Beyond Peace and Quiet – An Addiction to Silence (2008) | Hacker News Reader

Beyond Peace and Quiet – An Addiction to Silence (2008)

theguardian.com

40 pointssynthmeat12 comments

I loved the article. On interesting point: "For the first few days I wallowed in freedom: no phone calls, no emails, no neighbours."

Maybe she is talking about email notifications, because most email are text, so silence. But if you stop to think, when you read email, your brain can process this as an audible memory, so noise. Much like you read some author famous quote, and you can "hear" in your mind his voice. :)

I've tried earplugs, IEMs and noise cancelling headphones(Bose) and I wonder if theres something better out there.

I wish there's some sort of an procedure/implant that I could go through so that I could have a mute button for my ears. When it is switched on, it will 'deactivate' my eardrums so that I could become deaf temporarily.

White noise generators (aka static), there's e.g. an open source android app ("chroma doze" - named for adjustable freq distr by colour bars), or a fan works too.

I need quiet to concentrate, but curiously find the background conversation of a busy cafe just as good as absolute silence - and far better than people whispering, or eating apples, crisps or celery in an otherwise quiet area... Celery

I've wondered if I'm unusual in finding white noise mentally exhausting.

You are not unusual. White noise bothers me a lot too.

You are not alone. For me, it activates my tinnitus if the source is close enough to my ears. Even before it started doing that, it was just plain annoying.

try www.noisli.com, it is free and offers different noises. The loops of the individual sound files are very long so that you won't notice when they repeat.

I'm fairly sensitive person and I've lived in apartment buildings the last 8 years of my life or so, of which 4 and then 2,5 years in student apartment buildings of which that latter was practically totally quiet.

Only in the past 3 months I've had to endure two shitty apartments/neighbours in a row. Sometimes the bangs are so loud the building or walls vibrate. Almost impossible to concentrate for long periods because it has come to almost expecting the banging to start any minute and lasting for however long. Crazy stuff. Looking for an apartment again, third in the span of three months.

The only way to sleep is with earplugs because of intermittent banging and knocking noise. I've actually had to resort to using hearing protection and wearing earplugs during day also to be able to escape into solitude and comfort. Didn't realize how much I loved silence until now, it is a luxury indeed and I'll be among the first to queue for that ear nano augmentation.

Damn, having gone through something similar I feel so terrible for you. When I moved to rural Japan it was such a relief to not have to listen to neighbors, highways or cars coming and going at night. I now appreciate silence so much more. I hope you find your peace soon.

Very interesting!

"This is an edited extract from A Book Of Silence, by Sara Maitland, published by Granta on November 13 at £17.99. To order a copy for £16.99, including UK mainland p&p, go to theguardian.com/bookshop or call 0870 836 0875."

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Book-Silence-Sara-Maitland/dp/18470...

https://www.amazon.com/Book-Silence-Sara-Maitland/dp/1582436...

I must admit that I am addicted to silence myself, sometimes. I deliberetly put earplugs into my ears in order to focus more whenever I got hard work to do or just am tired and overwhelmed.

BTW, if it is indeed true that one prefers a modality of senses in order to experience the world, then that sense becoming more fatigued than the others would make perfect sense...

also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_tank

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