We have all known a person who is a veritable fountain of communication. The words pour out of him like water out of a fully opened tap. He talks and he talks, but - he never listens. At first blush, it might seem that he is an expert in communication, but is he? If he never permits the other fellow to talk, the lines of communication soon break down. His listener is soon awash with his words, and, unable to unload a few words of his own, he founders in a verbal ocean.
Then there is the perfect listener; perfect, in this case, means absolute. He only listens; he never speaks. When one communicates something to him, one receives no response. There is no way of determining whether the communication has been accepted, since there is no acknowledgment. Again, communication breaks down.
It is obvious, then, that communication is a two-way street; one speaks and one listens, and the one in each
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case is the same. Each person in a communication must transmit and receive by turns. When one transmits for a long time without receiving any reply, as happens all too frequently in some family relationships, one will become hungry for answers - any answers. One will get to a state where one is ready to accept any sort of answer in order to fill the lack. A good deal of aberration is based on just such a hunger for answers, and in fact it has been said that a person can be cured of much of his aberration if he can only become involved in good two-way communication.
Basic to all communication is comprehension. The listener must be able to comprehend what the speaker is saying, and (even more importantly) the speaker must be able to comprehend what the speaker is saying. Too often, the speaker utters glittering generalities or profound nullities culled from the thoughts of others, and these, used more often than not out of their context, are delivered with an air of final authority. How many supporters of campus unrest have tossed out the phrase "academic freedom" without having more than the foggiest conception of the meaning of academic freedom; The first rule of communication is to have meaning, to say something that the listener can grasp. Once this prerequisite has been fulfilled, the second rule is that the listener must listen. The third rule is that the listener must respond, thus becoming the communicator. And the fourth rule is that the first communicator must assume the role of listener.
The communicator is a cause, the listener an effect. Good communication occurs when each is willing to be
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both cause and effect by turns, and in roughly equal amounts. Without communication between individuals, relationships within a family or a business, or between friends, break down. Without communication between nations, international relations break down. The lack of communication in the first case leads to anger and separation; its lack in the second case leads to war. It is the world's present misfortune that communication between the so-called "capitalist" and the Communist nations is in sad disarray, for while the Capitalists appear to be willing, at least to some extent, to assume the positions of both cause and effect, the Communists seem determined to limit themselves to enacting the role of cause alone. It is obvious that communication is not solely a matter of words, but consists of both words and actions. If A tells B. "I love you," and then punches B in the nose, the communication is quite clear, and B gets the message, being well able to evaluate the sincerity of the words. The Communists may speak of "coexistence," but how does this square with the Berlin Wall?
All of this leads to what Hubbard calls the "A-R-C Triangle," the basis of human relationships. The "A" stands for Affinity, the degree of liking between people, ranging from serenity at the top, down through enthusiasm, to hostility, and finally to apathy. The "R" stands for Reality, not some metaphysical Absolute Reality, but that upon which we agree as the real. Reality is all a matter of agreement; if we agree something is real, it is real. The "C" stands for Communication, which has already been discussed above.
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The A-R-C triangle is not equilateral, Communication being far more important in human relations than either Affinity or Reality. But the greater the degree of Affinity, the liking between the parties, and Reality, the agreement between the parties, the better will be the Communication. Communication must be poor between two people who have no point in common upon which they can agree, and it is also poor if they do not like each other, at least to some extent. At the bottom of the scale, if two people hate each other and agree on nothing, they may either cease to communicate at all or confine their communication to the use of their fists. At the top of the scale, if two people love each other and agree on almost everything, they will have no difficulty in communicating, and may even be able over long periods of time to communicate with an absolute minimum of words. No good author ever felt it necessary to fill a scene between two lovers with an abundance of dialogue, and in real life, the dialogue may be reduced almost to the vanishing point, yet no one will feel that the lovers are failing to communicate.
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