1.2 Transitioning from Communication to a SONG of Life Perspective of Listening

The previous Communication perspectives of listening are bounded by human relationships. In conventional Communication, anything outside the human domain is not defined as listening. This Communication listening boundary represents a larger paradigm^[1] about listening that includes a constellation of beliefs, values, methods, and practices of the community of Communication scholars. Unfortunately, this Communication paradigm of listening severely restricts additional ideas about listening such as, listening to oneself (e.g., thinking, reflecting, talking to oneself), listening to the sights, smells, and sounds of the natural world (for instance, a desert sunset, a yellow rose, a hound dog barking), and listening to the Divine (such as in meditation or prayer).

I argue for a paradigm shift from the Communication view of listening as exclusively listening to humans to an expanded view that includes listening to other life forms, forces, and energies. There is a precedent for this expanded view of listening gleaned from a review of 382 journal articles from the International Journal of Listening over a thirty-year period. I found only three articles (less than one percent) suggesting the possibility of this wider perspective of listening.^[2] These sources include Robson and Young’s self-listening as inner speech (listening to self in the SONG of life), Nautiyal’s listening to the natural world (listening to nature in SONG), and Schnapp’s listening to the Divine (listening to Goddess-God-the Divine in listening to the SONG of life).

Three additional sources written by Communication scholars, outside of the three sources found in the International Journal of Listening, provide hints that listening is not confined to other humans.^[3] First, Purdy describes topics that fit listening to self in the SONG of life such as, dreaming, journaling, self-talk, and listening to the body. Second, Goodall invites us into listening to the signs of the spirit in a local community where communication serves as the, “. . . primary experiential source of all lived and imagined connections to all life forms and forces . . .” And third, Wolvin suggests that listening may include more than humans when he writes, “. . . another exploration of listening could take us to a consideration of non-human listening: listening to animals; listening to music; listening to the environment. . .” Purdy, Goodall, and Wolvin all point to the possibility of a broader view of listening beyond listening to other humans that includes listening to self, others, nature, and the Divine.

The intellectual move from a singular to a multidisciplinary perspective of listening is analogous to one of the themes in the novel Flatland.^[4] The two-dimensional world of Flatland is inhabited by geometric shapes like the square, who cannot conceive of the three-dimensional world of Spaceland inhabited by geometric shapes like the sphere. To borrow a different image from Plato’s Republic, the humans looking at the shadows in the cave find it difficult to imagine a world outside the cave illuminated by sunlight.^[5] Analogously, when listening is conceptualized from the perspective of a single discipline (the square in Flatland or the humans in Plato’s cave), it is difficult to conceive of listening from perspectives outside of that discipline. In summary, many scholars in the field of Communication become accustomed to their disciplinary conceptualization of listening as only human listening that they find it difficult to imagine the possibility of listening to other non-human forms of life as suggested by listening to the SONG of life.

My intent is not to argue against the normative Communication view of listening to other humans. Rather, I hope to expand the Communication view of listening to humans to include additional kinds of listening represented by the SONG of life. This broader view of listening invites us to recognize and cultivate relationships with non-human life forms as sources of information, knowledge, and wisdom. Indigenous peoples of the world give testimony to listening and cultivating relationships with elementals, plants, animals, and spirits.^[6] Siegel calls our intraconnected relationships with each other and the natural world “MWe.”^[7] I conceptualize these relationships as part of listening to the SONG of life which utilizes all five senses in addition to intuition.