It Doesn’t Make Sense

One sentence that I used to hear a lot, but seems to be fading away, is “It doesn’t make sense.” I have no idea why I used to hear it a lot. For whatever reason, a lot of talkers in the past had a high time making themselves believable. I cannot suspect their oral prowess. A Somali proverb already confirmed, “Rag waa raggii hore, hadalna waa intuu yidhi,” which loosely translates to “The best of men are those of the past, and theirs was the best of speech.” Can we call their listeners alarmists? I haven’t seen a reason to suspect so.

However, these days I hear that sentence on rare occasions. I have no idea why that is the case. (I wish if I could report it to any authority as “endangered species”). Interestingly, something else is also happening at the same time. More and more people are complaining these days about being taken for a ride. Politicians are notorious for this. So are other influentials of the society. It begs for answers why the two are happening simultaneously.

One reason is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to listen. These days, if you cannot arrest the attention of your listener in the first few seconds, and deliver your main point under few tight words, your message is at a loss. That was not the case with the Somalis of the past. They would rant and rumble until they reach their point.

The amount of information currently available complicates the matter. What people are exposed to in a single day, arguably, is an equivalence of what their ancestors were exposed to in a lifetime. Sorting, making sense of the information and deciding could require more processing time.

And, unfortunately, the demands on time are increasing at an alarming rate. One may argue time is constant. People only have a twenty-four-hour-day. The number of hours is the same, but the value is not. Twenty-four-hours is not the same for everybody. Can you argue the twenty-four-hours of the sick is the same as those of the healthy? People cannot produce when they are sick. The hours, marked by the pain, are miserably longer than the healthy person’s, but they are less valuable. Now you can compare two farmers who are trying to till their lands – one with a tractor and the other without.  People today are spending more and more time in productive means than they did ever before to cling on to the comfortable lifestyles they had built for themselves.

Worst of all, the amount of filtering present is breath-taking. It is difficult for any person to make a meaningful assessment of any assertion. The clan, political, religious and other social groups are playing at the background as a noise to the message. You simply remain to be a voice lost in the deafening noise of your clan.

This is not a call for resignation, but on the contrary. I think it is easy to reclaim sensibility with just two steps. The first step is to change the filter. Groupthink helps neither the group nor the individual. When people evaluate points on their inherent merits, they usually tend to come up with better ideas. One should not worship ideas. They are only as good as the purpose they serve and how well they do their job.

The second step is to make a point to listen. It is easy and good to listen when you agree; it is hard and better to listen when you don’t. Listening is easier when you are not judging. There is nothing wrong with judging the merits of an idea. It is disastrous when it jumps to the person who proposed the idea.

Listening with principled filters allows our true humanity to shine. They feed the organ that made us the most advanced of the species – i.e. our brain. As a result, we grow and become more sensible. Nothing is more important today than growing a sensible human being. This reminds me of a commercial I saw on the TV. The last statement of the commercial was, “It is your money. Use it when you need it.” On the same token, it is your sense, use it when you need it!