Gordon Hempton Quotes

Quotes about:

• Quiet is the element of discerning what is essential.

  Gordon Hempton

  Nature, Quiet

  5 Copy quote

• If you're going to listen, you have to be willing to be changed by what you've heard. My life has gone through so many changes. I'm sixty-two years old right now, and I'm as busy changing now as I was when I was a teenager, or in my twenties. Every day is different. Every day brings new information.

  Gordon Hempton

  Teenager, Different, Busy

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I'm in love with Earth. I truly am. And so listening is not work, to work toward a better future. It's joy. To not be able to work toward a better future would be work. That would be tough.

  Gordon Hempton

  Joy, Listening, Earth

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Healthy areas that are richest in information are those areas in the wild where we can get all the information that's available to us within our human hearing range. The most valuable information throughout human evolution has been faint sounds. We tend to think in our modern world that if it's loud, if it grabs our attention, it's important. We get a lot of that in advertising. But in nature, it's the faintest sound that's important; it has determined, in the past of our ancestors, perhaps, if they will live or die. Faint sounds are the earliest clues of newly arriving information.

  Gordon Hempton

  Thinking, Past, Healthy

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• When you listen to nature, it may still be difficult to live a life, but it's inspiring.

  Gordon Hempton

  Difficult

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Many environmentalists have failed to recognize that the preservation of quiet areas, places off-limits to noise pollution, should probably be a number-one environmental concern, not something we're going to get to later. And I say that because in that quiet is a whole experience that people can have that reaches to their soul. I like to think of quiet places in nature as the think tank of the soul. It's in these very basic levels that we'll be able to see what the real problem is.

  Gordon Hempton

  Real, Thinking, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I would say that to listen is to become aware. To become truly informed. You will discover whatever you do.

  Gordon Hempton

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The earth has continued to change, from rapid climatic changes that have caused the glaciers and the ice sheets to basically bulldoze the landscape and cause species compression in the tropics and cause mass species extinction - you know, all these huge changes. In terms of evolution, every species is doomed to eventual extinction. The natural world is constantly changing. So, to deal with "environmental problems," in quotes, totally misses the issue. That is not the way we want to define our problem if we're going to find our solution.

  Gordon Hempton

  Missing, Environmental, World

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I work in the same style as classic landscape photographers. You find the right perspective, and then you wait until the light is right. I do the same. I find the right location, and then I wait for the sound, the atmosphere to be right, and for the space to be revealed.

  Gordon Hempton

  Perspective, Waiting, Atmosphere

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• When we listen, it's not linear, it's 360, and it's in a time-space continuum, so you don't have to create a list of priorities, because it's all important. You can deal with everything at any given time. Not only that, but it happens very simply, without effort.

  Gordon Hempton

  Effort, Priorities, Important

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I 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 Hempton

  Believe, Moving, Water

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I used to hate the urban environment and the urban din. But I realize now that it's really not that much different than living next to a waterfall for wildlife. Most wildlife - unless they're specifically adapted - avoid being around a waterfall or whitewater streams and rivers because it jams their sense of surveillance. They are more vulnerable, and their message loses intelligibility. Now, the ouzel is able to overcome that in various ways. Back to the urban environment, we're talking and delivering messages as if we weren't next to a waterfall, and that's a problem.

  Gordon Hempton

  Hate, Overcoming, Different

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• We're all born listeners. And as a result of our modern lives, and living in a world that has less meaning than the natural world that we evolved to hear, we learn to think of listening not as taking in all the information with equal value, which is the definition of true listening. In our modern world, we tend to think of listening as focusing our attention on what is important and filtering out everything else.

  Gordon Hempton

  Thinking, Listening, Important

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• The most sensitive frequencies are at the resonant frequencies of the auditory canal. In other words, the ear has shaped itself to naturally amplify certain bandwidth. And that corresponds to sounds in that bandwidth that were most important to our evolving ancestors to hear, in order to survive. And it doesn't match the human voice. It matches birdsong.

  Gordon Hempton

  Important, Sensitive, Evolve

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• The 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 Hempton

  Bird, Pollution, Evolve

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Not only does the modern person often think that sight is more important than sound - there's no objective evidence to indicate that. Many people, even audiologists who study the science of human speech and hearing, have assumed for a long time that the human ear evolved to hear the human voice, rather than the voice changing to fit the human ear. And the human ear is actually not a perfect match if we map its sensitivity to the different frequencies in the human range of hearing; it's an unequal curve, it's kind of a wavy line.

  Gordon Hempton

  Thinking, Long, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• If you're tired of getting additional information, you can just close your eyes, get some sleep. But earlids, covering of the ears, never evolved. Not once do we find it, even in the fossil records. Because while we let our eyes relax, our ears are still hearing. And that's why alarm clocks work and wake us up. We still gather information. Every animal is gathering information 24/7. So I like to think of acoustic ecologists as people who are trying to become better listeners, 24/7.

  Gordon Hempton

  Tired, Sleep, Eye

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• You can listen to a birdsong, and from the content of the birdsong, you will be able to determine whether or not the bird grew up in a noise-polluted environment or whether it grew up in a pristine, clean environment. Isn't that incredible?

  Gordon Hempton

  Bird, Environment, Incredibles

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• You 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 Hempton

  Fun, Stress, Trying

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Whenever 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 Hempton

  Spiritual, Religious, Party

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• We think the problem is out there, when the problem is really in here - who we are and how we experience the world around us. The acoustic ecologist listens, as the primary sense, to the world around us, and I believe that they have a significant contribution to make to all environmental groups who think that they're solving environmental problems, when we're actually all on a spiritual pilgrimage.

  Gordon Hempton

  Spiritual, Believe, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Noise pollution is basically defined as the presence of simple information that makes it impossible to hear all the other more delicate - and often more important - information. Noise pollution creates, if you will, dumb environments. Our industrial areas, many of our downtown urban areas, are dumb acoustic environments. Very simple, very loud, often unhealthy.

  Gordon Hempton

  Simple, Dumb, Important

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  7 Copy quote

• Often how you define the problem will determine whether or not you're able to find a real solution.

  Gordon Hempton

  Real, Problem, Determine

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• How are we going to know what sounds are important before we've even heard those sounds? It's an absurd question. The only thing we can say is that we're going to base it on our past experience. In other words, modern listening doesn't inform us of anything new. It simply keeps us in the past.

  Gordon Hempton

  Past, Listening, Important

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• "Acoustic ecologist" is basically a fancy name for someone who tries to become a better listener. Not just listening to those thoughts, ideas, and productions of human intention, but listening to places - whether it's an urban environment, residential, industrial, or even the farthest corner of the world, in one of our last great quiet places where we can listen to the pure sounds of nature without any human-caused noise intrusions.

  Gordon Hempton

  Listening, Trying, World

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

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