Delphic Maxim 7: Perceive what you have heard

I’ve set myself the challenge of responding to each Delphic Maxim for 15 minutes a day.

7. Perceive what you have heard

Have you ever found yourself tuning out in a conversation? Or perhaps you find yourself preparing your response to someone before they’ve finished speaking? This maxim goes to the idea of listening, ensuring that the things you are hearing, you’re properly perceiving.

This quality is more important today — in the world of social media — than it has been in a long time. Mass media has led to a deluge of messages and information. I’m self-aware enough to realise that even these Medium posts are contributing to the massive wash of Things To Read each day, and the flow of information can be overwhelming. Taking the time to carefully consider things, to think before we respond, to properly listen to the people around us, is getting difficult with so many distractions.

One of the most frustrating things for me to watch on social media (and life more generally as a result), is the degeneration of the way people engage in discussions about contentious issues. In the past week, Australia Day took place, and every year we have a broad national conversation about the meaning of the day — whether the date should change in recognition of its insensitivity towards Aboriginal Australians, as well as the attendant conversations about national identity.

And each year, these discussions are characterised by a failure to properly listen. People tend to hear the words, but don’t listen to the meaning.

It doesn’t help to label a point of view as ‘left’ or ‘right’, and these are relatively benign terms — people tend to go in a lot harder with unhelpful labels and grand generalisations based on these political identity positions. This isn’t a sane or useful way to discuss a political issue, it’s just stupid. It is possible to disagree with someone and still take the time to listen carefully to their argument, even if it’s completely toxic. How else can we hope to change someone’s mind? Or if not change their mind, perhaps find convincing ways to change the minds of people who are prepared to listen?

All productive relationships start with genuine listening. This means taking a breath, stepping outside of your intellectual prejudices (even if they come from a noble place), and giving another person space to make their point.

I’m not amazing at this, by the way. But I do like this maxim as a call to at least try to listen to those outside of our bubbles of opinion. A rock pool at the beach becomes stale and tepid unless it is refreshed with a wave from the ocean. The same goes for our minds. There’s an ocean of opinion out there, and not everything in it is healthy. But the tumult, properly received, vivifies the intellect.

So next time you are hearing something, take the time to stop and listen, to actually perceive what is being said, to be curious and to withhold judgement. Not forever, but just long enough to ensure you are genuinely listening.

Your rock pool deserves it.