The Courage to Listen

I continue to be disturbed by the highly divisive and adversarial tone that pervades public and private discourse in our culture today. I wrote last week about communication as a significant quality of healthy community, particularly the ability to listen. What I am wondering about today is the apparent difficulty we have in listening to each other. What stands in the way of our ability to listen to the experiences of another?

One answer to the question is cynicism. Hardly anyone believes that others are telling the truth about their own experiences. Every communication is suspected of being a manipulation. It’s as if the name of the game has become who can tell the biggest lie in order to get someone else to believe the way you want them to believe.

It becomes a conundrum. If I can’t believe that anyone is telling the truth, then I am stuck with drawing conclusions based only on my own relatively narrow experience and perspective. Now, you might argue that people are still reading newspapers, still buying books on political and social themes, still listening to talk radio. That is so. But I have come to recognize a personal temptation regarding the sources of my information. I tend to prefer reading and listening to people who already see the world pretty much as I do. This is not a useful policy. While it might feel supportive of my personal opinions, if I restrict myself that way, how am I going to learn anything?

One way to continue learning is to distinguish “point of view” and “perspective” from opinion. If I simply state my opinions, that is to say, my conclusions about an issue, then you have plenty of reason to tell me that I am entitled to my opinion, but you don’t agree with it. If, on the other hand, I offer a perspective, then I am giving you something useful. I am sharing that this is what the situation looks like from where I stand. If you see things differently, we need not immediately conclude that one of us is right and the other one wrong. We will be able to recognize that the differences are related to the difference in our perspectives. Then we can learn something! Opinions are mutually exclusive, while perspectives can be added together. When perspectives are shared, then everyone has opportunity to see more broadly.

I suggest to you that our community, if it is going to be healthy rather than toxic, needs more sharing of perspective and less imposition of opinion.

What do you think?

Wayne Gustafson
“The Promised Land is within and among you.”