Remember the saying 'Can't we all just get along?' It used to be a popular saying in the '80s. Ok, why can't we? I have one idea, that people are in their own worlds and are disconnected emotionally from everyone else, or at least from people around them everyday. Social internet was supposed to connect people, and it does but mostly in a superficial way. It's that way not because of the internet, but because of the habits people have developed in communicating. The worst habit of all is not listening. Listening is fundamental to empathy. Listening requires being quiet and contemplating what the other person's position or argument is. It requires some halt to self, and some pause on our impulse to comment. Now, most people think that listening involves ears. Well, it does, but not just ears, it also involves eyes, nose, touch, the brain, and even emotion. Yes, emotion. How does one listen to someone's emotion and what does it have to do with people getting along?
Let's tackle the first part of the question. Have you ever had a nagging feeling that someone was watching you, and then you looked and someone was staring at you? Well, you've picked up on their emotion. People transmit brain waves all the time. It's not a hard stretch to realize a brain can receive brain waves from another brain as well as transmit them. So when your conversing with another person realize that the feelings you feel are not only yours but theirs as well. This becomes clear when you pause your thinking brain and just listen. The process of transmitting and receiving emotion is an on-going one. People have emotions, and they transmit them, and it just takes a listening brain to start to interpret them. The biggest hindrance to interpreting emotion is unbelief. Unbelief stems from selfishness. That is being concerned mainly about ourselves. Putting that part of ourselves on hold is key. Once that is done, we are ready to get those brain waves to help us experience what the other person is experiencing. This is not mind-reading as depicted in movies. These emotions are on the current emotions we all experience.
What would the world be like if we really listened to each other's emotions? Listening involves all inputs including listening to emotion. What we are talking about is interpersonal communication. Listening to emotion is different than hearing what a person says, than a person's facial expressions, than picking up on subtle odors, or even than feeling them tremble. Listening to their emotion lets us have a sense of experience to what their talking about. It's like the difference from reading a good story to seeing the story as a movie, or seeing the story as a movie and playing the story as an immersed 3D computer game. We're there. This will innately help us understand the other person. This is true empathy. I believe that the act of listening to one another's emotions fosters reason rather than competition, intelligent argument rather than heightened emotions, and a spirit of working together rather than working against each other. Being heard and understood is a basic human social need. When that need is met we feel we are part of a community, and when that need is not met we feel we don't belong. Listening has the power to create community.
By listening to one anther and listening to each other's emotions is key to fostering community. So to answer the question 'Can't we just get along,' we can if we listen.
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