TEDxSalford

You Should Have A Listen To This

I’m going to start this blog with some scientific fact – we have ears – yet despite this being something we’re all very aware of, what we’re not so aware of is just how much information we gather and process with them. And, in fact, just how our perception of reality is created through this information, so it’s time to listen up (or in this case read) while we discover just how the world of sound shapes our lives.

This journey is helped via a couple of TED Global talks from Julian Treasure. Firstly, ’5 Ways to listen better’ (Edinburgh July 2011) as well as ‘The 4 ways sound affects us’ (Oxford July 2009)

The world is now so noisy with this cacophony going on visually and auditory, it’s just hard to listen; it’s tiring to listen…

We spend roughly 60 per cent of our communication time listening, but we’re not very good at it. We retain just 25 per cent of what we hear

Julian refers to the fact that we are living in a time where we are being bombarded more and more with visual and audio from every point of life, so much so that we’ve begun subconsciously filtering out these noises, and with it our outlook on reality is changing.

The news uses more loud and shocking language to grab our attention while adverts will use any sound that they believe will hold your attention for 30 seconds (have you ever noticed how a lot of the time the adverts on TV are louder than the shows themselves?) These people and groups are all trying to get your attention in a world that is getting louder and louder.

We have got to a stage where all we seem to be doing is just making distinctions from noises, and in the process have begun subconsciously blanking out the ‘unwanted’ audio around us.

This leads to something called ‘differencing’ whereby a person, when faced with a wall of sound, will listen for the differences and discount the sounds that stay the same. For example if you talk to someone while something is buzzing in the background, you will subconsciously filter out the buzzing while your conversation continues.

Conscious listening creates understanding… a world where we don’t listen to each other at all is a very scary place indeed

Julian does have a much deeper point to his talks than just the need to listen more. He’s driving the point that we are living in an age where we are receiving too much information, intentionally and accidentally. There are multiple devices and various people who are always trying to get you to listen to what they have to say, and it seems we have had enough, and have begun ‘taking refuge in headphones’  and as such, have turned ‘ a whole soundscape into millions of sound bubbles.’

I’ve been here many times myself, the amount of times I’ve put on my MP3 player and stuck in my earphones just to get away from the buzz of the city around me, or so I can ignore all the various noises that come from a rush hour commute on public transport is countless.

I find refuge in the music as I’ve become fed up of listening to the world around me, I feel that there is too much to say from too many people, and I want to be left to myself, the problem is, I know I’m not alone in this, and this is where we are going wrong.

We should be able to listen and to be able to hear the world around us. Unfortunately the constant buzz of unwanted information has left us in a perpetual state of isolation, as our subconscious slowly filters out the world, and everything just becomes white noise.

Is there a way to solve this?

It’s time to re-tune our ears, and begin to really listen to what’s going on around us. It may sound silly, but we live on a planet that has a rhythm of its own, and it’s a rhythm that can we can associate with;

[Ocean surf] has the frequency of roughly 12 cycles per minute. And … 12 cycles per minute is [also] roughly the frequency of the  breathing of a sleeping human. There is a deep resonance with being at rest

So just by listening to something simple like waves and birds, we can already change so much about how we feel and also change the way we look at life in that moment. It does work – have you ever tried, for example, sitting in a park in the sun and listening to the birds, or by sitting next to an ocean while on the beach and not, in that moment, feeling better? That is you listening to the sound of the world, and using that sound to help yourself.

Birdsong is a sound which most people find reassuring. There is a reason for that. Over hundreds of thousands of years we’ve  learned that when the birds are singing, things are safe. It’s when they stop you need to be worried.

I get it though, it’s hard to relax sometimes. Life is stressful, there rarely comes a time where there isn’t something to worry about, why should I have to listen to your problems when I have my own to worry about, right? Sometimes it seems the only escape is in your headphones, music is incredibly emotive, and sometimes is just as good a cure as anything rather than a refuge.

As Julian has mentioned in his talk, we should live to listen, we’re living in a world where a lot of people are not listening, and at the highest levels it’s effecting us on a global scale as conflicts begin and arguments reign, all because we’re drowning out the other noises, and only hearing what we want to hear.

A world where no-one listens is indeed a scary place, and although sometimes the shouty adverts and the buzz of a noisy coffee shop or seemingly constant road works are sounds we would rather ignore, we should remember we run on sound. The sound of a heartbeat that signifies life, the sound of your favourite song, as well as the sound of the voices of your friends and family that can bring you comfort and joy.

The ability to listen is incredibly important, and while sometimes we want to ignore that bombardment of noise, just remember that every now and then, you should sit back and listen up. Every sound you hear is a part of human life, and if we start ignoring that, we really are in serious trouble.