Cape Town in February can be stifling. Now we have tipped into March and today there is a welcome drizzle to cool us all down. I chose today to wash my car which i saw as some sort of celebration of the falling rain. I don´t know why so don´t ask 🙂
While I waited for the car to be washed, I put on my headphones. Podcasts, music and news all set to feed into my ears at 1.75 times the normal speed. It struck me how different this is from two other channels of knowledge – reading or a discussion. Is it better to read, to listen or to talk in dialogue?
Reading for me is a battle. I am torn between Kindles, books, classics, modern trash, websites, magazines, social media. It all scraps for my attention.
Perhaps the first two channels (reading and listening) are necessary foundations to really engage in the third channel (dialogue) in any meaningful way. Famously Plato used the Socratic method where ideas are shaped through dialogue. The questions and interactions were supposed to uncover knowledge. My children are taught how to listen and how to read at school, but I am not certain they are taught what a meaningful dialogue looks like, nor are they taught what the preconditions are for dialogue to occur.
Socratic dialogue is not something that is easy or convenient to create in the busy-ness of everyday life. My wife is not interested in longform investigations into abstract ideas. But, listening to a podcast might be the best option to incorporate dialogue into your life – to hear it done well by others. Of course it depends on the podcast you choose, but I believe this is one of the biggest strengths of the format – it allows for longform, uncensored dialogue to occur.
Happy Tuesday, Chimps.
Chimpwithcans 