"I think therefore I am." The iconic line by Descartes who craved silence so much that he stayed in bed till 11am to avoid interruption. But today it is almost impossible to find peace and quiet - whether that be the increased noisiness of our cities or the distractions of social media, podcasts, and music on our phones. But silence and the thoughts that come from it are the foundation of a civilized society - it is in silence that ideas of genius are born.
The War on Silence and the Extinction of Genius
Once aware of the existence of Evil and of its intentions and motives, and of the existence of monetary manipulation, it becomes obvious that nothing happens by accident...
Transcript:
This is Julia James Davis and welcome to the war on beauty.
Our world has gotten so noisy... think about all the times we hear all this needless noise: couples arguing on the street way too loud, in the gym people are blasting their music out loud or people having phone calls on speaker phones, even when we're alone we're constantly listening to podcasts and music or YouTube or TV in the background.
Our world has gotten so noisy to the point where it's almost impossible to get any peace and quiet, and the severe noise pollution of our airwaves goes beyond really mere annoyance and disturbance and inconvenience, but really might actually be the reason that the West is stagnating and descending into complete uncivilized chaos.
As with so many of the War on Beauty topics this one was inspired by two things that I saw back to back: first was the amazing Kenneth Clark docu-series "Civilizations", and the specific episode on the scientific revolution and development that was happening in England and Holland in the 17th century, and a tweet responding to an Atlantic article titled "Why do rich people love quiet: the sound of gentrification (urban requalification that by increasing prices forces out original inhabitants) is silence."
The importance of silence was something that never really fully congealed in my mind until I saw these two things, and although it's something I am faced with every single day, kind of the proliferation of noise which I'm sure if you're watching this you've also experienced it as well, but it's a subtle facet of the war on beauty that is just as important as the box-like architecture or the blob contemporary art that we have, all of which have become so common in our experience that we no longer see or hear these wars on beauty happening anymore, but now that I'm on this topic I started to see the importance of it, and I do believe that the lack of silence might actually be the very thing that is contributing to our inability to not only create, but to recognize any real beauty, and to exert any civilizing force on our society.
So, starting with the importance of silence, Schopenhauer wrote in his essay on noise that noisy interruption prevents this concentration; this is why the most eminent intellects have always been strongly adverse to any kind of disturbance, interruption and distraction, and above everything to that violent interruption which is caused by noise.
Other people do not take any particular notice of this sort of thing; the most intelligent of all European nations has called "never interrupt" the 11th commandment, but noise is the most impertinent of all interruptions, for it not only interrupts our own thoughts but disperses them. So Schopenhauer is saying - and I completely agree - that we can't have any real or any good thoughts without silence - much less genius thoughts - with all of the noisiness of our world.
And so this is where that Kenneth Clark episode comes in: I was so struck by this particular episode about the development of Holland as a scientific and financial center in the 17th century, and specifically this story that he told about René Descartes: he said that Descartes, who was one of the most important figures of the scientific revolution, absolutely craved solitude and silence so that he could think, and of course he famously said "I think therefore I am." To the point that he moved houses in Holland 24 times so that he could find silence and no one could interrupt him, and he would stay in bed until 11:00 a.m in order to find that silence and to think.
So the kind of deep thought that is required to birth ideas of genius, ideas that are often so crucial for the success and the endurance of a civilization, are born and conceived of, and come, from silence.
So Schopenhauer goes so far as to say that abrupt noises are the murderer of thoughts, which brings me to the tweet that I saw, that really connected all of this in my mind: this tweet was in response to an Atlantic article that claimed that silence was the sound of gentrification. And this tweet by an Avid series on X says, quote "It is in fact true that one thing that seems to separate upper middle-class whites from most everyone else is a very low tolerance for noise."
It's the best reason to live in an upper middle-class white neighborhood that I know of: in my experience, noise less than crime is the most pressing daily problem when you live in, and very near, lower income neighborhoods. It's human noise in black neighborhoods conversations in the street and in homes and apartments, ridiculously high sound level music noise in Hispanic ones, and dog noise in white ones, and, although I couldn't read the full article that this tweet was in response to because it was behind a pay-wall and I'm not subscribing to the Atlantic unfortunately, but I was able to gather from an interview with the author of the article on NPR that she found the silence of white areas, like when she went to university at Brown, oppressive and basically anti-life, anti-joy, and basically tamps down other self-expression, and by imposing silence through gentrification, then those cultures are also erased.
Basically silence and shushing is effectively conflated with undertones of racism and exclusion; she makes that connection really clear, and it is definitely true that non-white areas are actually much louder, and it can be measured: in fact, according to a 2017 study, neighborhoods where 75% of residents were black had a nighttime noise level of 46.3 decibel compared to 42.3 decibel for non-black neighborhoods, and in neighborhoods where 50% of the residents were in poverty the nighttime noise level is 46.9 decibel compared to 44 decibel where there is 0% poverty.
So race and poverty are actually really linked to higher nighttime, and in general higher, noise levels, and this is really important especially the nighttime noise levels, because it's connected to the fact that the World Health Organization actually recommends a nighttime noise level below 40 decibel for optimal sleep without any disturbance; and when you have higher noises you will have disturbances that can cause health issues, which is really interesting. And this occurs as higher noise level in poorer and non-white neighborhoods occur for a multitude of reasons: think higher density of people, closer proximities to freeways, to metros, commercial activity, and also higher crime, which then leads to more sirens and more street activity.
And, on top of that, our cities in general have definitely just become increasingly loud, like, think about living in the old days of Schopenhauer: he was complaining about dogs barking and kids crying and the crack of a whip, but he didn't have to deal with the things that we have to deal with, like constant spam calls, airplanes, traffic noises, or even the hum of everyday electronics plugged in.
According to an article on Vox in 1912, the sound of a fire engine was 96 decibel from an 11 ft distance which compare that to now where fire engines are at 123 decibel from a 10 ft distance, and so, while our world is becoming more and more loud in ways that we can't directly have any impact on, we're actually inflicting more voluntary noise on ourselves every day in the form of music, videos, podcasts. When we have dinner we have the TV on in the background, we have just constant interruption, and it's estimated that 98% of the workforce is interrupted three to four times per day, leading to a loss of productivity and money. Of course, for businesses and in people's lives it takes a lot of effort to refocus after an interruption, and I have a feeling that it's actually a lot higher than 3 to four times a day that we're interrupted. Plus we're just constantly on our phones being called, texting, getting notifications, whatever it might be, so all of this amounts to having very little interior life, and constant mental fragmentation.
And really, beyond that, in the past few years something has changed, where we have kind of discarded all manners and boundaries around noises bothering other people than ever before: people have just issued all manners around noise, because I've really noticed that noise manners are being violated in bigger and bigger ways and more and more frequently.
At first it was just like, I would be out for my evening stroll and somebody would come up and have a huge boom box playing rap music; but then the instances started to become more and more egregious. For example, the best one that I can think of recently was: I was sitting in one of the nicest and most expensive restaurants in Los Angeles when a man comes to sit next to me, and and the restaurant was really quiet, and this man sits down next to me and my mom eating, and he just starts to have this conversation on speakerphone full blast so loud; and when that happens it interrupts not just your, like, whole experience; you can't have a conversation, you can't think and you can't even enjoy eating your food. All you can do is basically listen to this guy's conversation, so it's no longer the wealthy areas that are the only places shielded from noise: everybody is experiencing constant interruption and constant cacophony, whether that be exerted onto us from the exterior or inflicted upon us by our own media consumption habits, and so why that is so important?
Going back to what I said in the beginning, is that without silence we cannot commune with ourselves, and therefore we cannot commune with God, and so now I think the total reverse has happened, where instead of silence being a gentrifier like that woman said in the Atlantic article, I think that the opposite has occurred, where actually we have been deentrified by noise.
So I think that if silence is a great civilizer and a great civilizing force, then I think that noise is a great de-civilizer: without silence you cannot have the ideas because silence is where ideas come from that are necessary for the greatness or actually even just the survival of a society. Because think about those men like Descartes for example: they brought so much to the societies that were so thriving during their time, and all of that came from their dedication to silence and uninterruptedness. And so, without silence we really cannot think, and therefore we cannot be, we can't create, we can't ponder, explore, dream, produce, observe, understand, or pretty much do anything.
So, a last example of the greatness of silence is Beethoven: how he went deaf and in his deafness he produced some of the greatest musical compositions of his career. And you would think, how is that even possible, how can you make music without being able to hear? That is because beauty and art and even music comes from silence, that internal part carrying the still small voice of God.
So, in conclusion, why has the West ceased to produce any of the great minds like we used to have in the past? It could be very well in part due to the lack of silence in our world: the conditions necessary to produce those kinds of people and the thoughts that they carry within them, the condition of silence is such a rarity that it has become a luxury, and silence again is important for us all, rich or poor, black or white, we have to bring silence back to our cities and to our world if we are going to salvage this civilization.
And so I would love to know what you think about this, it's something... I think that this might be my favorite topic that we've talked about on the war on beauty because it's such a subtle way that beauty has been attacked, because you never notice silence because we rarely have it: it's something that when you do hear it you're like... the sound of silence! It really strikes you!
So I would love to know your thoughts on this: do you notice this as well? Do you hear people getting louder and louder, and with less manners around noise? Because I certainly do so. I hope that you will please like comment and subscribe, and I will see you in the next video.