In The Midst Of The Blissful Silence
Silence is a precious gift, a refuge from the Machine. We need it more than ever.
Up near the top of the fog-cloaked fell is where it hit me: the euphoria of silence. I wasn’t even meant to be on this peak; the dense fog rolled quickly in whilst I ascended Skiddaw in the English Lake District and being a novice on this fell, I took the “wrong” path. As I neared the cairn of stones and mangled metal that topped the summit, it dawned on me that I has climbed Skiddaw’s little brother, Skiddaw Little Man, instead — a mountain smaller by a few hundred feet than my intended summit. The fog had fooled me.
Even though the view from Skiddaw would have been exactly the same (thick grey fog looks identical matter how high you are), I was a tad disappointed, it must be said, as time did not permit me to retrace my steps and climb my intended peak. But going up a wrong path gives you a story, something that can be remembered, recounted, and laughed about round the fire for years to come. So, was it really the wrong path that I took? Or was this the path intended for me all along? A few feet into my decent, the answer became crystal clear.
As I came down from the summit, I suddenly hit a spot of intense silence. The windswept peak was still visible through the near blinding fog where the howling wind, only moments ago, had buffeted me relentlessly. But down here, it was as if I had entered a different world. The complete absence of sound, coupled with the gloomy aura of the thick fog, made for an almost mystical moment. Euphoria overcame me and a sense of complete and utter rest. My mind focused entirely on the moment and all distractions, worries, and cares dissipated into the absolute silence. I could have stayed up there for hours, reviling in the blissful absence of sound. But back to the world of noise I had to go.
Silence is a magnificent absence: an absence of sound, noise, and the movement of waves. Or is it? As before “Let there be light” was pronounced, silence reigned supreme — it was, and still to an extent is, the primary state in nature. As
says, silence isn’t just a negation or an absence, but it is something in and of itself1. Max Picard, who called silence an autonomous reality puts it well:“Silence is not visible, and yet its existence is clearly apparent. It extends to the farthest distances, yet is so close to us that we can feel it as concretely as we feel our own bodies. It is intangible, yet we can feel it as directly as we feel materials and fabrics.”2
Silence, as described by Picard, is paradoxical; more complex and multi-faceted than we perhaps realise. It is a concrete reality, not just a mere absence, and it is something precious and immensely valuable in its own right — its profound effect on us proves its own worth.
One of the many reasons silence is so precious is the property it shares with most other precious things: its rarity. In contrast to all other senses, we have almost no control over our sense of hearing3. In the presence of a revolting sight, we can close our eyes, when confronted with bitter tasting foods, we can shut our mouth. But we can’t close our ears. They always remain open. Putting our hands over them only dampens sound: we can still hear the blaring siren or the high-pitched screech — to our immense frustration. Apart from retreating away or destroying the source, there is nothing we can do4 to stop sound. Where there is sound, we will hear it. The fact that we have so little control over it is why silence is so precious. It gives us something we cannot easily create ourselves — peace. Stillness. Bliss.
Silence is a gift.
And a highly coveted one at that. Writers, thinkers, and prayers alike earnestly seek this elusive phenomenon. Noise is the ultimate distraction to clear and coherent thought; we can’t escape its presence and its constant stimulation wreaks havoc with our attention. Silence though, presents us with a mental clean slate. It is in the silence that epiphanies come, new insights arise, novel theories blossom — where the only sound one can hear is the sound of one’s own thoughts reverberating inside one’s head. It is the sound of dots joining, of logic coming into formation, of striking the cognitive gold of eureka. This, and a whole lot more, is what arises from the refreshing, distilling, concentrated focus that silence allows. The falling apple may have been the spark that ignited the theory of gravity ablaze in Newton’s head, but the cognitive kindling was surely gathered and set in place by the silence Newton dwelt in underneath that apple tree.
A precious thing indeed, this silence.
Another reason silence is so rare and precious is how hard it is to find and even harder to maintain. One has to venture high up on mountains, deep into bleak moors, out in wide open fields, or trek into the desert to find it. Isolation, inaccessibility, and inhospitableness are what keeps these places silent — they are their chief defences against the penetration of noise and distraction. These are the lands of hermits and wild saints, places far from human habitation or even (at times) bird song. No wonder Jesus frequented these places when he went to pray, surrounded as he was in ancient Judea by wilderness and mountainside. But even in these wild and desolate places, silence is fragile: all too easily interrupted by the sudden rush of wind, a croaking raven overhead, or the howl of a distant jackal. But do these natural sounds of the barren lands really break the silence? Or do they amplify the sense of solitude, vastness, and peace that belongs to silent places? I know what they do to me.
It is in the city though, that one fully comes to understand how precious and rare silence is — for silence here is impossible. Cities thrive on noise. It is the rhythmic sound of productivity, efficiency, and innovation. It is the sound of constant movement: of cars, people, and goods. It is the sound of entertainment, pleasure, and community. Above all it is the sound of the dominance of the Machine.
I am not overly criticising the noise of the city — for in a sense, that is its whole purpose. In addition, being saturated with noisy activity, the city keeps the hustle and bustle of busyness away from our rural and wilderness places, helping to preserve their quietude. Finally, who can distain the joyful sound of children playing in a park, the melody of rich and fruitful coffee-shop conversation, or the chiming of ancient church bells? But pleasant though they may be, these sounds do not detract from the brutal reality that much of what occurs in the city is not sound but noise. Distracting, ugly, constant noise. The kind of noise that puts you on edge, that allows for neither rest nor relenting, and that heralds the domination of the Machine. Even when the quiet moments do come, the background whirr of white goods or the sudden outbreak of a distant police siren contaminates the moment.
Silence is not only rare. It is under immense threat. We “modern people” are being conditioned to despise silence, not only because silence signifies dead or “useless”5 time in terms of economic growth, but also because in the silence we come face to face with ourselves and our inner thoughts. We reflect on who we are, on how the past has dealt with us, and on whom we are becoming. Oh, how uncomfortable we find such thoughts! As Stephanie Bennett remarks, in these moments of silent self-reflection we can be presented “with the stark realization of our own frailty, failure, and eventual death.”6. Our own death — now we hate to be reminded of that. Better to fill our minds with constant, distracting noise.
And that is what we do.
Headphones always in our ears. TV always on. Beeps and buzzes from the endless stream of notifications — we fill our moments with the noise of the Machine and rest content with the understanding that the deep and profound things of life can be considered “some other day”. This is what the Machine desires. The last thing it wants is for you to reflect on your life and ponder deeply in the silence. For then you might come to realise what the Machine really is: mere noise.
The Machine hates silence, and this is why even its supposed “silences” are a lie. Take for example “silent mode” on a phone. It is anything but silence. It still vibrates, which is itself the essence of sound. The only way to truly silence the phone (and indeed the Machine) is to turn it off, starve it of power, and render its ability to stimulate the senses dead.
But turning off our phone makes us unreachable — a cardinal sin in the hyper connected age we live in. Thus, we keep our phones on and persist in the noise of modern life, with rarely a moment of quiet, let alone silence.
If silence is indeed where profound thoughts arise; if silence is where true understanding blossoms; if silence does indeed help us distinguish between what is worthless and what is good, then what a tragedy it is to sacrifice silence. As Stephane Bennett says: “Silence does the deep work that speech cannot accomplish. Through its discipline, we come to better understand our own thoughts and motivations. We find ourselves relating more cohesively to our world and to others. We can gain a stronger grasp of what it means to be human.”7 Virtue grows in the silence — and we must not sacrifice virtue. Ever. Conversely, without the soil of silence we become hollow individuals, vulnerable to being blown about by the winds of the prevailing culture or the storms of social media. We need silence. I believe as a society we are painfully discovering, all too late, how much damage persisting in a world of constant noise is doing to us.
But what can we do? For those of us who live in urban spaces, they will always be noisy — there is little we can do about that. But we can make them quieter: campaigning for low traffic neighbourhoods, turning off machines and phones, or even practicing Ruhezeit on Sundays (quiet days in Germany where loud music and loud chores are legally prohibited). These and many other options can help create a more peaceful sane, and humane city environment.
But if we really want to experience the ultimate refreshment and bliss of silence, then we must go to where it is still possible: the great outdoors. These silent places must be protected at all costs. Like nature reserves for protected species and Dark Sky Reserves to protect against light pollution, we need Silent Reserves: protected areas free from roads, free from industry, and free from the Machine. Places where bird song is the loudest sound we are likely to hear and where we can revel in the blissful silence.
Protecting silent places is thus one of the chief duties in our stewardship of the natural world. Too much is at stake if we sacrifice all these places to noise and productivity. If we do, we will lose spaces where we can pray, places where we can think afresh about what we are here for, and places where we can stand in awe of the blissful silence and hear the still small voice of its Creator. And in a world where the beauty, sounds, and silences of the natural world are under immense and complex threats, we need ingenious, complex thinkers drawing upon novel insights and ancient wisdom to help us navigate the challenges of environmental stewardship in the modern world. These thinkers, their thoughts, and their ideas flourish in the soil of silence.
Up there on the foggy mountain, I revelled in the blissful silence. Long may it continue.
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Further Reading
And The Fields Fall Silent
The British Trust for Ornithology recently published a tool which shows the number of breeding bird species that have been lost from the place you live since 1970. Typing one’s postcode into the online tool brings up a list of now-extinct species from the 1 km square surrounding one’s home. The results of the BTOs rese…
L.M. Sacasas, The Thing That Is Silence.
Max Picard, The World of Silence (1952). I thank L.M. Sacasas for bringing this quote to my attention.
Shira Telushkin, Desiring Silence, Plough Quarterly. https://www.plough.com/en/topics/culture/literature/desiring-silence
Unless we happen to have a pair of ear defenders on our person!
Max Picard, The World of Silence.
Stephanie Bennett, Endangered Habit. Plough Quarterly. https://www.plough.com/en/topics/life/technology/endangered-habitat
Stephanie Bennett, Endangered Habit. Plough Quarterly. https://www.plough.com/en/topics/life/technology/endangered-habitat
We, humans, like most animals, do not have earlids. We are hardwired to perceive sounds incessantly. Reportedly, people confined in a laboratory-generated silence, so called anechoic chamber, felt driven mad, and broke out free before no longer than 45 minutes.
What we really need, is the reassuring and restorative background of natural sounds: whoosh of wind in the canopy of trees, the trickle of a creek, wash of waves, chirp of birds, the sound of another person's voice in a meaningful conversation.
We have built a sonorous hell of industrial sounds, from the clank of machines to loudspeakers blaring out what we don't need to listen to. This noise of civilisation is so overwhelming, that we've got used to calling the absence of this burden - silence. The silence we need is not a sonorous empty space. It is the space where we fill comfortable, and therefore safe, with the perennial sounds of Nature.
Another beautifully crafted piece, Hadden. Wrongfully avoided and always under appreciated, you are so right that “silence is a gift.” I hope to make it to retirement one day so I can search for it and occasionally disappear into its restorative embrace.