Raoul's Monday night response

Today we discussed two major ideas that interested me. The first is the concept of listening. I find my self always listening, even when I am not looking at the speaker. In fact, I actually have a hard time not listening to people. For example, if people are talking in a room at all (I mean like even whispers) I can not focus on what I am doing, I have to hear and process every thing. However, I feel that for me this derives from my constant desire to take in information. On the other hand, I do see other people losing focus of a conversation within seconds (this can be so frustrating). The second concept we discussed today was the idea of the pain caused by someone proving your ideas wrong. In Notes From the Underground Dostoyevsky refers to a religious person becoming depressed due to darwin's theory of evolution (his ideas were disproven). But in class we discussed how the opposite would feel (being atheist and being shown beyond a reasonable doubt that atheism is wrong. Personally I think both situations are equivalently painful.