Silence: In the Age of Noise

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After a few minutes of walking, Kagge answered that it was worthwhile following trails in the forest, or somewhere similar where the trail wasn't always clear but full of roots and obstacles that required one's full attention to avoid stumbling. You'll be so occupied watching where you step, Kagge’s reasoning went, that you won't have time to think about other things. What Kagge actually means by silence in this book is that feeling of stillness, of being alone with your thoughts, rather than coping with the constant input of ideas and work by others into your skull. It’s so easy to avoid just being alone with our own thoughts when we carry little digital distraction devices with us everywhere. Finding a path into a period of time with just ourselves and the natural environment is something we now have to actively seek, as life no longer provides it to us regularly. Silence through subtraction I’m old enough to remember being deeply bored during my childhood: in a 70s home, once children’s TV had finished and you’d read all your books, it really was possible to be very, very bored. On a sailing trip in the spring of 1986, pushing towards Cape Horn off the coast of Chile in the South Pacific Ocean, I was reminded of this. Early one morning, while alone on night watch between midnight and 4am, the world was dead silent. But then, I heard a sound that seemed like a long, deep breath just west of the boat. I had no idea what it could be. I turned 90 degrees in the direction of the sound and spotted a whale just off the starboard side. A mere calling distance away.

It is easy to assume that the essence of technology is technology itself, but that is wrong. The essence is you and me. It’s about how we are altered by the technology we employ, what we hope to learn, our relationship with nature, those we love, the time we spend, the energy that is consumed and how much freedome we relinquish to technology. Silence : In the Age of Noise หรือฉบับแปลภาษาไทยในชื่อ ‘เงียบ’ ของสำนักพิมพ์ OMG books ฉันยกมือสมัครใจเป็นลูกค้าทันที

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Not long after, I was invited to give a lecture at St Andrews University in Scotland. I was to choose the subject myself. I tended to talk about extreme journeys to the ends of the Earth, but this time my thoughts turned homewards, to that Sunday supper with my family. So I settled on the topic of silence. Humans are social creatures. Being accessible can be a good thing. We are unable to function alone. Yet it’s important to be able to turn off your phone, sit down, not say anything, shut your eyes, breathe deeply a couple of times and attempt to think about something other than what you are normally thinking about. I found this book deeply unsatisfying. Whatever it's about, it's not really about silence. Erling Kagge is a well known explorer and traveller. My expectations, based on the book's summary, was that he would be writing about his experiences of silence journeying to the North or South Poles, for example, and that he might reach some profound conclusions. But no!

Silent night, holy night; All is calm, all is bright": there is something about the lulling rhythm and the soothing final cadence of Silent Night that captures the spirit and quietude of Christmas – if not always the reality, with frantic preparations and merriment replacing the opportunity for quiet, reflection and true connection. Behind a cacophony of traffic noise, iPhone alerts and our ever-spinning thoughts, an elusive notion - silence - lies in wait. But what really is silence? Where can it be found? And why is it more important now than ever? What is silence? Why is it more important than ever?’ … Erling Kagge. Photograph: Simon Skreddernes Silence, Kagge emphasizes, is not simply the absence of noise, but a "full emptiness, a stillness of the mind."

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Do note that I am referring here, as Kagge and likely Pascal are, to "western" humanity, as I am aware that many eastern cultures and traditions allow for a much larger place for silence than is typically seen in the western world.) Tam da ihtiyacımız olan bir şey var aslında: Sessizlik. Bu sessizlik sesten arınma değil, hiç sesin olmaması da değil. Sesle birlikte sessiz kalabilmek demek. Erling Kagge เขียนวิเคราะห์ถึงความเงียบในบริบทต่างๆ ผ่านสายตาของมุมมองส่วนตัวในฐานะคนเป็นพ่อที่ลูกๆ พลัดหลงอยู่ในโลกโซเชียลตลอดเวลา ผ่านข้อมูลและการทดลองทางวิทยาศาสตร์ ผ่านโลกศิลปะ ดนตรี ศิลปิน และผ่านประสบการณ์การเดินทางครั้งสำคัญของเขา

I’m about to subtract this book from my life: it was a random borrow from the local library. But there’s enough interesting and intriguing ideas about that quest for calm and stillness in it, that I’m almost certain to return to it at some point. The philosopher and "boredom theorist" Blaise Pascal wrote of our discomfort with silence that "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." Kagge notes that Pascal wrote this in the 1600s. Which is to say, sometime before the advent of television, social media, and all those other instruments of distraction that exist today. Humanity, in other words, has always had a hard time being quiet. Searing and soaring….For Kagge, silence is more than the absence of sound: it is the incubator for thought, the conscious eradication of external distraction, and the ability to live in one’s own mind as fully as one lives in the physical world. Infused with powerfully evocative art and photographs that enhance his salient concepts, Kagge’s treatise on this endangered commodity provides an intriguing meditation for mindful readers.” —BooklistHow does one achieve silence in the everyday? While Kagge practices meditation, yoga, and going off into nature whenever possible, he also speaks about achieving "silence" while walking Oslo's busy streets or crawling through Manhattan's sewer system. I suppose this is some zen state that an experienced meditator can simply drop into. Or, to say it in a way that makes it sound slightly more achievable, simply comes from being particularly practiced in "tuning out the noise". My children have no real experience of that. Between a great abundance of stuff, of toys and books and magazines, and the constant digital delights from their iPads and streaming TV, boredom doesn’t exist in quite the same way. Have you ever read a book that resonated with you more so than usual because you read it at the right time in your life? For me, this was that book. At the time of reading it, I've been laid up for 6 weeks after ankle surgery which has given me more than enough time to think about what sort of direction I want for 2018. As someone that's always enjoyed time alone but makes a living from the internet, finding silence within noise is something that's important to me...and I've never read a better approach on the matter than this book.

When you’ve invested a lot of time in being accessible and keeping up with what’s happening, it’s easy to conclude that it all has a certain value, even if what you have done might not be important. This is called rationalization. The New York Review of Books labeled the battle between producers of apps “the new opium wars,” and the paper claims that “marketers have adopted addiction as an explicit commercial strategy.” The only difference is that the pushers aren’t peddling a product that can be smoked in a pipe, but rather is ingested via sugar-coated apps. What is silence? Where is it? Why is it more important now than ever?” were three questions they wanted answered. Much like his Walking: One Step at a Time, there is a great deal of insight to be found here. One of the things that Kagge focuses on, to my endless fascination, is our discomfort with silence. A discomfort of silence that we're all familiar when we're at the dinner table with friends or wrapped up in other social obligations but a discomfort that is quite contrary to the popular employment of phrases like "silence is golden" and associating quiet with peace. They are still curious, but their faces are not as childish, more adult, and their heads are now filled with more ambitions than questions. None of them had any interest in discussing the subject of silence, so, to invoke it, I told them about two friends of mine who had decided to climb Mount Everest. As an explorer Erling Kagge is world class; as a writer he is equally gifted. This breathtaking, inspiring little book teaches us how to find precious moments of silence - whether we are crossing the Antarctic, climbing Everest, or on the train at rush hour' - Sir Ranulph FiennesPastaruoju metu tylos motyvas mane vis dažniau pats susiranda knygose ir gyvenime, o tylos žygis, kuriame neseniai dalyvavau, sukėlė dar didesnį poreikį įsileisti kuo daugiau prasmingos tylos į savo gyvenimą. Todėl visai nekeista, kad netyčia užtikus tokią knygą bibliotekoje ją iškart pasigriebiau ir perskaičiau papildomai nesidomėjus (o kaip retai goodreads laikais taip būna). In the 2007 film "Noise", Tim Robbins plays David Owen, a Manhattan man so fed up with the noise of the city that he takes it upon himself to "rectify" the situation. He soon gains a popular following and a moniker, "The Rectifier", to go with it. At the risk of giving too much away, Owen eventually comes to the realization that vandalizing every car in the city is a slow way to go about achieving any lasting peace and quiet and instead decides to make some, ahem, noise, by campaigning for an anti-noise ballot initiative. Lccn 2017012758 Ocr tesseract 5.1.0-1-ge935 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 1.0000 Ocr_module_version 0.0.16 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-NS-0001186 Openlibrary_edition