Do we communicate to speak, or to listen?

I happen to do a lot of posting on boards and such, and as a freelance reporter, it's my job to talk to people and to listen to them, sometimes to get them to say things that they really shouldn't be telling me. One thing that has always bothered me about us as a social species is our penchant to converse not with the goal of listening, but of being heard.
Nowhere is this more prevalent than on internet chat boards and rooms, where there is political, social and other forms of debate. Far too often, people post to be heard, as opposed to actually expose themselves to other views. I am not immune to this. I don't think anyone is.
On one board I post to quite often, we're quite divided into our little (mostly political) camps. Liberal or conservative, republican or democrat. We have some quite rousing debates about what's going on in the world. However, except for a few notable cases, I doubt many of us are actually learning something from the other side. Which is too bad.
Why? Because we're not there to listen, we're there to be heard by the other side. That, I think, is a loss of opportunity.
What ends up happening is that, in lieu of actually reading what someone with an opposing viewpoint has said, the person instead just blanket categorizes that person's argument based on past discussions or what others in that particular "group" are likely to say. Case in point, a few weeks ago on the board I usually post on, there was a thread I started regarding child slavery on cocoa farms in West Africa. Someone responded with a comment regarding all Africans.
Now, my response was that this incident was confined to a few small countries, and that Africa is a continent, not a country, with diverse people. You can no more generalize what Liberians do to what Rwandans do than you can with the French and Hungarians.
However, because we had debated the role of Africans in the slave trade in the past, this person automatically assumed that my post was in some way trying to minimalize the role of africans in that particular slave trade and became a bit indignant when I said that wasn't what I was talking about. You see, this person didn't read what I wrote, he read what he expected me to write. He didn't read the viewpoint I was expounding, he read between lines that weren't there.
I'm not picking on this person specifically, we all do it. I do it. You probably do it too.
The internet has provided humanity with an incredible means of communicating, spreading ideas, learning from one another, and growing as a species. But to fully utilize it, we're all going to have to make a stronger effort at actually listening to what others are saying. After all, if you are not listening to what others are saying, what are the odds that they are listening to you?
So, next time you get ready to respond to that post here's my advice. Take a breath, wash what other conversations you and that person have had in the past from your mind, and look at what they've posted word-for-word, without reading other aspects into it. If you *think* they are trying to lead to some familiar ground, why not simply ask them: "Is this what you are getting at?"
Then, take them at their word until they prove you different.
It might be that your suspicions were correct. It might be that they are not. But there's a chance you might learn something new. And if you make a habit of listening, there's a chance the habit might spread.