20

Screwtape is very right, and he spoke in 1941. Today the noise is deafening—truly. The whole earth is noisy. There is ambient noise everywhere. If you are outside, you are the victim of traffic noise and jets overhead. Nearby radio and entertainment noise. Lawnmowers, leaf blowers (curse them), construction noise. There is noise everywhere. Inside more of the same. Background music (or background noise (sometimes same difference) everywhere, ventilating systems, printers and copiers, other people. Our use of machinery is increasing and as it does, noise increases. Even if noise doesn’t damage your hearing, it forces its way into your mind to distract and annoy you. In fact, noise is so overwhelming that some have searched for “one square inch of silence” and have found it tucked away in the rain forest in the midst of Olympic National Park. (Look it up.) Everywhere else on the planet, though, there is noise! And modern culture is bent on turning up the volume.

There is, of course, much natural sound: whispering or howling wind, bird song, rustling leaves, thunder, waterfalls, tinkling creeks, waves, animal cries, the human voice cooing, shouting, screaming, and so on. Nature is not silent, and at times natural sounds can be irritating and distracting, of course. But there are differences in the way we are affected by mechanical or natural sound.

Natural sounds are usually less damaging although a nearby volcano will be noticed! But few suffer hearing loss from spending too much time hiking in the woods!  Natural sounds are not monotonous. Natural sounds generally are not irritating, whereas when we hear a siren when we are reading, a neighbor’s loudspeaker, or a jetliner cruising over our picnic, we can be annoyed.

However we judge things though, almost everyone would prefer a quieter world, at least most of the time.  Yet we really don’t have or want that option, for noise is the price we pay for our clothes, our food, our homes, our transportation, our recreation, our everything. A quieter world would be a disaster. Very many square inches of silence, say a few square miles here or there, would be a sign of a catastrophe. 

(Screwtape’s author, in another place, calls the earth the ”Silent Planet,” but that’s another story although it does involve “our father below”, Screwtape’s guiding light.)