The human race has entered a stage where no one listens anymore.
We hear but we do not listen. We surround ourselves in a bubble of our own views, an impenetrable echo chamber of hatred and fearmongering against other bubbles. There is no time for listening, instantly dismissing someone before they have even finished their sentence, based on judgements of our mind of what that person represents.
Listening requires pausing from thinking about our own answer, it requires not thinking about how something affects us and it requires not evaluating what the person is saying while they are saying it. It requires empathy, it requires the ability to understand, it requires the ability to actually take in a viewpoint different from our own. It requires a love of all human souls and a realisation that we are all equal no matter what, we are the one-life, the human race.
An indigenous saying from North America sums up listening well – “Listen, or your tongue will make you deaf”.
Philip Dodson 