Silence: In the Age of Noise

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Erling Kagge is quite an impressive man. He was the first person in the world to walk alone to the South Pole. He was also the first to surmount the "three poles" – North, South and the summit of Mount Everest. He’s the founder of a publishing house and a well-respected author. I was thrilled to read what he had to say about the value of silence in our noisy world. Norwegian explorer Erling Kagge, who has voyaged to the South Pole all alone, on the importance of finding silence... While I already know of the importance of getting away from devices, shutting off and getting away from it all, not all of us have that luxury. Kagge seems to be able to escape whenever he pleases. You’d expect that a book called Silence would be about, well, silence, wouldn’t you? While Silence in the age of noise certainly explores the idea of silence, it doesn’t focus on the idea in the way you might expect. Kagge . . . writes in a chatty, accessible style and with a healthy dose of humor. . . . Silence . . . offers thoughtful meditations.” — The Minneapolis Star Tribune

Kagge is an explorer and entrepreneur whose worldview is close to 180 degrees away from my own. He seems earnest, but entirely humorless and enraptured by rich people problems. He also, in my mind, has never met an anecdote from which he can't draw the wrong conclusion. Allow the world to vanish when you go into it. To listen is to search for new opportunities, to seek fresh challenges. The most important book you can read is the one about yourself. It is open.” How 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". Il silenzio... che cos'è il silenzio? Noi esseri umani del 21° secolo non sappiamo nemmeno se esista, perchè siamo così immersi nel frastuono delle metropoli che macinano strombazzanti automobili, urla, martelli pneumatici, il rombo di una moto ecc... Siamo così anestetizzati dalla tecnologia, che non abbiamo nemmeno un attimo da dedicare al silenzio! L'autore esamina, in 33 risposte, la sua visione del silenzio, come parte fondamentale della vita! Erling ยกตัวอย่างการทดลองหนึ่งที่เปิดให้ผู้ร่วมทดสอบเลือกระหว่างการนั่งอยู่ในห้องปิดเฉยๆ โดยไม่มีเสียงเพลงและไม่ทำอะไร กับยอมถูกช็อกไฟฟ้า (หลังผ่านประสบการณ์นั่งในห้องเงียบมาแล้วครั้งหนึ่ง) ผู้ร่วมทดสอบเกือบครึ่งกดปุ่มช็อกไฟฟ้าตัวเองเพื่อบรรเทาความรู้สึกเงียบเชียบนั้นลงSitting there at the dinner table, I suddenly remembered their curiosity as children. How they would wonder about what might be hiding behind a door. Their amazement as they stared at a light switch and asked me to “open the light”. 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. He talks about the silence in art, particularly The Scream by Edvard Munch, "High-pitched noises can have many modes of expression, but the most powerful scream that I have ever experienced is one that is void of sound: The Scream by Munch."

This was an interesting book with an intriguing concept, but I was expecting more than I received, and I've finished it slightly disappointed. I thought this book may contain information that I was unaware of, but it was the same ideas, constantly repeated at various stages throughout the book. In 1993, Norwegian explorer Erling Kagge spent fifty days walking solo across Antarctica, becoming the first person to reach the South Pole alone, accompanied only by a radio whose batteries he had removed before setting out. In this book. an astonishing and transformative meditation, Kagge explores the silence around us, the silence within us, and the silence we must create. By recounting his own experiences and discussing the observations of poets, artists, and explorers, Kagge shows us why silence is essential to sanity and happiness--and how it can open doors to wonder and gratitude. Tam da ihtiyacımız olan bir şey var aslında: Sessizlik. Bu sessizlik sesten arınma değil, hiç sesin olmaması da değil. Sesle birlikte sessiz kalabilmek demek. Kagge also tries to use Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence" to boost his case (weird, as music, including that song, is somewhat of a sound-based phenomenon), and says things like, "I have more faith in Steve Jobs as a responsible father than as a visionary marketing genius" because apparently Jobs "limited his own children's access to Apple products." Lol okay. So Kagge has really done his research on Jobs, then.

According to a much-referenced study, we humans are worse at concentrating than a goldfish. Humans today lose their concentration after eight seconds, while the goldfish averaged nine.” Pastaruoju 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). 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. 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.