sick and tired of it on every single order of magnitude that I am exposed to it by on a daily basis and I am terrified of its ramifications for our future.

Finally, this is my proposal. This is my blog and I want to use it to quasi-philosophically explore the nature of listening at a fundamental level. My hope is that people can discover this blog and take away from it some element of listening into their own lives, in the quest to find unity with ourselves and each other, while growing together passionately towards a common goal: to thrive instead of survive, and show this unforgiving universe what life is capable of.

Thank you and I hope you will come to understand what I mean when I say I love you all.