For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of listening and understanding the world through sound rather than merely observing it.
Jacques Attali's quote reflects a deep philosophical viewpoint that challenges traditional notions of knowledge and perception. It suggests that Western thought has often been focused on visual observation, ignoring the vital role that sound and listening play in our understanding of the world. By stating that the world is 'not for the beholding, but for hearing,' Attali invites us to consider a more holistic approach to knowledge that encompasses auditory experiences and the complexities they bring.
In practice
In a discussion on the role of different senses in learning, this quote can highlight the significance of auditory experience.
What is called music today is all too often only a disguise for the monologue of power. However, and this is the supreme irony of it all, never before have musicians tried so hard to communicate with their audience, and never before has that communication been so deceiving. Music now seems hardly more than a somewhat clumsy excuse for the self-glorification of musicians and the growth of a new industrial sector.
...when everything else fails, we communicate in the language of the stars
The determination of the average man is not merely a matter of speculative curiosity; it may be of the most important service to the science of man and the social system. It ought necessarily to precede every other inquiry into social physics, since it is, as it were, the basis. The average man, indeed, is in a nation what the centre of gravity is in a body; it is by having that central point in view that we arrive at the apprehension of all the phenomena of equilibrium and motion.
Nothing is poorer than a truth expressed as it was thought. Committed to writing in such cases, it is not even a bad photograph. Truth wants to be startled abruptly, at one stroke, from her self-immersion, whether by uproar, music or cries for help.
Remember, he is not, like you, a pure spirit. Never having been a human (Oh that abominable advantage of the Enemy's) you don't realize how enslaved they are to the pressure of the ordinary.
Whenever a poet or preacher, chief or wizard spouts gibberish, the human race spends centuries deciphering the message.
Isn't it strange how upset people get about a few dozen baseball players taking growth hormones, when we're doing what we're doing to our food animals and feeding them to our children?
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