American culture of making noise and hyping is tiring and annoying at times.
Sports events are the most prominent example. Going to popular sports matches in the US: football, ice hockey, basketball, etc. and you'll be bombarded with ads, noise, hype from the loudspeakers and flashing lights from the huge screens -- every single second you're there. When you watch the Super Bowl, you watch more ads than you watch the game. Going to a soccer game which is the most popular sport outside of the US, the only sound you'll ever hear is when the fans actually make noise. And perhaps, the announcement when they substitute players. By the way, it's quite cool to be in a high-stakes soccer match: There are volunteering leaders emerging from the crowd that orchestrate the people naturally. Noise in sports events are great, but only when they are not from the stupid flashing screens.
It's not a surprise to me that the laugh tracks were invented in America. Their presence in modern American sitcoms is annoying at best. But now, I think the producers started to realize that.
I think we are happier when we're treated like adults who know how to feel and behave.
Another thing is advertisement pollution. Just notice it when going around in some bigger cities. Ads everywhere, shouting at you and not letting you to rest. Even if you don't look at them, they are still there, talking to you.
I was in Salvador, Brazil this summer and was disgusted by how loud everything was, people on the streets carrying speakers playing music, street sellers screaming, cars honking, I prefer the relative quietness of my southern Chile.
"Kirste found that two hours of silence per day prompted cell development in the hippocampus."
This was in mice, but if silence turns out to grow neurons in humans too, that will be big news.
Anyone reading this Nautilus article should also read the counter-point article from 2016
http://nautil.us/issue/38/noise/noise-is-a-drug-and-new-york...
Lewis Black, a comedian, couches his praise of noise in a cynical one-liner, noting dryly, “The reason I live in New York City is because it’s the loudest city on the planet Earth. It’s so loud I never have to listen to any of the shit that’s going on in my own head.”
> Here’s how Kirste made sense of the results. She knew that “environmental enrichment,” like the introduction of toys or fellow mice, encouraged the development of neurons because they challenged the brains of mice. Perhaps the total absence of sound may have been so artificial, she reasoned—so alarming, even—that it prompted a higher level of sensitivity or alertness in the mice. Neurogenesis could be an adaptive response to uncanny quiet.
Just a word of caution: Experiments that work in mice don’t necessarily work in humans [1]. These findings are very preliminary, although interesting.
[1] http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2016/11/01/the-troubl...
Taking this another level, and, where I thought the article was originally going, there is an internal dialog going on even with external silence. An aspect of vipassana meditation (and probably others) is when that internal noise silences.
During silence, the brain consolidates, much as muscles strengthen after exertion, not during.
This consolidation consists in making information fit together "better", by seeking patterns and other redundancies - resulting in both compression and insight. A role also assigned to sleep.
It's more basic than intellectual consolidation, but things like the concept of a chair. (Not the philosphical concept of a chair, but some particular person's actual concept).
But it also explains why we have spontaneous insight when disengaged, e.g. in the shower.
Attention has now been made a commodity, so good luck finding peace and quiet if you don't have the money to buy it
I wish hotels would be graded on how quiet they are.
"...and a vibrant cultural capital the size of Nashville, Tennessee..." ahh yes, as a finn, I know all the us cities/states and their size and instantly compare finnish cities to us counterparts. Indeed I do sir.
I do a lot of meditation and trance work, and I can say that trance is all about training yourself to ignore things that demand your attention. Both the body and the mind will issue such demands.
Stimulation becomes a "resource," one that you want to get rid of as fast as you gather it. But the easiest way to get rid of it is to not gather it in the first place.
As you get deeper into trance, other things you're not so skilled at ignoring start to make themselves known. You need to learn how to ignore those too. Otherwise you just don't have a whole lot of fun.
The brain can ignore practically anything. Many psychological disorders involve the brain not being able to ignore things that most people can ignore, such as OCD or tinnitus. If I'm in a weird state, tinnitus can become really awful. But most of the time it's not a thing. I submit that 90% of tinnitus cases could be solved with some guided meditation, and 9% of the other 10% needs the attention of a TMJ specialist. Maybe 10% of 10%.
I went to Target when they (briefly) came to Canada and was surprised and delighted by the absence of music in the store. I'm sure some people were weirded out by that, but I found it refreshing and peaceful.
Wait, this is a joke, right?? : https://i.imgur.com/LsjFa8O.png
(Ad tossed up immediately upon opening the article)
Protect your ears and don’t get tinnitus. Some people ruin their futures (aspiring musician or audio engineer).
The voices in my head may or may not agree with the voices in your head.
For some reason I intensely I dislike that "Silence, please" slogan. Maybe it's lost in translation, but to me it comes across as scolding.
I actually want to go to Finland and make a lot of noise right now. Maybe I've been browsing https://reddit.com/r/firstworldanarchists too much lately.
In a remote and quiet place, Vikman says, she discovers thoughts and feelings that aren’t audible in her busy daily life. “If you want to know yourself you have to be with yourself, and discuss with yourself, be able to talk with yourself.”
I was a homemaker for years. A lot of housework is fairly mindless, allowing for uninterrupted deep thought because most folks will not bother you while you are doing laundry. They don't want to be asked to help.
I have spent years cultivating a relatively quiet life by American standards. Since my ex moved out, I mostly have not had a TV. I gave up my car years ago, giving up its built in radio along with it. In my household, it is a common courtesy to announce "I am starting up a video (or game) with voices." so as to not startle anyone.
People complain a lot about the stress of our 24/7 always on lives in the US. They often lay the blame on computers, smart phones, email notifications and social media. I have a smart phone and computers. I don't feel harried and interrupted and like I can't get a break.
My life was quiet before sleeping in a tent for nearly 6 years, but doing that deepened the quiet. I am prone to ear infections. I can't wear headphones because of it. My days were spent in a library. My nights were spent trying to be quiet enough to go unnoticed and not have the cops called on me. Games were often played with the sound off.
Peace and quiet is necessary to be able to hear yourself think. I think the degree to which constant noise interferes with deep contemplation and self reflection goes largely unrecognized.
A lot of people could probably skip therapy entirely if they could just arrange to hear themselves think. But I think many people are intentionally avoiding that because the constant flak of noise obscuring their thoughts and feelings is critical to their ability to stay in a relationship that doesn't work or at a job they actually hate.
Hearing their own opinions about their own lives would likely compel many of them to make hard decisions and big changes and they would rather not know. That's scary. It's overwhelming. The noise that enables remaining stuck is like an anaesthetic.