Listening

Listening dives into the ethics of listening in times of technological turmoil. It explores, both philosophically and practically, how we ended up in this mess of polarisation, overstimulation and fragmentation and asks: Could listening be of help? Listening is about being open to your surroundings and to the sounds that you hear. It’s an invisible act that requires you to be silent and open to others, rather than focused on yourself and your own opinions. It might be an accessible way of resisting the dominant structures of our technologies. 

My criticism of technology stems from my love for it. We shouldn’t underestimate the democratic value of the internet. For the first time in history, people from all backgrounds could make themselves heard. The backlash has been huge, though. False promises, fake news, prejudice, hate-speech, and bias are all jumbled into a frantic hype-cycle. Who still cares to listen and why is it important? And how is it done?

Listening is often presented as a cure to many societal issues. If we could all just listen to each other, then all problems would disappear. But listening is difficult, especially when all our devices and media are always capturing and destroying our attention. If it was just about having a good conversation, then we wouldn’t be in this pickle in the first place. 

At the same time, listening is presented as soft and passive. We often forget that listening to someone doesn’t mean we have to agree with them. It’s hard to decide when to stop listening, because we get emotionally disturbed or shaken in our beliefs when we listen. Our attention is on ourselves rather than the other. But much is lost if we turn away altogether. There is a point in listening as a counteract to polarisation, overstimulation and fragmentation. Not in the performative way of politicians or the managerial class – who too often use listening as a promise that’s not kept. But by embracing the openness, purposelessness, and unpredictability that listening brings in. Then it turns out that listening is active and potentially transformative, both for the listener and the person who is being listened to. The communication model, with a sender, a message, and a receiver is kind of flipped. Listening, it turns out, is about being ‘on the receiving end’, but also about giving something back, namely attention. 

However, it’s not so easy. I think that in our culture, listening is a bit of a forgotten sense, in two ways. First, it’s snowed under in a culture that is predominantly visual and where sight is considered the most important (‘seeing is believing’). We’re surrounded by countless images all the time and are preoccupied by our own looks and others. And second, in a culture that foregrounds the freedom of speech, listening is the underdog. We’ve learned that articulating and sharing your opinions makes you an autonomous and responsible person. Enlightenment culture has connected speaking up with being a citizen who takes part in the democratic public debate. But the value that is placed on speaking comes at the cost of listening.

Listening can thus be contrasted with seeing and speaking – visual culture and a culture of sending and not receiving. (These two are combined in apps like Instagram and TikTok.) Turning the tables around, listening could be seen as a counterweight to these two. It’s not like pictures and visuals, which are tangible, measurable, and concrete, listening is invisible and silent. And not like speaking, which is a form of sending, making yourself heard, bringing information into the world.

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Ongoing thread. More from Miriam Rasch to follow.

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