Martin_8_I

People really don't know how to listen anymore. Aggressive listening is the name of the game. You listen long enough to get a general idea of what the other person is saying and then tear right into them. Because they are stupid for holding a viewpoint different from yours.

Fox News is particularly bad at this. Old white people may love Bill O'Reilly, but I can't stand him. He's a little bully yelling at everyone to make his point. Or Nancy Grace! Wow.

And there are people that I know in my life that are this way. My Uncle Randy is an idiot sometimes. He's a conservative Lutheran and holds all kinds of fun ideas about how all Muslims are terrorists. That kind of thing. You can't talk to him about these things because he absolutely refuses to listen and that pisses me off to the point where I just don't bother. He and my dad are terrible. They always end up arguing. Then again they are brothers.

I'm not always all that great of a listener myself. Oftentimes when I'm listening to a friend talk, I realize that I'm just waiting for them to say something that I can make a sarcastic comment about. I have to admit that I sometimes can't even pay attention to all of the stories in class. I'm not saying anything about the quality of the stories. It's more the quantity. After about three stories, my attention is anywhere else. Then everyone starts laughing and I wonder what funny thing the storyteller just said.