Blog #1

Quote: " I do not merely hear with my ears. I hear with my whole body. My ears are at best the focal organs of hearing." -Don Ihde

This quote stood out to me because it made me think about hearing in a whole different way. It made me understand hearing is not simply listening to what the other person has to say and responding. It is much more than that, or should be at least. Listening should be a way that you can fully engage with others. To do this however, you must think of listening as a stance. A stance is an approach to experience rather than simply a matter of hearing or listening in ways that are passive or active, or as skills in need of development. For example when I go downtown with my friends I am taking on a listening stance. I am not just listening to my friends, I have have the opportunity to listen to much more than that. Other than my friends talking to me, I listen to the cars on the street, the music all around me, and all the other sounds the city has to offer. I am not trying to just do the physiological act of hearing but instead experience theses sounds around me. Hearing should not just be the physical act of information going in one ear and out the other, but actually mean something. This quote and all the information I took out of it really made me think differently about the course material as well. It made me understand that communicating is not all about talking. It is even more about listening. Before I read this quote the idea of listening really didn't seem like anything that has to be explained. Now I know this course will teach me just how important it is to listen and be a critical listener. The quote reminded me of a lot of things Julian Treasure had to say in a Ted Talk called, "5 Ways to Listen Better." He starts out his speech by telling us the stocking fact of how humans only retain 25% of what we hear. This further backs up how important it is to listen with your whole body. Because a life where you just hear and not listen is useless. He than goes on to talk about  how the art of conversation is slowly going away. People are becoming lazy and don't want to listen. He stresses just how important it is to listen just like Don Ihde did.