Silence, what is it? How do you find yours?
Participants steve kleinbl00 theadvancedapes -Cadell Last Captain_Ozone geneusutwerk cW -Clive Watson flagamuffin mk Olive Watson
Music Intro -Steven Clausnitzer Silence is Golden - The Tremeloes Helplessness Blues - Fleet Foxes Silent Lucidity - Queensryche Sound of Silence - Simon and Garfunkel Night Swimming - R.E.M Oh So Quiet - Bjork
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also, thank you to littlebirdie for suggesting the topic. If anyone has any suggestions for future topics, post them here or pm thenewgreen
Yeah, it's always nice to hear our fellow hubskiers voices. Makes them less of "username" and more of a "human". I really enjoyed recording Clive/Olive's parts. They're a lot of fun to be around.
I like the closet effect, your recordings are always easy to work with, thanks. Per what you said, I too have spent time driving in the middle of the country away from any cities. When I first drove out to Montana for school I was struck by how desolate the Bad Lands are. Filling up for gas, or stopping at a rest area was definitely quiet. It was one of the first times I had experienced anything like it. I drove an old beat up minivan from Montana to Michigan once in the winter by myself. That trip was full of silence and many mechanical difficulties. I broke down in the middle of a blizzard and had to hitchhike my way to Sioux Falls. Lots of silence and were it not for some kind people and AAA, I would have had a very difficult time of it.
Since I was just the narrator here, I'm going to take this opportunity to mention my thoughts. Kleinbl00 was not the only one to mention that silence is essentially unattainable on a daily basis and even if it were attainable, it would be unpleasant. What we aspire to is not silence but rather "quiet" or "peacefulness" and these things are subjective. For me, it is the 10 minutes after a long run. While running I can get to a really great place but it isn't nearly as peaceful as the walk just after the run. I'm able to dial in to the present moment and really be "at one" with my surroundings. I also find peace while recording/playing music and even these podcasts. They're both similarly zen-like for me.
Great podcast. I agree that it is peaceful quietness, rather than silence, that places me in a relaxed and appreciative mood. It is the familiar, reassuring and slight noises that break the silence that make a moment special. For me, I find it walking through the English countryside on a calm day. I also used to find it in bed while growing up, in an almost silent house, knowing exactly where each slight creek or draft was coming from. Unfortunately I now live in a city and rarely, if ever, find that peaceful quietness. Bloody cars. nature of those slight noises that break the silence that create that atmoshpere. I grew up in the English countryside and I loved being outdoors, where all you could hear were natural sounds.
If you crave silence, you should give this a shot. Pure silence may make you hallucinate after a few minutes.
Yeah, that's what kleinbl00 was referring to in the podcast, an anechoic chamber. I know that I'd likely get really creeped out, but I still would very much like to experience the sensation of being in one. Thanks for the link.
It wasn't so much "awkward" as it was fun. There were a number of different intro "angles" I was going to take.
I think this point was alluded to nicely by Olive at the end of the podcast when she mentions "rests" in music.
I love me a bit of silence: it can be wonderfully still, and comforting, and spiritual, and thought-provoking. I'm not a Quaker, but I get myself a scheduled weekly dose of silence by attending my local Quaker meeting most Sunday mornings (and they don't seem to mind that our theological differences are larger than our theological similarities). For those who didn't know already, "unprogrammed" Quaker meetings are held in silence, broken only if somebody feels moved to minister (and I've been to plenty of meetings which have just been silent from beginning to end). It's not complete silence - the occasional shuffle, cough, or the movement of a bird outside can be easily heard - but it's special to me specifically because what you've got is about 50 people who are just sitting in silence: it's the intent that makes their silence special, IMHO.
It's interesting to hear people's ideas on silence/quiet/noise. How do we learn to appreciate silence when everything tells us to flee it?
said one of your speakers. This seems so true these days.
There is so much random noise.
I need natural noises: wind, water, and birds to connect me with the world. I need silence to write or think. How do I find silence? With difficulty. I'm previously programmed to answer distress calls or attempts at conversation. I'm learning to say, "please dear I'm working on something." (no private offices here, just shared space.)
I know people that can read a book while listening to music. This, to me, is impossible. I can't have a conversation with my wife while cooking, it's not gonna happen. I pretty much have to be doing one thing at a time if I want to do it with any conviction. I work from home and as such, I have a rule in our house. If I am working, I am not to be disturbed unless it is something that you would pick up the phone to call me about. My office and my work are just as valid as any office or work done outside the home. Boundaries are important. -without them, there can be no silence.
Nice work, thenewgreen! I really enjoyed listening to everyone's thoughts, and the thread of the program led me along a really enjoyable and insightful path. I think the observation about the unbearable nature of true silence is instructive, although I guess you could say the same about most things we crave. We often voice cravings for things that we want in partial measure. We might crave light or darkness, heat or cool, water, coziness or some space to breathe, but the totality of those things would mean, respectively: blindness; blindness; immolation; freezing; drowning; claustrophobia; agoraphobia? Or something like that. It intrigues me though that much of what we seem to want in "silence" is actually clarity and articulation for those things we _can_ hear, the desire for sensation not to become an overwhelming tangle, therefore unintelligible and assaulting to the senses and the mind, the sound and fury which signifies nothing. Anyway, it's been a most intriguing and illuminating contemplation, and thanks to everyone who contributed!
Thanks Clive. I really appreciated yours and Olive's participation. Does Olive have a Hubski account? I think she once mentioned that she did.although I guess you could say the same about most things we crave.
-You could and you make a good observation that most all things in complete measure would be a "bad idea". But I don't think we realize this about silence. We know too much heat or cold will kill us, but not many people realize that complete silence can be so disconcerting.
It's true, and really disconcerting in fact. I think it underscores a deeper reality that we don't like to admit, which is that we never really know exactly what we want. We have inclinations in certain directions, but appropriate scope and extent are always elusive, and the very crave itself may be a matter of mere conditioning, rather than accurate information delivered by the body to the conscious mind for acting upon. I think I want a cheeseburger. But do I really want a cheeseburger?
Could we ever know? :) I was just talking to b_b yesterday about how philosophy lags decades behind what physics has revealed, by asking questions that we know are flawed from the outset. Heck many physicists lag decades behind physics, in fact. Beyond out own gut instinct, there doesn't seem to be any evidence that we exist as a unit in any sense of the word. Not only are we smeared about space, but we are smeared about time. Like everything else, we are a cloud of possibilities, defined only by that which we interact with. To the extent that you want a cheeseburger, only those that can verify that you've eaten one, have a compelling answer, I think. :) Although I agree that it might be disconcerting, it is also highly supportive of the notion that you can change yourself by changing your environment.I think I want a cheeseburger. But do I really want a cheeseburger?
In fact, what is most disconcerting is not that we can never know the result of pursuing our objectives, because once you've embraced this fact, it's really quite liberating, and offers tools for avoiding self-inflicted confundity. The fact that we still pursue our objectives, for the most part, as if we knew what we wanted, or what achieving them would look/feel like, is the truly disconcerting part. It undermines our (admittedly naive) senses of agency and autonomy, and poses questions about what greater patterns and tendencies are really driving the unfolding of actions and events. This too is eventually just fascinating once one acclimates to it, though it may make decisions at the lunch table a bit more ponderous. Regarding philosophy lagging, I think that's probably an unfair assessment except for in all those cases in which it's fair. (How's your stomach for tautology these days?;) What I mean is mainly that philosophy is as broad a field as all those individual minds pursuing it can afford, and even if the discipline did have it's own Pope (a hilarious idea, now that I'm typing it), there would still be as wide a range of practice and leaning as there is the Catholic church, which is pretty epic. In other words, in massive (dis)organizations, nearly every type of thing can be found, and when humans comprise those entities, silliness, ilogic, or ignorance will surely abound. I won't really launch into a full-on reconciliation of physics and philosophy just yet, but I would like to point out that some of the important conflicts between the two disciplines result merely from a difference in which question we begin with, and what kind of evidences/answers can be deemed compelling/meaningful. To anyone with a hard-line stance on epistemology, for example, many of the methods of science, let alone findings, are laughably weak when considered as tools for securing hard knowledge. The follies of philosophy are certainly many. If you'd like a long giggle, just revisit Leibniz's work on "monads," or Malebranche's theory of mind-body interaction. However, if I'm not mistaken, it was Nietzsche who first challenged the notion of a self-contained and individual, autonomous "I" -- in the western world, at least. (I could probably dig it up in some dark-age mystic, like Meister Eckhart, perhaps if I looked hard enough). In short, I think there's a lot that philo could do for physics, and vice versa, if they could only just play nicely together -- but I'm not sure that's been possible on a large scale since ... Hegel? "To the extent that you want a cheeseburger, only those that can verify that you've eaten one, have a compelling answer, I think. :)" And we've arrived home in the safe harbor of existentialism! I'm officially hungry. Thanks for the stimulating thoughts!
Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't put the Physics Department a floor above the Philosophy Department. However, they both have to ascend the stairs to visit the Mathematics Department. :) That said, I do find it terribly frustrating that we have had piles of evidence sitting around for about a century now from Special Relativity and Quantum mechanics that get swept under the rug at the outset of some philosophical inquiries. It's as if we discovered bluebirds, and then several decades later, question whether or not it were possible that a small bird could be blue. We have this fantastic hard-won evidence that shows us that no matter can occupy one space or one time. In fact, if it did, it would be a completely new type of matter that would turn our current understanding of the world upside down. And yet, we continue endlessly explore the conundrums of a self that resides some where at some time, when we know full well that it is an impossible initial condition. IMHO if we are to move onward, we have to be willing to get uncomfortable, and start trying to build new language to talk about new concepts in new terms. We must abandon the accepted notion of self. It's no longer enough to poke and prod at it and see how silly it is. We know it is silly. Now we need to try to build a less silly definition that better withstands our current poking and prodding. Thankfully, IMHO artificial intelligence is going to force our hand in this respect. :)