I'm very thankful, hearing impairment or not, that I've brought listening into my life. I will never say that I'm a good listener, however. Thinking that I was a good listener was one thing that kept me from being a good listener. It's a very dangerous thought. I just want to be better.
Gordon HemptonYou don't really need to engage your visual sense, because the natural wiring of the human psyche is to monitor the environment through sound, not through sight. But we're convinced through modern conditions that we have to look at everything, and that creates stress in our life, because we're trying to solve problems in ways that are much more time consuming, not efficient, and not fun.
Gordon HemptonAn acoustic ecologist is a listener who is aware that sound is information. It's information because it's created by events, events produce sound, and that sound has all kinds of data, if you will, that conveys what event occurred, what the materials were, whether it was sudden, slow, loud, in what direction. And because it is information, we can think of it as a message. The acoustic ecologist studies information systems that are both intentional and sometimes wild.
Gordon HemptonThe birds are already evolving, changing the way that they sing as a result of noise pollution. And we have yet to do that. We're still not communicating. We're not changing our words. We are not testing, not providing this new lexicon for noise-polluted areas.
Gordon HemptonI believe that our distant nomadic ancestors came forward and survived because they could hear distant, faint birdsong as an acoustic navigational beacon, if you will, and by moving toward the birdsong, they were able to find places with shelter, food, and water, and a prosperous growing region. Indeed, birdsong is the number one indicator of habitats prosperous to humans.
Gordon HemptonWhenever you're in a natural system and you're making sound, you are putting yourself at risk. As you go up the evolutionary ladder, from insects to frogs to birds and on up into mammals, the higher intelligence recognizes that when you vocalize, you put yourself at risk. So mammals generally vocalize or make noise much more rarely than, let's say, insects or frogs. And when they do, and put themselves at risk, it has to be worth the risk, and have true meaning, such as signaling during a hunting party, calling in prey, some religious or spiritual ceremony, something like that.
Gordon HemptonI've never really understood how people cannot value the future, or think that the world is going down a fast slippery slope of degradation. No, I don't think so; this is just what it's going to take to wake us up, and allow us to do what our ancestors did. You know, our ancestors brought us here by tooth and claw. A lot of people perished, a lot of pre-humans perished. Life has never been easy. Why should it be easy for us?
Gordon Hempton