2015: The Poverty of Listening
It is said that respect lies in listening. Yet I have found that listening is one of the least practised arts of our time. We are schooled to talk, to argue, to advise, to sell, but not to attend. Attention is treated as optional, as if the presence of another human being were an inconvenience to be tolerated rather than a field to be shared.
This is poverty of the most insidious kind. We excuse it as ignorance, as forgetfulness, as absentmindedness. But I call it abuse. When you dismiss a word I have carefully chosen, when you overwrite my self-description with a label of your own, when you tell me how to live while pretending you do not—you reduce me. And reduction is violence, even when no blow is struck.
Our society prefers its abuses obvious and its categories neat. Patriarchy versus matriarchy, power over versus power under. But there is a third axis left unspoken: the autonomous stance, where one meets another without conquest, without submission, and without the need to erase. Attention belongs to this third axis. It is the minimum condition of respect: to notice what is actually said, not what you prefer to hear.
To ignore is easy; it costs nothing in the moment. But in truth it costs everything, for it corrodes trust. A friendship cannot survive it, nor a marriage, nor a society. The poverty of attention sits beneath all others: beneath money, beneath knowledge, beneath contribution. For what is the point of wealth if no one sees how you use it? What is the use of knowledge if no one hears it? What is the worth of contribution if no one receives it?
We are told to listen, to respect boundaries, to avoid judgement. Yet these are empty slogans if attention is not given. Attention is not passive. It is an act of presence, a willingness to hold still in the company of another without interruption, correction, or theft. It is the rarest coin in circulation, and its absence explains much of the bankruptcy of our time.
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