How Golden Is Silence, Actually?
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
Without the pressure to speak amongst others, it became clear that I often said things out of anxiety - fear of looking weird or of making the other person uncomfortable.
Nowadays I rarely speak when I feel that pressure and paradoxically it has led to far deeper relationships and more interesting conversations.
It seems that the topics that come up when theres a pressure to fill the silence are the most mundane. Deeper connection seems to happen in the silences, or rather mutual comfort with silence.
Another way I could describe it is it feels almost as if there’s a fear of really being seen in silence that the surface level conversation manages to keep at bay.
I can't go probably 100 words without saying something stupid or flat out contradictory. I'll think back to the conversation, realize I don't actually think or believe what I said, and wonder just what possessed me to say that and how many people I've alienated with words that I don't even believe or hold to be true!
Silence is one way to avoid making those mistakes, but that's me avoiding the problem, not actually solving it (and it would be nice to speak all the time in truth, with coherence, and consistent with what I believe), despite not having much to say in the first place, unless:
- to clear misunderstanding / requests ("Excuse me, but I think this is my seat.")
- to prevent harm / danger ("Look out!")
- civics / politeness ("Excuse me", "Good morning", "I'm fine, thank you.")
I too think back on past blunders or embarrassing moments, even from decades ago. What cured me of over-reflecting on this is to try to identify similar blunders from others. Surely over the years I can think of insensitive blunders of others and I can rarely do so.
So if I can't think anything anyone has ever blundered, apart from maybe a handful of instances, others likely can't recall my blunders. I've even brought up cringe moments to friend and they have no recollection.
In short, no one cares about what you say. Maybe at the moment they might cringe or immediately after, but your words have pretty much no impact on anyone.
Except my wife. She remembers everything offensive I have said.
I can absolutely relate to this, it was a very common occurrence for me when I felt pressured to speak.
> Silence is one way to avoid making those mistakes, but that's me avoiding the problem, not actually solving it
It doesn’t have to be avoidance, it’s not a binary of either speaking a lot or not at all.
Silence (especially when the other person is comfortable with it too) gives the mind space to allow something that feels more honest and truthful to arise.
The problem is that most people feel a kind of anxiety when nothing is being said, and if you’re sensitive you might subconsciously pick up on this (in yourself or the other) and then feel the need to say something to end the awkwardness.
My meditation teacher had an interesting journalling technique: don‘t write a single line until you know that what you’re writing is absolutely true.
Sort of like how some folks say 'everyone should meditate.' Maybe that worked for them and the issues they had, and that is brilliant, but lots of people don't have that problem or that response doesn't fit them.
I live in a rural area and don't get much noise at all other than wind and animal noises when I'm home alone. It is comfortable precisely because it isn't artificial. Going to a silent retreat means being around people who are intentionally suppressing their desire to speak and being expected to fit in. It is an intentional change in behavior, which starts out uncomfortable.
I think some of these people were coming from noisy workplaces and homes. But I live on my own and my area is reasonably quiet (not completely peaceful, there is a lot of low level sound.) I don't have children running around. But it also reminded me of being punished as a child. Because if they couldn't catch someone at school we had to go around in silence as a punishment.
I would prefer the noises of nature. Which is precisely what I did. I headed to the local nature reserve near the retreat centre. Not noisy but somehow less prisonlike.
Even often so, what might be a problem for some, will be a desirable solution for others. Cue the utilitarians...
(I think a lot of folk should meditate, but I do know people who can't. I find it hard to meditate at home for reasons too long to go into.)
Silence only works like that when all the extroverts are busy yapping away. If silence becomes trendy amongst extroverts, they will create the same pressures you temporarily found relief from.
All "no" policies (no talking, no running, etc.) eventually turn into a form of bullying (see reddit if you didn't have a childhood like that). All the interesting conversations would be "shushed" as swiftly as anywhere else with a power tripping moderator.
That sounds like an impossibility, unless these extroverts are communicating non-verbally. How do you do the "extro-" part of extrovertedness without talking?
Maybe I can paint a clearer picture in your head if I asked you to imagine how silence would be used during an interrogation or by the main character of an action movie?
Silence used to be a very popular choice by previous generations of extroverts and it wasn't "relaxing". It created the very same tension that compels people to make small talk (and fools of themselves) nowadays.
No, not really. If anything that makes it more ambiguous, since I can imagine several different ways for silence to be used in such a scenario.
>or by the main character of an action movie
An action hero asserts dominance not by silence, but by physicality.
>Silence used to be a very popular choice by previous generations of extroverts and it wasn't "relaxing".
Was it? How do you know? Why aren't you giving those examples instead of these ones?
The opposite “no” policy is also not something to aspire to. Both are artificial policies.
The silent retreat simply helped me to see the “yes” policy even existed in the first place so I could start let it go.
Letting go of all policies is where the flow seems to happen.
It is easy to overdo it and torpedo relationships. Relationships are build from small interactions and when you refuse to do communication that is not strictly necessary, they just wont build. A lot of that "useless" communication has social purpose - it allows people to learn in initiate connections without putting large stakes on it. When you stop engaging, they will stop engaging and it all, well, stops.
The paradox I mentioned is that not rushing to fill the silence actually allows conversation to flow more naturally. It allows time and space for something more honest to arise in the mind to say.
There are also so many other means of communication that we humans naturally have - eye contact, facial expressions, body language - that communicate far more than words can and paying attention to these can lead to very connected conversation.
I think we overemphasise words. For example, you don’t need to small talk with your dog to have a deeply meaningful connection.
The reason I jumped to fill silence before was to avoid a kind of vulnerability, to appear competent and hide my anxiety. Little did I know that that was actually preventing deeper connection.
Noawaday I end up having far more involved conversations, it’s just that the conversation no longer starts from a point of trying to fill the silence.
There have groans, feuds and aggressiveness towards me for asking for peace. I'm not unreasonable. If you wish to have a party, do it adult without DJs blaring till 3am.
Most of the time, it's that they didn't realise. But it's had aggressive moments where it's turned to "It's my apartment ..."; and I get it. Folk don't like being told to show consideration for their neighbours and only when the noise effects them do they realise how disrupting noise is.
The courtyard too has seagulls and at 5am it turns in to a hellish frenzy. So luckily this has taught folk a lot about how peaceful quiet actually is and on cases have made others move out.
And too the courtyard faces the back of a couple of restaurants which are were the exhaust fans for their ovens stand. What I presume is due to lack of calibration as these whirl sometimes up until 2am even though their restaurants close at 11pm. You can really feel the level of atmospheric vibration drop when they shut off. It's a sigh of relief when they do.
I've plead, and the local council is useless so I have put up with it. 3am is really the only time I can actually relax my ears in to a slumber because having hyper audio sensory really sucks.
Peace is nice and I wish others would value it more. But with peace, folk don't know what to do. It scares them at first because it's rare to encounter in this day and age.
What I presume is that the cool down is on a uncalibrated timing like unfair traffic lights but you can't really demonstrate this as they just shrug and tell you it's not their problem.
If people want to live in a shoebox surrounded by thousands of other people in a shoebox, I wont stop them but I"m not going to normalize it either.
just make the damn building with noise in mind (RC, interior insulation, gapped flooring, etc).
it’s very possible.
(btw I am as country bumpkin as they come, my village has less than 200 people so i understand rural living.)
How to live like a king.
Putting material like rockwool in the dead spaces can make an incredible difference in acoustic performance.
Their heavy equipment doesn't have those backup beepers.
I watched a construction site and all I heard were the well-muffled excavators grunting a little to move their hydraulic arms.
All the apartments were separated by brick or concrete, the front doors had lobbies that acted as baffles, and all the living areas were carpeted and had good thick ceilings.
Other places, you can follow conversations through the wall if you're attentive and they're raising their voices.
I used to think living in a new building would be insurance enough. According to a colleague who lives in an apartment built in the 2010s, it's not.
For reference, this is in Paris, where there were laws passed in the 2000s supposed to enforce soundproofing in new developments.
Ironically all of my noise worries these days do not come from my multi tenant development but the neighboring single occupancy houses that have parties in their yards.
It's been awesome for those six but in the last four, city construction and all the rest has come and ruined the noise.
The felling of trees near-by really ruined the peace.
I wish I were rich enough to distance myself from the noise of the riffraff. But with some 8 billion humans on the planet, that seems unsustainable.
Building with soundproofing in mind would be a good place to start. Asshole-proofing is trickier. There's nothing unreasonable about expecting people to behave in apartments (or elsewhere). Many (most?) places have laws about noise and nuisance, getting them enforced has not been easy in my experience.
Edit: 8+ billion people, apparently. I'm getting old.
If you want to never talk to neighbors, then don't have any. Sadly, this is becoming more and more of a luxury, particularly in areas with economic opportunity.
However, I also know that many people find my lifestyle agoraphobic, and positively need high-density living. Many PhDs at my institute seem to feel the need to constantly surround themselves with noise and distractions that would do my head in (they literally have TV series playing on their phones as they do repetitive analysis tasks ... it is freaking weird!)
I'll never forget my first time living in the UK, describing my happiness of hiking in the wilderness to my English colleagues, and them looking at me in absolute horror, telling me that the idea of not being able to see a human house in any direction would scare them half to death.
And now, even when I go hiking, I encounter people who feel the need to hike with a bluetooth speaker blaring out their music / podcast / audiobook at themselves and everyone else.
I love silence, but most of the world seems genuinely scared by it.
Man, I really have no issue with people who can't enjoy the silence, and feel the need to occupy their ears. But imposing this on other people is beyond inconsiderate. I have no idea how this kind of behavior came to be so widespread.
And at least out in the forest, you'll be a nuisance for a few minutes while you pass someone. But the same shitty behavior happens every day in cities, on the street, and in public transport, where you're being an asshole to dozens of people for possibly dozens of minutes at a time.
Odd that it’s on HN front page :-/
HN sometimes likes to discuss texts that weren't published as a free contribution on some blog by a dev with lots of time on their hand.
It's not forbidden to post paywalled links on HN, AFAIK.
I also struggle to see an alternative when it comes to professional journalism.
Maybe a kind soul will be able to share a gift link.
> It's not forbidden to post paywalled links on HN, AFAIK.
The FAQ states that it's fine to post paywalled links as long as there is a workaround that everyone can easily access.
Disabling first party JS works too, using umatrix or similar tools. The site works perfectly without JS.
Edit: because of all of that, of course view source bypasses the paywall too and reveals tons of inlined CSS.
Thank you!! I had no idea, and this is such an elegant fix.
However there are many more properly implemented paywalls that send only a few lines of content and you don't find the content even on the archive sites.
There are several variations of those schemes. Sometimes there is text but not images. Sometimes the first party js is fine and you have to block some of the third party js.
Sometimes the content is in a JSON blob.
Sometimes the reader mode trick works but only for a short while before the js paywall removes it (the sibling comment hints about it.)
You have to experiment with each site.
I agree with you though, it's obnoxious to share paywalled articles on Hacker News.
We can do without mean words like “obnoxious” for people contributing interesting articles for the community to read.