The tsunami of noise

"The modern age knows nothing about isolation and nothing about silence. In our quietest and loneliest hour, the automatic washing machine will sigh through its changes, a plane will drone over, the nearest freeway will vibrate the air. Red and white lights will pass in the sky and lights will shine along highways and glance off windows. There is always a radio that can be tuned to some all-night station; or a television set to turn artificial moonlight into the flickering images of the late show. We can put on a turntable whatever consolation we most respond to, Mozart or Copland and the silence would be dead."

~ Wallace Stegner, historian, novelist, short story writer, and environmentalist, often called "The Dean of Western Writers."

Whether it is the wind in the pines, or the rustle of dead leaves, or the clearing of a monstrous throat, or the humming of a devout crowd; all pleasant and unpleasant sound; agreeable or disagreeable: they all constitute noise. Noise is not necessarily random even if at times, it appears to be aimless. Noise is constant, and sound is the essence of the universe, along with other things such as energy and matter.

However, noise also contains silence. In fact, the greatest gift to humanity is the thunder of silence. Nothing is more useful to a human being than silence; and yet, the inability to stay quiet is one of the most conspicuous failings of mankind. He realises not, that silence is a fence around wisdom. Silence is more musical than any song; even if one person's music is another person's noise. Silence is also speech.

Silence speaks louder than words. In the attitude of silence, the soul finds the path in a clearer light. The Arctic expresses the sum of all wisdom: Silence. Whereas sounds are quite innoxious, or most distressing, by their sort rather than their quantity; true silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit, what sleep is to the body; nourishment and refreshment.

If one could divide the constant tide and random flow of noisiness, with conscious recurring moments of empty mind, solitude, and deep, slow, breathing, one would learn to live in harmony with the demands of the natural law of self-preservation.

Bluster

Living as we do in an age of noise and bluster, we measured success accordingly: by the amount of noise we create. Hence, everybody wants to create noise. The way they do it is by continously being connected to, everybody else: on twitter, facebook, e-mailing, texting, talking, shouting, hooting, laughing, crying, moaning; saying and doing so many unimaginable, unspeakable, impossible, things in a constant chorus of discordant vibrations: with or without perspicacity, acumen.

The frenzy and flood of information endanger meaning. Everybody is talking at the same time as if in a state of hypnotic trance. Hyper-din, incessant chatter fills the airwaves, as though everyone is at a cocktail party in hell. It is what I call Total Noise: The Noise soup - the tsunami of facts, fiction, context, perspective lash about one's ears and burst through. Soon silence will have passed into legend.

Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day, he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life: contemplation, meditation. Tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling, bolsters his ego and his anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like, gray vegetation.

Sounds, particularly loud, that disturb people or make it difficult to hear wanted sounds, are noise. Hence, the sound of conversations of people around us, in the surroundings areas, would constitute noise, to people not involved in any of them. Any unwanted sound such as domesticated dogs barking, neighbours playing loud music, loud speakers on public and private space, road traffic sounds, or a distant aircraft in quiet countryside, is also noise. In common use, the word noise means any unwanted sound: sound that is loud, unpleasant, unexpected, or undesired.

Arthur Schopenhauer, the German philosopher was fond of saying: "I have long held the opinion that the amount of noise that anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity and therefore be regarded as a pretty fair measure of it." It would seem that Nature's only idea seems to be to make human beings into machines for the production of incessant noise: Dead voices, lost sounds, forgotten noises, vibrations, lock stepping into the abyss of the distant a silence. So much so, accustomed to the veneer of noise, society is suspicious of those who value silence.

Desperation

Nowadays most people lead lives of noisy desperation. I have often lamented that we cannot close our ears with as much ease as we can our eyes, for it is strange how loud the world is, even when we were not filling it up with our own noise.

We listen too much to the telephone, the television, our own voice; and we listen too little to nature. The symphony of wind is one of my favourite sounds: A lonely sound perhaps, but soothing and refreshing. Everybody should have his or her personal sounds to listen for - sounds that will make him or her feel exhilarated and alive, or quiet and calm. In fact, one of the greatest sounds of them all - and to me it is a sound - is utter, complete silence: not the depressing silence of the silent majority, but the silence of the silence.

One can hear the footsteps of the godly, when silence reigns in the mind. Thus, cultivate solitude and quiet and afew sincere friends, rather than mob merriment, noise and thousands of nodding acquaintances. It will throw light in your life. Noise is a stench in the ear. When there is noise and crowds, there is trouble; when everything is silent and perfect, there is just perfection and nothing else to fill the air. Why are we embarrassed by, silence? What comfort do we find in all the noise? Noise proves nothing. "Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid," said Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain.

The lack of harmony in our lives is like noise that is super-imposed on the silence. The issue is not how to create silence, but how to live in a way that eliminates the noise. The worst wheel of the cart makes the most noise; so does ten people who speak, make more noise than ten thousand who are silent. Let me end with a quote from Swami Radhananda, the spiritual director of Yasodhara Ashram in Kootenay Bay, BC, Canada: Silence allows you to watch your mind and become aware of the thoughts that you may be acting on unconsciously. When you see the thoughts, you can make a conscious choice to act on the thought or change your mind, instead of going along with the noise. I have seen people who don't want to look at themselves keep going until something happens that makes them stop - a sickness or an accident - and it gives them that reflective, quiet space where they can face what is difficult in their mind. We each have a unique purpose to fulfill in this life and inklings can come in those quiet moments.

See you this day next week. Until then, keep thinking; keep laughing. Life is mostly about these two activities.

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