A CULTURE OF LISTENING - AFRICA SPOKEN BY OTHERS

Chinua Achebe, mostly known for his even-on-Obamas-reading-list book ''Things Fall Apart”, gives in his short essay “Traveling White” a little anecdote about Wolfgang Zeidler, former president of the Bundesverfassungsgericht (aka the German Supreme Court). This judge – retiring as fashionably as possible – planned to go to Namibia to stack his Vitamin D storage. But before he was able to board his flight, he got “Things Fall Apart” into his hands and after presumably reading it - “[...] closed the Namibia chapter”.

For Chinua Achebe, this decision was an obvious triumph of common sense and humanity (if the judge had taken his flight, he would have probably ended up legitimising some dictator-Esque regime). But because it seemed as if this action would not need any second thought, Achebe was puzzled by the fact that a well-educated, literate man had such a blind spot about Africa. He asks ironically: Did he never read the papers? Of course, Zeidler did, but as Achebe points out: after a lifetime of hearing Africa spoken about by others, he needed to hear Africa speak for itself. He seemed to have listened – maybe for the first time – to the people worth listening to.

MASTERING THE ART OF LISTENING:

So, with the words following these words, I want to express my belief that the notion of listening is criminally neglected and that if done correctly it can ease a lot of problems – furthermost in politics. Crucially the task of listening is more demanding than most people think, mainly because we tend to forget it, the older we become. It means treating everything that penetrates our ears for the first time as an equal possibility to what we know so far. No bias or as few as possible should throw its shadow over what has been said.

But this is difficult even if you consider yourself a great listener. Just consider a famous example in Claude-Levis-Straus’ “Triste-Tropiques”. There he argues that cannibalism or child sacrifice can be a well-accepted part of some tribal cultures. While our western-European, ‘Enlighted’ minds would form words like ‘barbaric’ or ‘primitive’, they would in return be shocked about our custom to give away the elderly to a foster home. Of course, we will now have well-rounded arguments to support our worldview, our way of living, but so would they. And can we claim that our state-of-being is better, more rightful, just because we supposedly do everything with reason?

CONVICTIONS:

So, what is the point of these anecdotes besides letting me appear literate? Because I

think the way we interact with people of a different culture, make foreign politics, plan

the belief heavily tarnishes debt reliefs or developing-aid in our way of living as being

the greatest – and thus our firm conviction that everyone should emulate us with the

best to their ability. This doesn’t mean our convictions are necessarily wrong, but

cultures not obeying them or exploring alternatives are neither.

There are numerous examples during or shortly after the colonisation period where people started drawing lines on the paper creating national states while ignoring the fact that the tribal organisation in some of these regions have prevailed for several environments). But why did these people turn a blind eye? Because they grew up living centuries or even millennia (keeping the difficult balance in these multi-ethnic in national states, regarded this as an achievement and because they just couldn’t accept united via the line-drawing exercise these gentlemen were engaged with, weren’t other forms of living working equally fine. Worst of all the people who were divided or included in this process. Maybe if the colonisers of the past had listened, they would have caused less harm than they subsequently did.

Let’s now turn to the notions of intercultural exchange, cultural diplomacy or international understanding - endeavours I regard as essential for successful global on understanding the culture the other party is immersed in. Blatantly speaking: If I politics. To my mind, these enterprises aim at enabling foreign political decisions based know the intrinsic biases of the other party and the other party knows mine, it is more likely and easier to strike a deal favouring both styles of living.

If I, for example, know the people in a country go to prayer everyday between 12:00 and 13:00, and I know how important it is to them, I might not propose a deal that would require a quarter of the population working through 12:00 until 13:00. So, while better cultural understanding might be a potent tool in problem-solving, one must not forget the limitations that come with it. The two main limitations I have already mentioned before: Don’t overestimate your culture and your state-of-being and only because you don’t understand their customs it doesn’t make them negligible or unnecessary. The big problem with cultural exchange and diplomacy is that we never fully grasp the essence of something if we haven’t engaged with it for a long, long time. We will always remain outsiders, and we will always be susceptible to the bias of our own culture because we will always find enough reasons to justify why our lifestyle is undoubtedly the best. I mean why should we live the way we live if we, in general, don’t consider it to be the best way of living? Thus, I would argue that if you have a feeling on how people outside your cultural circle behave, think and act, you are probably wrong and project your own bias onto your judgement. On the contrary: If your counterpart focuses on some customs, emphasis points that seem quite arbitrary, even negligible to you, you are probably on a good way to approach their thinking appropriately – and thus respectfully. It needs to be remembered: You will almost always be an alien to their thinking.

This doesn’t mean that you have to accept everything they do and say, nor hail there societal functioning as something untouchable. But before you decide and spit out your political proposal or judgement, just listen to them – for longer than you want to – and then start your biased reasoning, as hard as this might be. Or to rephrase Achebe: Let speak Africa for itself, listen carefully and then start thinking.