How do you integrate having two ears and one mouth into your life?

people are obese enough…we have to limit our intake :)

If only what we listened to didn’t go in one ear and out the other most of the time. Perhaps we really should only have one ear!

Like [listen] [listen] this. [listen] [listen]

@JeanPaulSartre I’m sorry, what’d you say?

@erichw1504 Oh, [listen] [listen] no [listen] [listen] it [listen] [listen] will [listen] [listen] take [listen] [listen] forever [listen] [listen] to [listen] [listen] repeat! [listen] [listen]

I think the real lesson is nature is smarter than we are – can you imagine how strange and unproductive it would be to have two mouths of which we could say two things at once with?

I see it more as that one ear hears half of it and the other hears the other half and together they hear the full thing.

I probably listen as much as I talk. I’d be willing to bet it’s about the same.

I don’t feel like philosophizing right now, so I’ll say, it would rule if I had a smaller mouth in my main mouth that could come out and spit acid and shit on people, like in Alien.

could you repeat the question; I wasn’t paying attention

I listen much more than i speak, actually. I find that those who have trouble stopping their talk rarely have much to say.

This popular admonition is actually impossible unless restricted to conversations between three people.

Consider a conversation with two people: I promise I will listen twice as much as I talk, and so does Betty. So, Betty starts the conversation by talking for two minutes, which then allows me to talk for one. However, Betty can now say nothing, because she has only listened for a quarter of the time she needs to (she should listen four minutes to account for talking for two, but she has only listened for one). Supposing we just let the initial two minutes slide, Betty could talk for 30 seconds, and then I could talk for 15. Soon enough, the time would be so small that neither of us could speak if we were true to our promise to listen twice as much as we talked.

Now, consider a conversation with four people: To begin, Betty talks for two minutes, then George does the same. Now, Sam and I can each talk for two minutes because we have listened for four minutes. I choose to talk for two minutes. Next, Sam talks for three (since he has listened for six). Betty and George have now each listened for five minutes. Betty talks for 2½, then George, having now listened for 7½, talks for 3¼. I round my listening time down, and talk for six minutes, followed by Sam for another six. If this pattern continues, we will soon each be giving long speeches, and the conversation can never end. Or, we will begin to panic that we have listened so much more than we are supposed to, and we will speak over one another with no one listening at all.

The only way this philosophy of conversation can play out correctly is if three people take equal turns talking. However, how often do we interact solely in groups of three? Most genuinely significant conversations occur with just one other person. In order to have your “listening quotient” filled so you could actually have this important conversation, you would have to go listen to random conversations before attempting to have your serious one. Also, many important things are conveyed in classrooms and business meetings that consist primarily of one person talking to large groups. It clearly wouldn’t work if all of the listeners thought they should be talking half as often as they were listening, or if the communicators thought they couldn’t say anything unless they got others to talk first.

I understand the need to emphasize that good communication involves a lot of listening. I actually much prefer to listen than to talk. However, the idea that we should always listen twice as much as we talk is slightly ludicrous.

Each mouth has two sides and politicians seem to use both. I am in sales so I listen, watch and use my mouth sparingly. We only have one tongue too but Ms. Monk would love if I had two. I can assure you I’d use both.

I have to say, it would be nice to have one mouth to talk and breathe, and another mouth to eat. Then things wouldn’t go down the wrong way, aka choking on my water, AND I could talk with my mouth full. FUN! ;-)

I try to listen more. “Try” being the operative word. I don’t always succeed. :/

I listen to others’ opinions before I voice my own.

Maybe it’s saying, you have one mouth, so you better know how to use it.

I thought it was so your head would be balanced when listening to your iPod.

I don’t. We have one mouth simply because we have no need for more mouths. We have two eyes because it is optimal (for judging distances, more sight, etc). and we have two ears in similar ways (better hearing, judge direction, etc). The only reason to have more than one mouth would be to provide an alternative way to breath if one became blocked. But that is not a prevalent cause of death so it would not be adaptive.

Sorry I killed the mood.

@bobbinhood wrote: I understand the need to emphasize that good communication involves a lot of listening. I actually much prefer to listen than to talk. However, the idea that we should always listen twice as much as we talk is slightly ludicrous.

You must be a theoretician. You are assuming that everybody will follow the same behavior (like a good little formula) and that there are only a certain number of people. I debunk your debunking like this:

1) Nobody ever makes agreements about how much they will talk and listen because it is slightly ludicrous to do so. Therefore, your counterpoint about you and Betty doesn’t hold.

2) A conversation with a larger group of people may well allow everyone to talk more than they listen, but this doesn’t mention the other conversations they have with other people. So your model only makes sense if we apply it to the entire group of people that we actually talk to, which is thousands of people over a lifetime. Since they all don’t agree to talk and listen for certain amounts of time the model still doesn’t hold.

3) Who said talking and listening was measured in terms of duration? Time is arbitrary anyway. You segmented conversations in minutes, but what about seconds, hours, weeks…? Wouldn’t your model make just as much sense if I talked for 2 weeks and then was completely silent for 3? Few people do that. It’s silly.

If you really want to model this, think about the communication of concepts being equally distributed rather than duration. Sure some concepts take longer to convey than others but the purpose of communication is surely to relay information, not to talk for a certain period of time. Professing fewer concepts than you hear is certainly easy considering the large number of people, books, media, and so on that exist in the world.

***

Allow me to disclaim something. The 2-ears, 1-mouth thing was just meant as an aphorism to get people thinking about how they function in social situations. I don’t mean it literally. Clearly, we didn’t evolve to actually listen more than we talk because we have more ears. But it’s something people say and so I thought it would be interesting to discuss it with someone.

For example, when I was young (pre-adolescent), I asked a lot of questions and listened a lot. As a teenager, I asked questions with the intention of directing conversations or points of view, and did less listening. I was more interested in arguing. In my twenties, I did a lot of talking and not so much listening. I found that if I was listening to someone, their words reminded me of something that I thought and I wanted to tell them what it was. In my thirties, I find myself caring less about talking to people and spend more time listening to them. But I also find myself being less interested in people. I wonder if, as an older man, I will distance myself from other people.

Has anybody noticed a similar pattern in their lives?

Hmmm. When I was young, I think I asked a lot of questions and I suspect I tried to talk—often enough that my parents’ refrain, “children are to be seen and not heard,” was very common. I may have chattered some, but I don’t remember.

As a teenager, I was filling out my idealism, and I was interested in heady debates and ideas, not necessarily in that order. I belonged to the debate club, and I learned how to make my points, backed by as much information as I could dig up.

In my twenties, I was a political activist. But I was also a salesman—selling ideas. I learned to persuade—listening and speaking. I was willing to play therapist to any friend, and I was also willing to take on any Jehovah’s Witness in order to try to convert them away from their faith. I was pretty sure of myself, and willing to take up as much time as I could get, yet at the same time, I was already starting to guard the group process—trying to make sure everyone got enough space to say what they needed to say.

In my 30’s this need to assure space for others remained in place, and expanded into more formal areas. I joined a conversational salon where it was very important. I was in drum circles and dance groups, all places where equality was crucial in my eyes. I stopped being so interested in debate. I was much more concerned with building community.

In my 40s, I would like to think that I became more sophisticated in my understanding of how people work together—at any level: the political, the organization; the familial, and the dual. I saw parallels everywhere in each of these levels. I had friends and we hung out and talked about ideas and we made music, but that which we had done in our thirties was falling off. We had children. We withdrew from the world. Our conversations became less of conversation and more business meetings about our kids.

In my 50s, I found places where I could exercise my voice through writing. Because of the asynchronous nature of the internet, there was all the time in the world for me to talk, and listening was so much more efficient. I spoke at length, you will all be surprised to hear. Yet even so, I always felt that it was my job to be the guardian of the process. I had no authority, but I could persuade, and so, when I saw impoliteness and disrespect, I sought to introduce better listening skills. And when I didn’t listen and someone else corrected me, I tried to take that correction gracefully.

Now, I see speaking and listening as being about courtesy, kindness, community building and only then, information or argument. I prefer that everyone gets a chance to speak, and we all listen to the other people’s voices. I hope we are not threatened by anyone else’s point of view. I hope we don’t feel like we have to have the last word. It’s all right to say things once, and not defend them again and again. If you weren’t heard the first time, you probably aren’t going to be heard.

So I have become ever more interested in people. In fact, I am so dependent upon the affection of people, that it is dangerous for my mental health. But I love people. I want them to be happy. And I want myself to be happy, too.

It must have something to do with nursing, at least in mammals, since lips play a big role in language right across the species. I don’t think fish birds and reptiles qualify for lips. What am I talking about?

Two ears can do two things, which, for me is listening to music and chatting with a person.

I don’t know why it’s hard to get – we need two ears and eyes so that we can span more of our environment – because food goes into us, we only need one path.

The purpose of having two, two, and one is not to tell us that we should listen more than we speak. These features and functions evolved as they did for a purpose other than to show us the path to wisdom. But I am sure you know this.

Eyes and ears are input devices, and we need two sources for accurate perception, which is important for safety and survival. We have to be able to detect the direction of sound, so we need two ears. We have to be able to perceive depth and perspective, so we need two eyes. One mouth is a big enough target to hit when eating, and eating is not about analyzing conditions in our environment. We can speak adequately with one mouth.

So this is just an obnoxious little platitude that actually has nothing to teach us.

Allow me to disclaim something. The 2-ears, 1-mouth thing was just meant as an aphorism to get people thinking about how they function in social situations. I don’t mean it literally. Clearly, we didn’t evolve to actually listen more than we talk because we have more ears. But it’s something people say and so I thought it would be interesting to discuss it with someone.

@timothykinney Got it, sorry.
It is my job to listen to patients and assess their situations – I speak less than I listen to them but when I do speak, I speak with an impact.

Listen more, talk less.

Because we’d look funny otherwise. :) The old adage of construction; “measure twice, cut once”. I think it means we take more in, so we can enunciate a unified thought. Would two mouths would be considered surround sound?

The problem lies with those who have two faces.

I find it easier to listen than to talk, and I am happier to listen more than I talk.

When I have something helpful or constructive to say… then I will speak.

I agree with those lessons learned except when I encounter those with a penchant of talking out their a$$.

Funny thing, people’s ears wear out before their mouth does! Seems, it should be the “other way around!”

@BoBo1946 Your humour knows no bounds !!!

By listening and eating

it’s the Nose
the Nose is central, meaning my breathing integrates my being

@partyparty thank you my good friend!

I“m quite thankful that people only have one mouth.

By listening twice as much as I talk.

We recieve from two sources good or evil but can give from only one.

Your mouth tells your true nature.

@kess That sounds very Islamic to me. Thanks for sharing!

Some people should put a plug in their ass! Then all their shit would come out the same hole! And, would certainly solve problems with hemorrhoids.

Hmm, buttplugs.

Too many mouths and not enough ears?