“Hungry Listeners”

One concept that stood out to me among the lectures on sound was the idea of “Hungry Listening,” a concept which I think is extremely prevalent in modern society. “Hungry Listening” refers to the practice of listening with a specific goal in mind and your perception changing about what you are hearing depending on what this specific goal is. I believe this is actually very dangerous. In fact, it is this exact mentality which leads to climate change denial. Due to the politics of oil, many politicians (and normal civilians) continue to deny climate change despite huge amounts of evidence for it being real. Many studies show that 97 percent or more of all scientists agree on the fact that human-caused climate change is real, which is as high a number as you could expect for any well-accepted theory: yet politicians continue to question it. They use false assertions such as “Why is it so cold right now if global warming is happening” in order to confuse the public. Those who actually believe them are also practicing “Hungry Listening”: they also ignore decades of scientific research and fact because these public figures are telling them exactly what they want to hear. They want to believe that climate change is false, and thus rather than listening to scientists, they will listen and agree with anyone who tells them what they want to hear.