I like being listened to. And when I’m being listened to, I like to be thoughtfully vulnerable. Just as people make a distinction between being listened to and being heard, I think there’s an important difference between listening-through-gritted-teeth and listening-with-a-smile. The former is done to fulfill some obligation or avoid social awkwardness; the latter is much more enthusiastic and self-motivated.
Sympathy, understanding, and interest seem
There is
a lot to be said for the virtue of finding what is sparkly in other people and helping it shine:
I like mantras along the lines of “if you’re not finding the conversation interesting, you’re doing a bad job”
and “only boring people get bored”.
Doing the work of cultivating interest in others gets very tiring after a while, though, particularly
if your conversation partner isn’t reciprocating. Even if you’re both trying
to be interested in each other, but not really seeing the sparkle, the conversation feels
forced quite quickly: something I wrote after going on a blind date for the first
time was that “one can smile and laugh a lot without enjoying oneself much”.
– the idea of making someone else “feel heard”
comes with a ring of superficiality, I think. But I don’t really want to open up to
someone who is
I’m not arguing
here that people’s intentions for actions are of fundamental importance.
(One objection
to utilitarianism is that its justification of why we ought to do things for our friends – that
doing so is best for aggregate welfare – completely misses the point about why friendship
is valuable, and that following such a framework would be incompatible with sustaining
any meaningful relationships.)
Rather, I’m claiming that, empirically, people’s intentions matter for consequences.
If we’re at a drinks reception and you’re only listening to me because you think
it’d be rude to move on too soon, then (in all likelihood) you won’t be paying
particularly careful attention to what I’m saying, or engaging with it much.
Probably, I’ll pick up on this, and find the interaction less meaningful. Even if some person S
were listening through gritted teeth but so good at disguising it that I never found out,
I’d be worse off compared to the world where I was listened to with a smile, because (again,
in all likelihood) S will not want to continue the conversation once the social expectations
of the reception are lifted, whereas I will.
(I think a response along similar lines works well to the challenge of if A’s partner were cheating
on them but A never found out, doesn’t utilitarianism say that nothing wrong was done?.)
in what I’m saying; I want to be wanted.
So, the kind of listening I mean is that which includes genuine
curiosity & excitement to learn more about your interlocutor.
Hotseat is an activity which tries to encourage this kind of listening: everyone sits in a circle and spends 3-5 minutes asking questions of whoever is having their turn in the hotseat. The person gives a rough spiciness level from 1-10 before their time starts, and other people anchor their questions to that. The atmosphere is important – the person in the hotseat is always allowed to pass answering a question they don’t want to, and the person who asked it shouldn’t be penalised for being too forward (though they might need to recalibrate their spiciness scale). In my experience Hotseat works well even with people you’ve only just met, provided that you’re within a high-trust environment where everyone feels safe and able to assume good faith.
There’s something really electrifying about a group of people listening to your reflections in real time, thinking about them, and asking thoughtful follow-up questions. It makes you feel interesting and special, like the things you say matter to someone.
Drinking games do a similar kind of thing: they create an environment where everyone has agreed that different-to-usual social rules can apply, and so topics which are usually off-limits can be broached. However, in my (very limited) experience, the questions that come up are generally more boring and of lower quality than during Hotseat (e.g. there are a lot of slightly-edgy questions about sex). Overall there’s less of an vibe of being interested to learn about what makes other people tick, and more something along the lines of « what’s a topic that might be funny and a bit embarrasing? ».
(Lest I be accused of complaining and not suggesting solutions, I’ve curated a list of questions that I would have fun asking and being asked .)
The other gripe I have with drinking games is that it makes me a bit sad that avoiding the punishment of having another shot of alcohol has to be available as an excuse to make it un-embarrassing to reply honestly to personal questions. Maybe this isn’t what’s actually happening, but it seems sort of like that’s the function of the drinking, and why without it these sorts of conversations don’t usually happen in groups that aren’t already close.