OHOY!

Listening is crucial for communication and understanding. On the first look, listening does not seem to be something that requires any kind of special skills or to be problematic in any way, but I think that a closer look will show that this is not the case. One might think that listening is not worthy of much attention because it is so basic and just a matter of hearing what others say. But there are many ways that listening can go wrong and people fail to hear each other well.

Listening and Quarrels

We start to have problems with listening to others and hearing them properly, when we are angry with each other. When our ego is hurt and we feel that we have been insulted, we often want to get back at the person responsible and so we stop listening to them. In these circumstances, we sometimes get very carried away and interpret everything that they say in the worse possible way to make them look bad and foolish to ourselves and others, so as to confirm what we think of them. We might even convince ourselves that they cannot be saying anything sensible or kind because then they would have been kind and sensible to us.

We generally over-interpret when we have something at stake emotionally. People who have conflicting emotions, are confused or do not know themselves well, sometimes do not listen well but listen for approval or rejection. Some people even turn listening into a sinister business. When we are hurt or just feel psychologically threatened by someone else, by something they may have over us, like wealth, some ability, or just confidence, some of us often listen for something that we can later use against them to bring them down. Such people do not believe in exchanging ideas, learning from each other, and listening with empathy, but often want to establish confidence so that later they can break it for personal gain of some sort. Some people even assume that they know what is going on in our head much better than us and that they know what we mean better than us, so they will not listen well either and find words and phrases to back up their preconceived notions about us, while dismissing and overlooking everything that does not support their opinions of us.

Listening and Racism

Prejudice and stereotyping can also make us not listen to what others are saying. When we have very firm and fixed beliefs about people and think that we know The Truth about them, we can only listen to them through these lenses. Recently in the Netherlands, it emerged that a Liberian refugee family, consisting of a woman who had lost her husband in war and their four children, were being systematically racially harassed, bullied, and intimidated for over 18 months by the local youth. What is shocking is that during this period, the Liberian woman tried to seek help and tell the authorities what was happening to her, but no one would listen to her or believe her. So, the family had to flee from their residence and go into hiding to get away from this ordeal.

She spoke to many different officials from a variety of different governmental agencies and organizations which were supposed to be of assistance to her, not only her many complaints were not listened to, but she and her children were also singled out as having problems fitting in and integrating. A new independent report on racism in the Netherlands has concluded that for a year and a half, the police, the local government, the officials from various refugee, housing, and youth organizations, all failed badly in their responsibilities to protect the Liberian family. They did not recognize what was happening as harassment, let alone racist harassment. They did not intervene or put any checks on the youth, but blamed the family for what was happening to them.

The woman and her kids left Liberia to get away from war, but they were not able to find peace and safety here either. It seems that no one had an ear for her misery. Netherlands of course has many anti-racist and anti-discriminatory legislations and laws, but they are not being enforced or taken seriously. Many Dutch folks believe that they come from a rich culture and civilization which makes them better and more upright than people of other cultures which they see as different from their own. They assign bad attributes such as racism, sexism, or bigotry, to these others without blinking an eye, and assume that they themselves have progressed well beyond them. These assumptions in turn influence the way they listen or not-listen to others.

Listening and Disagreements

When we start disagreeing and someone criticizes our views, if we have not had a lot of experience with friendly disagreements, we may also become quickly offended and feel like we are under personal attack and in turn feel justified to think ill of our opponents, to stop listening to them, and to rebuke them. This is why it is important to focus on ideas and stick to discussing them. It is therefore advisable to begin by making sure we have got our opponent’s views correct. This usually involves repeating in our own words their claims and conclusions to them to make sure we have their views right. If we want to avoid misunderstanding and keep the conversation going, then this is a good norm to follow. If the views of others are unclear and we have problem formulating them with our own words, then we must ask for further explanation and give them a chance to speak for themselves instead of quickly ascribing the worse possible views and meanings to them. If we do not like their views, then we should put the burden of further explanation on them. Often the best way to respond to someone who appears to be speaking nonsense is to ask them to explain what they are saying and to elaborate further. Sometimes this process makes them rethink what they were saying and see what might have been wrong with it. People who are interested in ideas generally ask questions and demand more explanations rather than try to read minds.

In so far as a conversation is a shared activity and a joint endeavor, we have to involve our discussion partner and be friendly, rather then to quickly dismiss them and their views when they do not accord with ours or are critical of them. In order to stick to ideas and not get into personal attacks and negative speculation about our opponent’s background and psychological states, it is also always important to not loose sight of the common grounds and interests that have brought us to the same questions and to build on these. Often so few people are interested in complex social and political issues, that it does not make much sense to push away and alienate some of them just because they disagree with us. In many ways, a civil and polite opponent is more precious than those who agree too easily. For instance, we might actually learn something from them and come to a new understanding of the issues.

Listening and Philosophy

Listening is also important in philosophy, but some schools of thought give it more prominence than others. For example in analytic philosophy, when one engages the ideas of others, it is crucial to embrace or at least be attentive to their concerns and worries and to make these, part of our own. This means taking them seriously, interpreting them in the most generous way, looking at them closely and critically, and accepting those parts and bits that are legitimate and fitting them in with our other beliefs. In this way listening with empathy and with attentiveness becomes part of analytic philosophy as an intrinsic norm. Listening in this sense involves a kind of give and take of knowledge, learning, if you will, or the broadening of one’s horizons.

But in some traditions, folks do not want to engage in this sort of exchange to the same extent. If someone’s views are different than their own, they just accept it that way and do not insist on listening empathically. In this way they encourage a pluralism of different views rather than grinding them all into one. This approach is fruitful in some contexts, but not in others. When there is a need for reaching agreements or for critical but friendly discussions and arbitrations, people are usually trying to some extent to go beyond the differences and come together on some joint endeavor. In these situations they must listen to each others concerns and worries, try to respond to them and alleviate them, and let the fundamental differences, if there are any, emerge in the course of discussion and dialogue instead of making strong assumptions about them from the beginning.

The danger with invoking pluralism when we meet up with other views, is that it encourages entrenchment and treating our own views as good and valid for us and therefore beyond the reach and criticism of others. Those who promote this kind of pluralism often simply explain away criticism and disagreement by reference to difference in background, culture and history. They simply do not seem to want to look at the ideas of others very closely, challenge their own assumptions or find their own blind-spots. In any case, whatever the virtue of this sort of pluralism is, it is very different than the listening which is at the core of analytic philosophy and which reflects universal respect.

Another norm which elevates analytic philosophy above others, whatever we may think its shortcomings are, is the focus on argument analysis and sticking with the issues, rather than taking on a simplistic version of the view of others or attacking the person making the arguments. In this way analytic philosophy preserves the insights about the ways that listening and communication can go wrong and fail miserably. But those who do not want to analyze and break down the views of others or look closely at them with empathy have few routes left.

Scholars who promote what may be called difference-pluralism often claim that various views on a subject or issue are irreconcilable and do not want to pay close attention to them, so they find it easier to make their critics into the Other, therefore they set out to read the views of others in such a way to find things that they can put together to form unkind narratives about them, usually by echoing and utilizing common prejudices and stereotypes. This approach is not civil or friendly, and it seems to involve a kind of hubris and passing severe and harsh judgments on others in virtue of whether they agree with us or not. This is the opposite of thinking through a problem with our opponent.

Listening and Charity

It takes effort to be a good listener. Being a good listener requires open-minded-ness and modesty. It demands letting things develop rather than jumping to conclusions or making strong assumptions. It also demands that we treat others as persons who can reflect, learn and be reasonable. But above all good listening probably requires the virtue of charity.

Charity means giving generously to others. It is usually associated with helping the needy, but it can also mean generously ascribing positive motives to others, thinking good of them, and having good will towards them. It requires that we assign positive meaning to the words of others and treat them as friends. It does not mean that you have to accept everything that is being said and claimed by others. But it means that when you are asked, you will attend to them and look at them closely.

When someone is criticizing our views, it is certainly possible that we can be wrong not having considered everything that is relevant to the issues. It is also possible that our critic is wrong and mistaken in some way. But we are not going to find out unless we listen and look at things closely together. Listening well and attentively does not guarantee that communication will always succeed, in fact in some ways they make a person committed to these things more vulnerable, but it goes a long way in bringing people together.

-Rotterdam, Netherlands