Listen!

As a person who enjoys watching movies, I have often wondered what watching does to people. I think it is true that we receive information much faster when we see it than if we merely hear it. Better still if we could both see and hear what is being communicated.

Is this higher transmission rate a boon or a bane?

If we are trying to make decisions of which time is of the essence, then surely being able to size up the essentials rapidly is a big advantage. Cut to the chase; show me, don't just tell me; give me the multimedia experience; better still, entertain me while you're at it.

But if our intention is to appreciate fully what the other person means and feels --- not only by what is said but how it is said, the way the logic flows, the nuanced choice of words and their pleasurable ring as they roll off the tongue, the tonal inflexions that colour the words with emotional meaning, or for that matter, the pregnant pause between words --- then perhaps seeing and watching overloads and rushes the brain along too much for us to notice these finer points of communication.

In fact, the addiction of our mind to constant visual stimulation conditions us to shorten our attention span. We find it hard to follow a line of thought that is not broken down into power points. We are so well-trained to scan without really looking that we hastily glean what we consider "relevant" without even pausing to ask "What is 'relevance', after all?"

I believe this is detrimental to our cultural and intellectual development.

Where is the pause between action sequences and newsflashes where we can ponder, "What does this mean?" Where would we find time between blinks to reflect on the deeper questions of life? How deeply can we think if the building blocks of our thought processes are no bigger than sound bites and slogans, snazzed up with eye candy? How well can we know ourselves and one another if we can't listen for more than 30 seconds without wondering (yawning), "So where is this going? What's the point?"

I still love movies --- the interplay of light and shadow, movements and colours, long shots and intimate closeups, fleshing out an intricate plot with the help of dialogue and sound track --- but I hope we will recover our ability to simply...

...listen.

What do you think? I'm listening!