We Have Heard
A way of offering a thought so that it can be weighed on its merits: "we have heard", "as it has been said", "I have heard the elders say".
I think X puts a person in front of an idea, and a listener who resists the person will resist the idea before they have looked at it. Much of what passes for disagreement is that reflex. The form we have heard removes the obstacle: it sets the saying down in the middle of the room, unowned, where it can be examined without anyone having to concede anything to anyone.
It also says something true about most of what we carry. Almost nothing a person holds originated with them; it came through elders, traditions, long chains of hands. Speaking it that way is more accurate than claiming it, and it leaves the speaker room to remain open to further light — the phrase carries both the hearing and the humility in four words.
The convention has deep use. It is the form by which peoples who govern themselves by council pass wisdom without contest, and it is the form used to invoke a saying a room already knows in order to open a new meaning inside it.
Two cautions keep it honest. It is not a way to launder an assertion the speaker is unwilling to own — where something is your own judgment and the room needs to know that, say so. And it is not a way to smuggle in an authority that does not exist: we have heard invites weighing, and a room should feel entirely free to weigh it and set it down.
Also called: as it has been said Stands on: Listening · Dialogos · Wise Eldership Opens onto: Speaking Truth In Love · Asking Questions · Chatham House · Attribution · Be the canon, don't narrate it · Holding Paradox In play: table · Room Sources: We Have Heard (draft) · The LIØNSBERG Book of Conventions (canon-grade for its role) · the Pattern Language inventory, convention patterns (ore) · lionsberg.wiki: We Have Heard Open: the convention and the voice discipline pull in opposite directions — one asks a page to say the thing in its own voice, the other asks a speaker to set the thing down unowned. Which applies where, page or room, is not stated.