Blog Post 1

The first two weeks in our Comm 160 class have heavily focused on listening. Our reading for week two was chapter 4 of Communication: A Critical/Cultural Introduction. This chapter had the perfect quote to sum up what we have been learning so far in class. “In general, hearing is a physiological experience in which sound waves vibrate our eardrums. We usually ignore these sounds or take them for granted. We therefore take hearing to be as passive act, contrasted with the more active practice of listening. In this way, listening is a practice that requires our active attention and focus” (Warren 64). I think this quote is important because it sets up everything we have been talking in about in class. Before we could learn anything else, we needed to understand the difference between listening and hearing, and this quote did a great job to explaining the two. We need to understand that hearing is passive and listening is much more in depth and active. Once we recognized the difference, we could learn about the different kinds of listening.

            This quote is important for us to understand because I have a feeling we are going to be going back to this idea and talking about listening a lot throughout the semester. If we can get a good grasp on these terms now, it will be easier for us to learn and talk about different ways of listening as the semester goes on. I think another way this can help us throughout the semester is by showing us that we often hear rather than listen. By learning the difference between hearing and listening, we can begin to develop our skill for listening which will make us better students in all of our classes.

            While I can’t think of a specific example of this in the world right now, I think this can be related to the way people talk in general when it comes to politics and the current problems we are facing in the world. The political climate is probably more divided now than it has been in our county’s history. People are very certain of their beliefs, and they are looking to find people who disagree so they can get them to change their minds. The internet is currently full of fighting instead of working to bring this country back together. People are refusing to listen to others. People aren’t making an effort to understand one another. Instead people hear what the other side says and then immediately responds by saying they are wrong and their argument is flawed. We need to learn to listen to others, even if we have different views. We all need to learn from each other and try to understand why we have our own beliefs. If people were willing to actually listen to others instead of looking ways to poke holes in their arguments, we might actually learn things from each other and end up growing instead of continuing to tear each other apart. I think listening is incredibly important, and if we can all learn to listen better we will be able to feel less separated from the people we talk to both online and in person.