Is There A Way Out Of The Noise Or Are We Doomed To Disengage?

The noise is how they keep us shouting

Image by Grae Dickason

You finish work and go to the pub with some workmates. It’s Friday night and you are the first punters. It is quiet and the conversation flows easily. As the pub fills with people, the noise levels increase. Without realising it, you have to shout to order your third drink and, by the time you get home, your voice is all but gone.

I tend to speak at a low volume. After many years of singing and public speaking, I’m still surprised by how subtly I can damage my voice by simply hanging out with friends in a busy bar for a couple of hours. You don’t notice it because the volume is lifted ever so incrementally, but your voice strains with every passing minute. You can hardly hear the other end of the table and your throat is required to cut through the noise even to speak to the person sitting next to you.

A similar thing happens in society. The noise is the barrage of breaking news and aggressive marketing. There is so much to deal with that there is no good way to sort the signal from the noise. It is all happening at the same time, and it is loud. Realising it or not, the news is broadcast under ever more bombastic headlines and products are sold with gradually more violent methods. We must cut through the noise at any cost…