Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Entwicklung und Humanitäre Hilfe
Outside view (EN)
In a world dominated by images and noise, we often forget the importance and power of listening. This text explores why listening is not passive, but active and indispensable—for responsibility, empathy, and sustainability. From personal stories and collective memories to plans for the future: listening facilitates and provides orientation in a complex and changeable world.
Outside view by Norman Sieroka
All too often, we focus on the evident, we highlight new insights, which then change our views of the world etc. This is because our eyes supposedly present things to us as they are. But what about listening? I don’t mean to set hearing and seeing in opposition, but I do want to advocate for the importance of listening—and reflect on why it matters. In particular, I want to explore four particular characteristics of listening: that there can be no responsibility without listening; that listening is always active, not passive; that listening reveals lives and stories; and that listening is both transient and yet enduring.
Let’s begin with responsibility. The clue is in the word itself: response-ability—the ability to respond. In order to respond to someone meaningfully, we must first listen. This idea is in line with another core value of UNOCHA, namely outspokenness, but it also reveals a deeper truth: what is said must be heard and understood if it is to receive a response. Someone who talks without listening—or without seeking to understand—fails to take responsibility. Genuine responsibility only arises through the interplay of listening and speaking.
Secondly, listening seems simple and easy: I hear you speak and understand what you say. But is it really that simple? In fact, listening is always an active process. It is not just your words, but, to put it vividly, it is what I inhear. Meaning emerges through interpretation, which depends heavily on my own background: the things I’ve heard before, the experiences I’ve had.
Take the word war, for instance—it means something very different to someone who has experienced war than it does to someone who has not. The same goes for love, car accident, and many other expressions. Or consider music: if I regularly listen to jazz, I begin to recognize patterns, nuances, and expressive detail. But if I’m unfamiliar with the genre, it may all sound the same—just noise or repetition. Something similar happens with foreign languages: if I don’t understand the language, I may perceive it as undifferentiated sound, a kind of background noise.
This brings me to the third point: listening discloses personal histories and individual voices. Listening is rarely abstract or detached. It connects us directly to the person speaking. Through attentive listening, we start to perceive their unique vocabulary, their tone, their pace. We begin to recognize their voice—not just acoustically, but existentially. A person’s voice has a meaning that goes beyond the words themselves; it tells us something about the speaker’s life and world.
Think of iconic examples: Martin Luther King Jr., or—returning to music—John Coltrane. Both had voices, literal and artistic, that were instantly recognizable. Their expressions carried a particular urgency and individuality. And while most of us are not Martin Luther King or Coltrane, the same principle applies: voices are an expression of an individual life.
Which leads to the fourth point: listening is ephemeral, yet it can have lasting impact. Listening happens in time. Acoustically speaking, sounds and words vanish the moment they are spoken. And yet, words can echo through our lives. A sentence my grandmother said to me before she died, or something a teacher once mentioned in passing, might seem fleeting. But perhaps I, so to speak, re-hear these sentences again and again throughout my life. They resonate differently in different moments, unfolding their effects by maintaining an inhe(a)rent connection to my lived experience. The same applies, again, to the case of music where pieces may stay with me over time.
This kind of ongoing listening is, of course, a deeply sustainable process. And notably it is not about volume or force but about meaning and connection. Shouting may cause more people to hear me in a physical sense—but it rarely leads to more people listening, at least not in any deep or enduring way.
Thus, it is precisely the ephemeral and discursive dimension of active listening that paves important ways towards a responsible and sustainable world. The transience of sound and the immediacy of listening are of unique value in a changeable, fast-moving, and volatile world. Where images may attempt to freeze time and preserve evidence, sounds pass on and demand attention in the moment. Thus, cultivating the virtue of listening may help us meet the world—and each other—with openness, humility, and care.
Last but not least, of course, I cannot resist pointing out the title of this column: ‘Outside View’. However, I hope that I have not provided an outside view, but an outside voice that is worth listening to and that invites further responsible discourse!
Norman Sieroka is professor of philosophy at the University of Bremen. He studied philosophy and physics in Heidelberg, Cambridge, and Zurich. Listening is one of his central research themes, where his interests in psycho- and neuroacoustics, consciousness studies, philosophical anthropology as well as phenomenology converge. His interdisciplinary expertise has led to numerous collaborations with philosophers, physicists, chemists, statisticians, architects, historians, pharmacists, computer scientists, and others. He also frequently collaborates with musicians and organizes concerts to make philosophical themes audible in a literal sense. For more information about his research group see www.uni-bremen.de/theophil
Inspired by Tom Fletcher’s statement of commitment to the humanitarian community when he resumed his position as Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator (OCHA) in November 2024, this channel provides expert views and impulses that highlight the current importance of listening, efficiency, outspokenness, and innovation in humanitarian assistance.
