Listening humility?

There is this thing about philosophers that they give a great deal of respect to humility. The idea of any humble man being worthy of respect is, quite possibly, funny today. The man of respect is the man who flaunts his power, not the man who speaks politely. I mean, when we were praising humility, we also called the open-minded chaps who were willing to see the other person's point of view as liberals. Which made the liberal a polite and humble man who did not espouse the idea that only he was right. Now, though, all sides of any debate are convinced of their rightness and the moronic wrongness of anyone who has the least little thing to say which deviates from their point of view. Humility? What humility?

Tiru does not live today, does he? So, it is no surprise that he said this without the least little fear of being canceled.

Nunangiya kelviya rallaaar vanangiya vaayina raadhal aridhu - Tirukkural

He who is not a discerning listener is incapable of being a polite speaker in public - Loose Translation

Yeah, Tiru actually lived in times where they placed a lot of weightage on convincing others with their debates and not merely shouting them down. If, indeed, you are placed in a situation where the chap you are speaking to is not someone you can merely shout down, you may need this advice.

I mean, yeah, you can walk rough shouldered in Social media. But that is not where you really live, do you? You can hardly think that shouting down your potential Venture Capital provider will get you funds or shouting down your interviewer will get you a job. You do NEED to convince by polite reasoning; calling him a profit-sucking leech is not what will get you the moolah.

To be able to convince politely, you need to be able to be a discerning listener who is able to understand the nuances of what is being said. If you can see beyond what is being said to what is being meant, you can then find a way to satisfy the other's need without sacrificing your own. Like, a lender asking you to pledge your ancestral home is seeking security for his loan - if you can see a way to making him feel secure about his loan either by providing a surety or by pledging something else, you could satisfy him without agreeing to the letter of what he says. For that, you need to have to be a nuanced listener, failing which you could end up screaming about never giving up your home and losing the loan. To be able to speak well starts with being able to listen well.

Listening well is to open your mind, stop filtering everything through the lens of what you want and seeing it like a neutral third party would and assessing the pros and cons impartially. Only that will help you formulate a meaningful and polite response that could carry forth the discussion to a fruitful conclusion.

Oh and yes, Tiru is talking about being a discerning listener to everything. After all, in his times, most learning happened by way of listening to the wise. Thus, to be a bad listener was to end up being an ignorant lout. So there was that as well.

It is the fool who thinks that wisdom lies in non-stop talking. The wise listen and, thus, are listened to. AND it is not the talking but the fact that people listen to you when you talk which makes one shine forth as a wise man.