Hearing
Hearing (Auditory Abstracting)
Take care to note your reactions to what you hear below in your Personal Journal or in the Ongoing Course Discussion.
1. Hearing Explained
From the Charlie Rose Brain Series (Da Cunha, 2013c), Dr. David Corey explains the hearing process. Again, he doesn't use the term abstracting, but he describes the process that Korzybski highlighted 90 years ago.
If you have trouble viewing YouTube videos, try this as an alternative:
CRose-hearAbstracting.mp4 Download CRose-hearAbstracting.mp4
2. A Listening Demonstration
This video illustrates that sometimes we need pointers to direct our sensing.
3. My Tinnitus
About four years ago, experiencing the quiet and stillness of a full moon and late night in the high desert south of Santa Fe, NM, I noticed that it wasn't quite as quiet as I expected. I was hearing something ... something like a high-frequency buzzing in my left ear.
After extensive testing at the nearby veteran's hospital (including an MRI), it was clear I was experiencing tinnitus, or ringing in the ears, a fairly common affliction associated with aging. My hearing wasn't degraded in any way, it's just that I have this continual whine in my left ear, predominantly, which isn't really noticeable unless it's quiet.
The medical community have a variety of theories about what causes tinnitus, but nothing conclusive. The only real treatment is to wear something that looks like a hearing aid that emits a masking tone (not dissimilar from noise-canceling headphones), but even that has mixed results.
It's very strange. I hear something, but what I'm hearing isn't "out there" ... it's something that my own brain is creating. And it's not like hearing some other audible internal process like when your stomach growls, or ... well, I won't list other internal bodily processes that you hear on occasion. But it's a very personal reminder to me that my brain is creating everything I experience - even when it's self-created.