If fifty million people say a foolish thing...

it is still a foolish thing.
-- Anatole France

A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate,
because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can
understand.
-- Bertrand Russell



I took a class once that gave out a survey so we could find out what kind of listener we were. There were some who listened for entertainment, some who listened for facts, and a few other types, but my type was the one where everything I heard had to be assimilated into already owned knowledge. Kind of like every sentence I heard had to be filed in it's proper place before I could go on to the next.

I can't find the exact test, that's a task for another day, but the thing is, the test pointed out that if you are the "assimilation" listener, if you don't have a hook to hang the information on, you make one up, or make the info fit the hook you have. So if you have a broad range of knowledge, are fairly well read, etc, you have plenty of hooks to put new knowlege on, that's cool. But it you live in a bubble, and only hear certain sides (0r get your news from one source), you tend to force things to fit on the hooks you have, since it does require you to learn new things to make new hooks.

People who listen for entertainment don't have to work nearly as hard. Neither do the people who listen for facts. Like there's a different storage system. But a day of a conference or meetings plum wears me out, while others can sit through these things without a sweat. I used to sit in on meeting while the place I worked developed a new software package. I would have to represent the users needs to the programmer and then translate the programmers questions and procedures to the users. I would go home at night with my head on fire. My co workers thought I was nuts. Same goes for church. One hour, one sermon, that's about my limit. After that, nothing is being processed anymore.

Life is context. New things have to fit into our old life. That's what makes change difficult for some. The new ways don't fit into the old context. New wine destroys old wine skins, to quote Another's analogy. With communication and technology, a lot of what we know of how the world works is changing. How we look at commerce, war, agriculture, climate, all of it is taking on a bigger, yet smaller scope. But when we put the new ideas and information into our tired old brains, there are two things that can happen. One is, we subconciously change the information to read/hear what we already know. We put conflicts especially into previous fights. Comparing old events to current events, even though the two are quite different. Personally and politically.

Or two, we need a nap.

Suddenly, the idea of an afternoon siesta seems inspired.