“A community of meaning is by and large an auditory community.”
– David Le Breton.
In his book, An Anthropology of the Senses, the French sociologist and anthropologist David Le Breton highlights in the concept of seeing the world, the Western society’s bias towards sight as the primary sense. Everything is viewed as an image, measurable and subject to visual conventions. Le Breton also acknowledges that other societies prefer and prioritize different perspectives, such as: hearing the world, tasting the world, smelling the world, or touching the world. In this matter, we quote the American linguist and philosopher Walter Ong (as in World as View and World as Event) and the American historian of cultural studies Constance Classen (as in Worlds of Sense Exploring the senses in history and across cultures) among others.
What is the reason behind the existence of audio communities?
Before we delve into our initial illustration of the conceptual and anthropological structures of the main concept contained in the title Listening to the World, I point out that choosing listening and not hearing came about because the former is superior to the latter in that it is a conscious act with the intention of paying attention and true understanding of what is being said. In other words, it is an honest (or at least serious) listening act. A person is genuinely listening in order to understand, not pretending to listen, nor is listening just for the sake of argument. This precious meaning is what drives us to choose listening to instead of hearing the world, and that is why we said, listening to the world.
Let us assume that this time we are going to listen to the world instead of seeing the world, what might that entail? As a matter of fact, when I wrote the term let us in the previous sentence, the word imagine appeared immediately on the keyboard, I almost wrote let us imagine. However, I avoided using it because it takes us back to the previous concept seeing the world, that we want to abandon in this text. For this reason, I wrote the phrase let us assume because assumption is impartial, as it is rational, not sensory or biased toward any sense.
Perhaps, many would agree with me if I were to say that the Arab-Islamic society is among the societies that can be safely considered as one of the auditory societies, those that prefer listening to the world. Why? For several reasons, the most important of which are:
- Pre-Islamic Arab society was a society that lived primarily on Folklores, through poetry, tales, proverbs, sayings, and oral legends. Words and listening were more valued than writing since it was not prevalent at the time. Writing paves the path to a world of vision, drawing, sculpturing and images. In modern literature, there is an emphasis that “Words in an oral-aural culture are inseparable from action for they are always sounds”.
- After Islam, the culture of listening became more established, due to the fact that the sacred text, Qur’an, requires us to hear it in order to understand it. Qur’an is the spoken word of Allah. The speech is heard, which is why they use a famous expression in Islamic literature, auditory evidence. The term can also be referred to as transmittal evidence versus intellectual evidence. Islamic thought grants hearing a higher rank, and this is evident in many manifestations, including prioritizing hearing above sight in most of the Qur’anic verses that combine the two. The total of these verses are 38 times. Among them is this noble verse that has a great significance in explaining knowledge and learning and the primacy of hearing: “And Allah has extracted you from the wombs of your mothers not knowing a thing, and He made for you hearing and vision and intellect that perhaps you would be grateful.” (An-Nahl: 78). The verse also refers to the major differences between the blind and the deaf, whereas the blind can learn almost everything because only material images are inaccessible to him. In contrast to the deaf who is in fact separated from the world. A reader may wonder: Why did Arab-Islamic culture lean more towards listening to meaning and not seeing or imagining it through reading? Noting that reading belongs primarily to the world of vision and images, not to the world of hearing and meaning and that the Holy Qur’an was revealed in a form of a text to be read, and its first words were read.
This is an excellent question, is there an anthropological secret behind it? Perhaps the internal settings of some societies are of an auditory nature, which makes them more attracted to listening, then they will attempt to check the language and meanings, and enjoy it and resort to it, with the cultural, social, political and economic patterns that this creates. Okaz, for example, was the best-known marketplace, where the poetry of Al-Nabigha Al-Dhubyani and his famous arbitration among the famous poets, who soar to the skies of meaning and force themselves to understand what they heard and memorize it. The market was located near al-Ṭāʾif in pre-Islamic times around 500 AD. Followed by Majanna and Dhu ’l-Majaz̄ markets, which were held near Mecca at the same time of year. It may be said that this is one of the conditions for making societies originally religious, as listening is usually for the purpose of understanding orders and obedient to it. Not only that I see great significance in both matters, but in the fact that they are complementary to each other as well, in many ways that are beyond the scope of this text to explain.
Now, it would be advantageous to further expand our discussion and make it more inclusive. This will ensure that our discussion is not limited solely to the Arab-Islamic community but includes all societies that fall under the category of auditory community. We should include all human societies in general, regardless of whether they are formal or biased societies towards the concept of seeing the world. The concept of listening to the world encompasses universal (=common) human factors. Perhaps all societies have reaped good benefits in our contemporary world. We will adopt the Snowball effect, where we will progressively build upon the concept by comprehensively analyzing it through capturing various interconnected concepts and ideas within a networked analytical framework. Let us embark on this journey, starting with an initial template, through the following paths.
Listening to conscience (reaching a more conscientious world)
There are multiple ways in which we can listen to the world, but the most important of is listening to our conscience. Listening to the conscience of the world indicates that we engage in a deliberate act of listening, voluntary listening, which allows us to listen to what is righteous, virtuous and justice. It encompasses listening to what holds substantial meaning or value in the world. Conscience is an internal entity that cannot be observed, visualized, or quantified, but we can only listen to it. It represents a transcendent guidebook that influences our actions, whether they are religious, philosophical, or moral beliefs.
Engaging in a deliberate act of listening prompts us to reflect on what the insatiable capitalist factories refer to as development music, which is essentially the noise produced by factories. This noise is mostly heard by those individuals who work in these factories and/or live near them, leading to significant noise pollution and hearing impairment. Such circumstances may cause them to lose their senses. What if, with a global conscience, we inquired about the lives of the poor and how they experienced a peaceful, deep sleep after the hustle and bustle of factories ceased as a result of the Corona epidemic. What if we did not continue to witness pictures of the destitute and disabled people on television and the Internet, but instead we listen to their stories and empathized with their pain and hopes. Over time, sight turns into mere static snapshots that pass us by quickly, and if we possess compassion, we may choose to close our eyes or turn away from these images. In comparison to listening to them, sound is highly effective, it is impossible to ignore as it finds a secure and reassuring place within our consciousness and subconsciousness. The mind shelters a vast amount of untapped auditory energy (i.e. it provides storage energy for auditory emotions).
From the perspective of research in social and human sciences, I believe that the concept of listening to the world has the potential to open up new avenues for research. It can also conscientize our research, which is the most crucial, by rekindling a sophisticated anthropological sensitivity among researchers. I deliberately used the term sophisticated because I am convinced that the most distinguished social researchers are those who are affected by the struggle of the poor, moved by their hardships, and engaged with their everyday experience. Yes, such researchers are distinguished because they are carrying out scientific research that aim to saving millions of underprivileged people worldwide by listening to their stories with a conscience striving to the best of his ability to help them break free from the cycle of poverty, ignorance, insignificance, futility and crime. What a challenging journey it is!
Listening to poetry (reaching a more poetic world)
Listening to the world entails embracing all that is beautiful, wise, inspiring, creative, promising and pleasant to hear. These elements often occur in poetry or poetics, in its broader literary sense. Contemporary individuals suffer the loss of experiences a lot when dismantling the poetry of the world and constructing alternative worlds of flowing, momentary and rigid meaning. The modernist worldview is biased toward quantity, therefore, in the words of Edgar Morin, it ignores “love, suffering, desire, pleasure, and poetry” for they are qualitative aspects. These qualitative aspects cannot be quantified, and they do not produce added economic value.
During the Ted episodes, a young technical man addressed a serious topic entitled: Can computers write poetry? He began to test the audience knowledge regarding human and computer poetic texts with cold nerves to determine the extent of their ability to distinguish human from computer. Regardless of this young man’s proposal and its various dimensions, I hasten to say: Why did we turn to this type of codified, computerized thinking? Through poetry we listen to the world, yet it has become a subject to computerization. Instead of creating a more poetic world using our creativity and emotions, we allowed for invasive technology to do so! Thus, technology will thrive while we deteriorate. What misery. It is a murder for dreams, hope, pleasure and pain. We are not responsible for dreaming of a better tomorrow, but our dreams are intended for us, our hope is given to us, and we accept our share of destined pain and pleasure that takes us to the factory then to the marketplace, where we produce what we do not see, and buy what we do not need. Holdren, whose body died before his poetry and his mind before his melody, is warning us to “bear the flames that we are unable to restrain, while the blaze devours us”!
Listening to sensitivity (reaching a more sensitive world)
People believe that the world is fine when they hear the melodious songs of birds, however, the truth is that our environment is becoming increasingly sick. The temperature of the world is rising, causing it to have a fever, its inhabitants suffer, bleed and groan for a long time. The tragedy lies in the fact that the Earth cannot speak up of the environmental injustice it faces, nor can it punish those who support brutal development. Despite its subtle pain, the Earth always adorns and presents itself with its breathtaking beauty, its generous giving, and its singing birds. This picture fails to convey the extent of the Earth’s suffering to us. This becomes even more evident in our modern reality, where there are tendentious campaigns that belittle scientific diagnoses and potentially dangerous scenarios towards the conditions of the planet and its inhabitants. It is our responsibility to promote environmental sensitivity, considering the urgent need to address these issues.
Here, we mention incredible listening encounters from the Arab-Islamic heritage regarding the world of animals and the world of inanimate objects. These are two worlds that are our existential partners and have protected rights. I will present two experiences, one with animals, and one with inanimate objects. In the first encounter, it was stated that the Prophet, peace be upon him, entered an orchard belonging to an Ansāri man and found a camel therein. When it saw him, it began to groan, and its eyes shed tears. The Prophet, peace be upon him, approached it and patted it on the hump and behind its ears until it calmed down. Then, he asked: “Who is the owner of this camel? To whom does it belong?” An Ansāri youth stepped forward and said: “It is mine, O Messenger of Allah”. The Prophet then asked: “Do you not fear Allah regarding this animal which Allah has placed in your possession? It is complaining to me that you starve it and put it to toil.” – Narrated by Abu Dawud –. In the second encounter, an instance of listening to a log of wood took place. Al-Bukhari said: “the Prophet, peace be upon him, used to stand by the trunk of a date-palm tree while delivering the sermon. When a pulpit was placed in the mosque, we heard the trunk crying out like a pregnant she-camel until the Prophet, peace be upon him, came down from the pulpit and placed his hand over it and it became quiet.”
In our contemporary time, assuming that the world listened to a transcendent guidebook that would alter its thinking and behaviors towards the environment to be more conscience. Will the disagreement between us become huge in regard to major global problems, the most fundamental of which is environmental pollution? Then, will greedy neoliberalism, for example, think of finding tricks to avoid environmental obligations or will help the industrialized countries in producing more pollution, just because they are industrial?
Pathways to expand our sense of the world
During my visit to Brazil in 2017, I received an official brochure which declared that Brazil is a country that practices happiness. It was the first time I thought of happiness as something that is being practiced. Brazilians do not perceive happiness as something tangible that we pursue to obtain or reach. Rather, they perceive happiness as something that we possess or have in order to practice it. in other words, they are telling us that happiness is not only the final destination that we reach, but it is the stations that we pass by or through. What does all this mean? This declaration holds numerous significant, including that we require to activate many anthropological perspectives in order to be enriched by them, especially since globalization has killed our human cultural diversity. The anthropology that we require is what gives weight to culture, highlights differences more than similarities and regularities, and acknowledges particularities in a comprehensive human context. This context should accept the common and set it as a pillar of peace and harmony. In brief, it is a field that celebrates diversity, enriches it, and becomes enriched by it. Does this Brazilian perspective embody itself as part of tasting the world, smelling the world, or touching the world perspectives? Or does it embody a kind of moral sentiment centered around making the world happy in the form of have a beautiful soul, and you’ll realize that existing is beautiful? These sentiments could potentially guide us to the concept of being happy, denoting the internal build-up of happiness. I am not aware of this, but I am certain that we urgently need to diversify our perspectives on the world, examine, criticize, develop and expand them. In addition to permanently enrich these perspectives with the repertoires of local cultures and the total repertoire of humanity.
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