Rediscovering the Power of Voice
It’s so easy to forget the power of voice in the current context of human social interaction.
It’s so easy to forget the power of voice in the current context of human social interaction.
As it stands, it isn’t the lead currency of global communication. We are surrounded instead by text and images, moving and static. These can all be varnished and disguised, as well as being true. Watching from the sidewalk, I can assume that often, more than half the people I can see are staring at a screen (we all do it), reading, watching and discarding information, in varying states of concentration, delivered by words and images across the social and media networks.
We can hear the words of course, but we can also hear emotion
When we hear the human voice over these networks, more so without the distraction of an image, our senses engage in a completely different way. We can hear the words of course, but we can also hear emotion. The more we listen, the more our ear also engages forensically as we seek other information about the voice. This is instinctive. Based on our own experience, we can often deduce the race, gender, age, nationality, and perhaps even the locality of the speaker. We imagine also the physical and emotional context of the voice, as we engage in a journey of the imagination, forming a mental picture in our minds of the speaker. Sometimes our conclusion is right — sometimes it needs adjustment — but it doesn’t matter.
This is an altogether different experience from the visual — and one where it’s inevitable that we experience our own emotional engagement with what we hear. We can also form our own opinion on the authenticity of both the voice and message, and enjoy the empowerment of this sensation. The underlying reaction towards the sound of the human voice is that we relate to it as people, as who we really are — using some of our most basic faculties to receive and convey vital information about our state of mind and being.
All of this is true. But it is a conundrum that in the modern, technologically driven age, so many people feel that they don’t have a voice or the means of acquiring one.
Someone ought to fix that.
Photo credit to Thomas Leuthard
