What Does it Mean to Listen?

[unspeakablehorror]

Sometimes I feel like "Listen to X people" just ends up being things like "I'm not X, so I just listen to X people I already agree with" or "I'm not X, so I just listened to the first X perspective I encountered" or "I'm not X, so whenever I want to push a perspective about X people, I find X people who already agree with me, and say 'Listen to X!'" or "I'm not X, so my arguments about how I treat X people or what's beneficial for them don't require any critical thinking--I can just say 'I listen to X!'".

And the thing is, people do need to listen to X people, whenever the context is that they have the capacity to oppress X people, but any and all of the uses of that statement that I listed above are misguided at best and actively malicious at worst, and either way, they can cause immense harm.  I feel like this statement too often gets weaponized against the very people it's supposed to help.  I think it's important to understand that listening should not be treated like a passive activity.  It is an activity that requires critical thought and understanding, and requires one's active mental participation to understand nuance and context.

And yes, that means trying to understand what contexts in which one shouldn't inject their own statements and...avoiding injecting statements in those contexts.  But I do not think its appropriate to position listening in contrast to critical thinking.  Listening isn't the antithesis of critical thinking; rather, it requires immensely careful thought and reflection.

Comments

[tobermoriansass]

YES! This is a very good way of putting it, thank you. It bothers me a lot when people say "Listen to X" to reinforce the easiest and simplest way of thinking about what are, in fact, really complex issues. I think it often boils down to wanting to find a magical dogma which gives you a simple answer for action. But reality is not structured in such a simplistic way and that elision of complexity has been really really damaging, not to mention, alienating & frequently extremely alienating for the most marginalized/dissenting voices.

[unspeakablehorror]

Yes, I think that unfortunately these very unhelpful ideas about listening get applied because actually listening requires a person accept discomfort, accept information that may not match up well at all to their current worldview. Whereas a surface definition doesn't, for the most part, really require people to mull over or challenge their beliefs about themselves or the world. It's less listening and more finding those who will echo one's own beliefs back at them, or having a way to have this imaginary certainty that a particular perspective is true so they can absolve themselves of having to think about issues they espouse opinions on.