Just... Listen

Thoughts

We humans do not, as a rule, listen to each other uncritically and with an open mind. Our first urge is to judge, and to evaluate critically based on that judgment. I suspect, although without evidence or data in support of this idea, that we are hard-wired for this behavior through our mechanism of belief formation and reinforcement. We evaluate new information against our existing matrix of beliefs, accepting inputs which accord with those beliefs and rejecting those which do not - and, as social animals, we voice our acceptance or rejection. We are a cacophony of opinions leveling judgment upon each other for every difference or disagreement, however trivial.

I think this failure is at the heart of some of the most bitter and entrenched divisions on display in human discourse. Yes, there are some real, fundamental, existential differences between us. But the nature of those differences, and the basis for them, is largely obscured by our assumptions and biases. We distill every disagreement down to its most reductive state, and then fling that judgment at the person we disagree with as an accusation. I’ve done it. You have done it. That pattern has become the common mode of exchange in every forum, online or in real life. And to what end? What value is created? What good is served? What do we learn? What do we accomplish in these unending, trivial, and static debates?

I am not a practicing Quaker, nor was I brought up as one, but I attended a Quaker high school in Baltimore, and attended weekly meeting for three years - an experience that is fundamental to much of the way that I see the world. While Quakerism, for those who are not familiar with it, is a religion based in Christianity, Quaker meeting is not a religious service in the way that most people think of such things. There is no sermon, no liturgy, very little structure at all. Meetings take place largely in mindful silence.

The function of the meeting is to quiet one’s mind so that one can listen with an open spirit to whatever the universe has to tell us. Quakers believe in the “divine spirit” which will guide us spiritually and materially if we are open to hearing it. Whether you share that belief or not, the practice of listening - of being open to other voices - is something that we can all benefit from.

The one exception to the silence of Quaker meeting is the practice of speaking out of silence - to voice some message or idea that one is compelled to share. Anyone in the meeting can stand up and speak at any time. However there is no discussion of what is shared - the members of the meeting simply hear it and think about what was said, mindfully. This period of deliberate consideration - unforced, unbounded, with no critic other than one’s own conscience and with no external signals of conformity - creates a space where we are allowed to consider an idea at a remove, without the need to process it through our mechanisms of belief formation and reinforcement.

In that quiet space we may find that there is a path to an understanding which does not demand agreement or judgment, acceptance or rejection. We are able to find other ways to regard an idea, and by extension the person voicing the idea. We may respond with empathy, or nuance, or compromise. We may adjust our own beliefs in subtle ways to accommodate a new idea, or we may allow ourselves to accept that there is no universal human condition, no one method of being.

Listening mindfully and openly does not prevent discussion or disagreement. We do disagree on many things, and the ability to work through that disagreement to arrive at some new understanding is one of the principle values of discussion and debate. But understanding is not acquiescence. Listening is not agreement. Not every argument demands a response. Sometimes there is more to be learned, more to be gained, by thinking than by talking.

Just… listen.