Noise and disharmony is being normalized in our lives to the point that we just accept it. We are becoming so disempowered and disorientated by the glut of information and the relentless speed of globalisation that the bombardment of unwanted noise remains largely unquestioned. Noise is replacing tranquillity, silence and any notion of peace. It is a crashing symbol of our total failure to wake up to those that flood the world with cacophonic mediocrity in so many forms limiting any chance for lasting peace inside ourselves. It is actively affecting our bodies and minds to the point that there is an incessant undercurrent of constant, distraction that prevents concentration and the opportunity to cultivate an interval for the mind to process the frequent surge of information and demands on our time.
According to Ted Rueter of Noise free America (www.noisefree.org) "The U.S. Census Bureau notes that noise is Americans' No. 1 complaint about their neighborhoods. Noise levels have risen six fold in major U.S. cities in the past 15 years, and automobiles are the largest source of noise" And this new upsurge in noise is being brought into the countryside. Noise is symbolizing the acoustic version of material pollution of our land and seas. Now we have it carried in the medium of air and propagated to such an extent that there is literally no escape.
If contemporary society does indeed offer us more leisure time, this only seems to become an opportunity to fill it with more noise. A natural consequence of this is a reduction in our ability to THINK. Concentration, our natural curiosity and the vital impulse to question become the casualties among a multitude of social conditions and conditioning. There is simply no time for such things, nor the perceived need when coupled with a sound-byte, push-button culture of immediate sensation. We are fast losing the ability to communicate while ironically under a dearth of advanced technological communication systems. Educational curriculums are being sucked into this acceleration while simultaneously being pulled back to the rigidity of the past. It is no wonder that children are seeking meaning in the violence of noise/sound. It has power, it has effects and serves as a tranquilizer against the void of meaning that many ironically “sense.” Any notion of experiencing the present in any meaningful way, should we have the opportunity to relax or take a break, means surrounding ourselves with sound that keeps us externalized rather than allowing us to venture within for a moment.
What is most disturbing is that new generations now seek security in this fact. Silence is the enemy, a void waiting to be filled. It is uncomfortable, dangerous; it throws us back on ourselves where we can be forced to confront the internal dissonance, the cacophony of mind pollution that is riding on the sound waves of a consumerist culture. And we are full to the brim with such frequencies. This and the fact that around every corner there is the likelihood of hearing the maniacally synthetic strains of Mozart or Beethoven lovingly compressed into the push-button tonal system of the ubiquitous mobile. What a symbol of divine inspiration made meaningless. It is another example of how increased “communication” has speeded up our need to fill the void of silence and further replace knowledge with endless information.
The cognitive processes are sometimes subtly by-passed due to the insistence of noise as a distractive normality, a horrible, insipid vacuity in the form of Muzak in our supermarkets and elevators, and if that doesn’t stimulate customer shopping quotas then we can have the equally bland and synthetic shine of contemporary pop music pumped into our inner ears. Taking America as a model of intensity for just about every Western ailment of excess, we find also that young Americans’ hearing is decreasing year after year due to noise exposure, a major cause being amplified music. One only has to listen to a teenager on the train with the CD player turned up to full volume to understand that the dominance of the drum machine and a token “melody” may be doing more than causing ear drum perforations. It seems the sensory apparatus, (and by extension the ability to think) in the present and future generations is under threat from this sound distortion. Generations of teenagers become entrained and attuned to the vacuum-packed young men and women that reduce the potential of music down to a sexual reflex, churning out the same repetitive harmonies to consume along with the ever-present diet of burger and fries. Music becomes sound and eventually just noise as a source of habit and familiarity. The ubiquitous devil of mediocrity soon becomes all that is desired, all that is required due to diminishing expectations and a “dumbing down” of anything that has quality and which cannot be subsumed into the quantitative maw of the market place. Natural selection and a Darwinist stranglehold still exists within economics and political policies the world over. However much we may recognize the holistic emergence of innovation and creativity it still remains a forgotten potential of most social systems.
Battles with selfish neighbours that listen to radios and T.V.s at full volume, or those that choose to share with us their relationship difficulties by screaming at each other through the walls; night club owners and late night partying; flight paths and airport expansion plans, traffic congestion, racetracks and power plants, construction companies and military war game training are all contributing to this pollution of silence. To escape from that pollution, as with air-born particulates, is nigh on impossible unless we walk around with ear-plugs and face-masks which is not exactly conducive to day to day communication!
Perhaps people are generally more sensitive in their hearing due to increased medical care? Is there too a parallel possibility that more people are thinking than ever before, are healthier and enjoying a better standard of living? Firstly, because more people, at least in the West may have more access to information via technology does not mean that more people are truly thinking and thinking creatively. It does not mean that more people are understanding the whys are wherefores of the human condition and transforming dead information into knowledge and wisdom that is in turn, passed on to younger generations. If we look around the world we can see that this is not happening. A heightened sensitivity to sound is not the issue, rather it is the desensitization of quality and authenticity, loss of meaning and invasive environmental noise that ensures a vicious circle of auditory “blindness.” The loss of hearing from community noise and consumer demands symbolizes our Faustian bargain.
And refusing to see situations objectively causes intense emotional static which is manifested as greater and greater intrusions into our lives by the physical noises listed above. And as people become more and more desensitized across ALL their senses, the willingness to make the effort to respect one’s neighbour’s right to silence is decreasing. Just as many cannot SEE the negative developments in the world, many cannot or choose not to LISTEN to the cries for help from their own family, friends, loved ones and the world at large, due to the meeting of external and internal noise that is drowning out any interval for understanding and tolerance to take seed. How can we hope to recognize and come to know ourselves if the Voice of Silence cannot be heard? And the volume of this voice is being turned down to the point that most of our responses remain mute.
Just as the erosion of values or a sense of the sacred has continued at a frightening pace, thanks in recent times to the agenda of the Bush Administration in the U.S., so too have all the associations and qualities connected with such a potential. The crudities of a quantitative culture are rapidly replacing activities and initiatives designed to integrate and cooperate. The “Shock of the New” is just that: “shock” without understanding or creativity and adaptation, only apathy and acceptance. It is in the cities that this auditory attack is being felt most keenly, gradually hardening our sensibilities while wreaking havoc on our nervous systems. Evidence suggests that: “Apart from hearing loss, such noise can cause lack of sleep, irritability, heartburn, indigestion, ulcers, high blood pressure, and possibly heart disease.”
Organic sounds have been replaced with the mechanical, and synthetic where the soundscape of our modern urban life has essentially become the antithesis of all that we value as harmonious. It is increasingly difficult to find a resonance that has purity, as this resonance is firmly embedded in endless copies of a cultural reaction that has long since been “atonal.” If the very foundations on which society is based is sourced from an ascending scale that has become progressively “out of tune” all our individual notes will naturally contribute to that tonal flatland, colliding together in a maelstrom of physical, mental and emotional expressions.
Just as we value and cherish the effect of harmonious sounds, it seems that constant noise can take us further and further away from the truth and self-knowledge as we become tied to the instant world of noise and its causes, the almost subconscious stress that it induces and the knots that are created an sustained by other forms of disequilibrium. The exhaustion renders us docile with a need to seek solace and relief no matter what. Once again, we begin to exist and survive like cogs in a vast machine where the habitual level of noise becomes our nature as a contributory factor to the manipulation of a lowest common denominator. The stress can manifest in a variety of ways according to our personality and life experiences. For some, noise – any noise - is an opiate, a stimulus and the territorial cry of the predator. For others it is, at best, irritating, at worse, disabling. It represents yet another battle for the minds of humanity, another tightening of the screw. The more we recognize the rising levels encroaching into our thoughts the more aware we are of the wholly artificial nature of our existence. In the end, we must switch off another part of ourselves in order to function. This can be seen as an assault through sound – an “acoustic violence.”
Federico Miyara Director-Coordinator of the Acoustics and Electro-acoustics Laboratory, National University of Rosario has some interesting ideas on the nature of this violence:
Violent behavior has a double meaning in zoology. First, it is used as a means to get sustenance and, second, to express power. In one case, it means action; in the other, just a sign to convey the threat of potential action. Predators must resort to violence in order to get food, and dominance is an essential part of success that is ensured by displaying force. Roars, bellows and howls are examples of acoustic violence in Nature used to exhibit strength in order to intimidate, subdue and then seize the prey.
Interestingly, Nature offers few examples of actual injury due solely to sound. The biological role of acoustic waves is seemingly restricted to conveying different kinds of information. In the case of human beings, such information is astoundingly complex, and so is the acoustic code used to communicate it. The ability to discriminate the subtle nuances present in the vocal signal and extract meaningful and accurate information requires a fine-tuned sense of hearing.
This, in turn, makes the ear an extremely delicate organ. Whereas very few natural sounds are loud enough to be really dangerous, human-made sounds (either intended or residual ones) can easily reach noxious levels, which is further aggravated by customarily long exposure intervals.
[…]
Now let us focus on the primitive use of acoustic violence to express power. The habit to raise the voice or even to shout to impose one's point of view, opinion or will is, perhaps, the first and most frequent example. It is, indeed, the human expression of animals' stentorian roars. Hunting horns and the fanfare-like cornet or trumpet tunes spurring soldiers on to battle are two examples in which an artificial instrument is introduced in order to increase loudness. Unamplified voice has a limited reach, especially outdoors, hence the need to resort to louder sound devices. Besides, the ability of proper tunes to arouse strong feelings has proven particularly suitable to this aim. Furthermore, the exposure to loud noises such as drum-like ones, even for short periods of time, cause an increase in the secretion of certain hormones (such as adrenaline and noradrenaline) that raise heart rate and blood pressure and prepare humans psychologically to fight. Loud noise has been used by the ancient Chinese to torture condemned criminals to death, and in certain cases it is used by the police to force assaulters to surrender. (By the way, it is not surprising that people suffering from noise pollution often refers to it as "a torture.") Although almost blurred, we can still recognize the metaphor: the power holder subdues the weak ones by means of noise.
[…]
In this case, acoustic violence has acquired a new significance. It helps to perpetuate the endless din of a modern and acoustically sick society, which in turn masks, almost literally, the actual roots of the deep injustice implicit in the terribly asymmetric distribution of wealth. 5
[Bold mine]
One could say, quite logically that the habitual level of noise is yet another symptom among many in our disastrous imbalance; a socio-cultural inevitability of an overloaded earth. Yet just as prolonged exposure to noise causes mental, emotional and physical breakdown, we know that prolonged exposure to harmonious sounds have profoundly beneficial effects both at the conscious and subconscious level. Sound, light and energy are the trinity of our existence. And power lies within each. We could say that noise controls our ability to function and find our inner and outer voice. If noise begins to dominate as a primary stimulation then our ability to tune in to our own unique resonance is disrupted; our own original tone cannot be heard. We lose our collective voice then we lose the power to change ourselves. And if that is lost, then no harmonies can be created through networking as we have lost the art of silence and all that goes with it. We are too busy fulfilling the void. This world provides more than enough opportunity to do just that. We do not hear, we do not see, and we do not speak. We are the monkeys tied to whichever organ grinder happens to be placed in power. And these grinders are located in every corner of our lives, they use our power, our voice to decimate the world. Activation of that voice is not enough.
We must understand why our voice has been mute and why the noise and its invasive compatriots of deception and lies have hijacked the silent place in our hearts. Then we must channel that anger into tuning ourselves to truth, honing our senses to SEE, to HEAR and to SPEAK about all that we learn for those that will and are able to listen. We can be wise monkeys or - just monkeys. Each of these senses can be made to work for us, they can be our tools if we cut our mechanical ties to that all powerful mechanical Organ which is connected so intimately to the belief that we can DO nothing. Symbolic of our opportunity to awaken, disrupted sleep patterns are steadily increasing year by year from a variety of pressures, both on the inner ear and on our emotions. It’s time for us to wake up and read the signs that may lead us collectively to the source of sound control.
Is it possible that there is a great secret in sound? That like light and energy, sound or vibration represent the third spark of renewal in a trinity of transformation to a 4th dimension of perception? As such, perhaps it is our birth right to value, express and utilize sound to its highest potential in every sense possible. If we are experiencing noise and the manipulation of sound to destroy and to control, to nullify our senses, then depending on which sense that clamours for your attention in order to know its higher counterpart, it could also guide us to a part of the puzzle that may just alter this reality in ways we cannot comprehend. As one author states:
To be "spiritual" around 1900 was, in the most nondenominational of senses, to be receptive, contemplative, inwardly quiet. It was, in the most non-scientific of senses, to be attentive to "vibrations" emanating from other hearts, other beings, other times. These "vibrations" harked back to 18th-century mesmerism and early-19th-century animal magnetism, but they partook also of a newer (Helmholtzian) acoustics in which sound was explained mechanically and electrically as vibration, and of a somewhat mystical fin de siecle physics in which the Fourth Dimension (and other dimensions beyond) could be intuited from vibrations reaching our humdrum three. To be "spiritual," then, was to be, in the broadest of senses, acoustically adept. 6
What if this ability to be “acoustically adept” was one thread on a route to freedom of the mind that was purposefully unravelled without our awareness? Could the correct use of sound be more than just a healing balm? Could it be more than just stimulation or the irritation of noise distortion? Do the “Walls of Jericho” and “The Word” of God vibrate with meaning? It would seem so, and those in power are intent on recreating this Word of God in their own image.
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