January Blog Post

“Conscious listening creates understanding”

In a society full of “its my way or the high way” mentality’s, this statement from a Ted Talk we watched in class really struck me. With there being a huge divide in the U.S right now after current events, this statement is extremely applicable to our society today. So many people are ready to jump the gun and prove that their points are right, that there is very limited conscious listening going on. Before a conversation is even fully started most participants are on the defense ready to defend and protect their beliefs from the opposing side. This lack of conscious listening is leading to a huge deficit in understanding between the people having the conversations. People’s inability to practice healthy, conscious listening is only hindering their growth as a person and also taking away from our growth in society as a whole. I believe that a big contributor to the lack of critical thinking skills in recent generations is the media and technology. With this huge spike in technology and basically everything having gone digital, people’s cognitive skills are sinking. Technology is taking away the creativity and critical thinking skills that people used to possess at higher levels. With so much information (real or fake) at everyone’s finger tips the world is becoming a bottomless pit of facts and data. Because of this now people believe they know all of the world’s little secrets. If they know all of the world’s little secrets why should they listen to what anyone else has to say, they’re already the smartest of them all right? I recently read an article by Samuel Greengard about the irony of these growing piles of information on the internet and how they are in no way equating to greater knowledge in the common person, but in all actually are taking away from our reasoning abilities. With this demand to think out of the ordinary in our society people are getting caught up in being right rather than understanding, growing, and learning as individuals.

After hearing that Ted Talk I really started to monitor myself and see if I was practicing conscious listening. I began to open up my ears more and listen to what people have to say while setting my preconceived notions aside. It’s truly amazing what you can learn when you genuinely listen to someone else’s side. As a whole, I think today’s people need to apply conscious listening to themselves and truly try to understand each other. As mentioned in class, hearing and listening are two very different things, which one are you doing?

Greengard, Samuel. "Are We Losing Our Ability to Think Critically?" Communications of the ACM. ACM, n.d. Web. 25 Jan. 2017.