In 1920 a Nebraska inventor designed the first automobile alarm. In 2004 New Yorkers proposed a bill to ban car alarms as a public nuisance. [i] The two events are a telling commentary on our relationship with noise. At first we invite a little extra noise into our lives because it seems to serve a purposeful function. But then, like a cub grown into a lion, it takes over and resists all attempts to drive it out.
Noise, in fact, now comes standard with contemporary life. Gordon Hempton and John Grossmann introduce their book One Square Inch of Silence, with these comments: “’The day will come when man will have to fight noise as inexorably as cholera and the plague.’ So said the Nobel Prize-winning bacteriologist Robert Koch in 1905. A century later, that day has drawn much nearer. Today silence has become an endangered species.”[ii]
Silence is truly an endangered species. One evening while I was leading a group discussion about silence and challenging those attending to spend 10 minutes in silence the following day, one woman joked, “So, you can guarantee I’ll actually get ten minutes of silence in my house?” She has three boys and holds two jobs. Silence is an endangered species.
Perhaps it is for you as well. Yet silence must be invited, coaxed, and lured back into our lives. George Prochnik, author of In Pursuit of Silence, remarks, “I think we’re seeing noise tied to a host of problems of the age—problems of attention, aggression, insomnia, and general stress. Noise is now the default position as a society. But I believe we have to make an effort to build a passionate case for silence.”[iii] Noise is now the default position for society. But silence must be the default position for saints.
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[i] Holly Pevzner, “Silence,” Real Simple, July 2011
[ii] Gordon Hempton and John Grossmann One Square Inch of Silence (Free Press, 2009), 1.
[iii] George Prochnik, In Pursuit of Silence (Doubleday, 2010).
