Silence is a rare thing in our modern world. Music plays in every public space. Televisions play with no one to watch them “just for the background noise.” The ubiquitous iPod plays noise continuously in every ear, lest there be a moment of silence anywhere. I would argue that silence is as precious as it is rare.
No television presides in my living room. Or my family room. No radio, either. There is a piano, but it will not play itself. Noise here connects directly to a person—laughing, talking, playing the piano, pages turning. People can hear each other easily; if I have to raise my voice to be heard, iPods must be turned down or off. Here one can carry a thought to its logical (or illogical) conclusion.
This society looks askance on my choice not to have a television. “It must be really quiet in your house” people commonly say. Rarely do they ask what I do with my time. But to have no background noise? That’s weird.
Perhaps I put myself at a disadvantage. I cannot concentrate with a lot of background noise; I am easily distracted. I have no practice in ignoring noise. But I can concentrate for a long time. I can spend two solid hours on one task. Young people seem to be timed to a television schedule: eight minutes before a commercial comes on, eight minutes of concentration. A junior high school teacher says he must change topics every seven minutes or he starts losing the focus of his class. He attributes this to television, and the eight minute maximum on any one thought.
Music in stores and restaurants is designed specifically to discourage careful thought. Impulse buys, eat and run, spend more money in less time—music manipulates moods and encourages the flow of the almighty dollar. Of course businesses want to make money, but does that give them the right to manipulate their clients through sound? Perhaps being aware of this manipulation mitigates some of its effects, but the sound remains.
Constant and universal sonic input calls for more decibels to be heard over the ambient racket. More decibels leads to greater damage to cochlea, and hearing loss, leads to a need for more decibels . . . . Our hearing is damaged by all the noise. Silence does no damage to the physical ear.
The silence of meditation, of prayer, nurtures the soul and mind. Sitting in meditation, quieting the mind and the body, provides a measure of tranquility to carry through life, easing the difficult patches by calming the spirit. Spaces and silence in lectures or sermons gives a moment for the thought to settle, be remembered, to stick as it were.
Silence as a common good or as an experience is essential to the peaceful inner life of people. Airspace unencumbered by sound waves is hard to come by. It must be cherished and preserved wherever possible.
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