C'mon, feel the noise...

Timothy Leary said, “Tune in, turn on, drop out,” and I believe we’ve finally managed it on a global level. With cell phones.

Not long ago, I watched two young women come into a restaurant together. They picked a booth, sat on opposite sides of the table, and started looking over the menu. Both were on cell phones the entire time. It would only have been MORE surreal if they had been talking to each other. And I catch at least 2 or 3 students a week texting under their desks during class, in spite of the grade penalties and public humiliation they know I’ll dish out.

This isn’t just the age of instant communication; it’s the age of incessant communication. Cell phones, texting, emailing, IM’ing, Facebooking, iPodding (all with the TV as background noise)…they keep us connected, tethered, CHAINED, to the outer world. Ironically, though, the ubiquitous noise keeps most people completely—and thankfully, according to most of my students—disconnected from the inner silence, from themselves.

Forget the solitude or discipline required for contemplation, meditation, or hermitage. Today, most of us have tremors if it there’s a momentary decrescendo in the din. I know scads of people who would give their right (insert your favorite body part here) to have permanently-implanted earbuds and a subcutaneous iPod. I wonder what about silence drives us to bombard our brains in a constant electronic hum?

Maybe in moments of silence, we meet ourselves. That can be downright scary. Maybe Self is a total stranger, and we all know what parents say will happen to us if we talk to strangers. Maybe Self is no day at the beach, and the noise keeps us from having to deal with a scoundrel. Maybe, it’s like William Benet said, “and now there is merely silence, silence, silence, saying all we did not know,” and THAT’S what keeps us plugged in—we don’t want to KNOW how much we don’t KNOW. Maybe when the noise stops, however briefly, big questions pound in our heads like a trunkload of subwoofers—why am I here, ba-BOOM, where did I come from, ba-BOOM, where do I go from here, ba-BOOM, why do we do what we do to each other, ba-BOOM, is there a god/goddess, ba-BOOM, is anybody really OUT there, ba-BOOM.

I know I sound curmudgeon-ish. I could have started this post, “Why, back in my day, by gum,….” But between checking my email a gazillion times a day, talking on my cell (while driving/eating/cooking/walking—no texting yet, but my thumbs itch constantly), and listening to music (CD’s, iPod, radio), I’m running just as fast from the inner world as the pre-adults I horrify in class. Maybe I should try a day unfettered by electronics. Or at least an evening. Or maybe I’ll start with a couple minutes…