No Silence

I have a theory on the excessive noise present in society today. In particular, I refer to the constant cell phone chatter we see and hear as often in public places as heard in the home or other refuge. I think the constant chattering about "nothing" on those phones has greatly damaged the quality of speech today. A mind which has no time to quietly think thoughts, formulate ideas and prepare speech becomes one that speaks merely to be heard, not to orate wisely.

If a cluttered mind is one that makes for cluttered behavior, then those who have surrendered their quiet times for noise have lives as much in disarray as the constant bombardment of noise itself is disorganized. I hear people speaking, but what they say is more often trivial, disorganized, and uninteresting. They have lost their ability to speak wisely. Might their addiction to phones and electronic "talk' be causing this loss of the ability to speak meaningfully? Surely, people behave in as disorganized a manner as the disorganized world commands them to do so. And the world today is highly disorganized. The result of the loss of cogent speech is speech that is less than pleasant or meaningful to hear.

Today's typical human (anywhere in the industrialized parts of world, as the problem of noise and poor speech is universal today) speech is often mean spirited, idle and empty of substance, is ritualistic, perfunctory, cruel, too personal etc. It reflects the fact that today people speak too much and think too little, producing a vacuous chatter that we so often see in the cell phone addict screaming into his or her phone. True, we can't stop others from abusing silence with their noise (Why do we need music in elevators or while we hold on line during a business phone call?). But we can stop abusing ourselves.

Good speech that enlightens us is being replaced with silly speech that is meant only to entertain, and often it does not even do that. Human beings need quiet time to think and reflect on matters important to themselves and others. When they don't get that time (because they never stop their idle chattering) communication as a whole suffers. Maybe, for example, that's why news outlets today speak about the octomom instead of about the death of millions of starving and diseased moms in impoverished and neglected areas of the world.

We might be both better off as a people and be able to better understand each other if we sought quiet times each day. We should use those quiet times to think about what is important for us and for others, not about the every day mundane chatter subjects we are bombarded with. Silence is a rich and fertile soil in which many things grow and flourish, not the least being an awareness of everything outside oneself and apart from oneself. We need to depersonalize much of our world if we are to lose the selfish nature that humans no display. And to do that we just need to shut up more often.

Do you hear me?