I read today that Meta/Facebook’s new generation of VR headsets will be able to read your facial expressions, purportedly to allow your avatar to more realistically portray emotions in whatever virtual world you have chosen to experience. Let me put aside for a moment the fact that I feel that this kind of information gathering is at least “a step too far,” if not a couple of marathons too far, and simply look at it as simply another digital information gathering device for which we are the entity being probed for information.
Much of this information we provide voluntarily to make our lives easier. Our contacts list eliminates the need to dial - strange archaic term - our phone. We simply say “Call Joe.” In turn our “find my” app locates our digital devices, and those of our friends and hence, usually their location. Our smartwatch monitors our breathing, temperature, and, for couples seeking to start a family their ovulation calendar. Our mattress reacts to our sleeping behavior, adjusting position and temperature to enhance REM sleep. Our smart fridge tells us when the milk has spoiled. MyChart lets us know when we are running low on meds, the pharmacy automatically reorders the meds and then either mails them to us or sends us an reminder to come pick them up, which prompts us to hop into the car where the gps will guide us to the drug store, turn on our favorite music channel, and ask us if we would like it to read us any email we have received.
I found this post in this morning’s email: “Imagine riding an Apple e-bike while your Apple AR glasses share turn-by-turn navigation, your Apple Watch provides biofeedback, the bike itself tracks information on output, speed and air quality — and maybe the coffee shop up ahead sends a discount coupon to entice you to stop by.”
Whether this is heaven or hell or somewhere in between is a matter of personal preference. My concern at the moment is my realization that we are often, waking or sleeping, attending or ignoring, consciously or subconsciously, in a state of constant communication. And we have come to, what, expect it? Want it? Can’t live without it? I don’t know. We have all heard of the dreaded FOMO - aka Fear of Missing Out. At an extreme level we have all been irritated by it - friends who sit down at lunch and immediately put their phone on the table. Jeez.
But the intent of this post is to explore the opposite of all this frenetic communication: the sounds of silence. I read today - New Scientist, I believe - how folks are paying for some time in isolation chambers. They claim to emerge refreshed, calmer, less stressed, less depressed. That’s really kind of neat. Had me looking around for my noise canceling headphones, until I realized that I usually used them to listen to music or nature sounds, storms, even trains. Not quite silence. So I kept drawing and listening to the podcast about silence. Strange, eh?
Anyhow, it was awhile until I was struck by another, even stranger idea: the weaponization of silence. Bear with me here. We live, for the most part anyhow, in a two closely related auditory worlds. There is the world of ambient sound, environmental sound. This is everything that creeps into our ears, from the gentle rush of the AC or heat whooshing on, the dishwasher whirring, lawnmowers and leaf blowers intruding, traffic, all that ambient sound. We “hear” it but are largely unaware of it until the curtain of sound is disrupted - the microwave, dryer, dishwasher, email, or whatever dings, or beeps, or chimes. And we attend. I have seen a commercial - I think for a HVAC system. The video pans through a home, regular middle-class house, dog asleep, no movement, no audio. Then the audio fades in: ”This is the sound of the yadda yadda home heating system.” The implication is that there is no sound and that is unique. Reminds me of another spot where a harried Mom escapes from a, what, playground maybe? Anyhow, she slips into the front seat of her rather plush auto and shuts the door, closes her eyes and sighs. Both spots acknowledge the intrusive nature of ambient sound and present an option to catch some silence.
More interesting to me is the second acoustic world in which we exist: the acoustic world we voluntarily create. I am perhaps more attuned to this world because I rarely - indeed if ever - step out of it. It is a soundscape made possible by technology. I am writing this on my iPad as the clock leaves midnight in the rear view mirror - and Pandora plays a gentle spa music track in the background. When I decide to stop writing I will leave Pandora on activate some similar track, meditative, spa-ish, instrumental stuff and then will overdub that with a NatureScapes track of wind or rain or a stream or crickets or whatever - which I will leave on all night. So, yes, I am sound dependent. It isn’t that I am silence averse, I just see no reason to seek it. Although writing this post has convinced me to give it a whirl. But, I am wandering off course here a bit. I wanted to be talking about the weaponization of silence.
There is an interesting parallel notion in the acoustic world we create. There is a communicative aspect component to it. We seek sound based input that confirms, aids, or enhances our life. Reminders from our smartphone, watch, or whatever, keeps us “on task,” music that we enjoy passes time pleasurably, videos entertain us, while actual phone calls, voicemails, posted images, text messages, and video chats keep us connected to the important people in our lives. And it is this last cluster of communicative interactions that can be weaponized. Let me explain.
There was a time when a person might live their entire life in the village where they were born. An "adventure" might be defined by hiking a mile or two down a dirt track to the next village over. Maybe to trade excess produce, maybe to seek a spouse. This lack of mobility was transformed as transportation and communication options evolved. Living in the 21st century those twin evolutions have resulted in the somewhat uncomfortable reality that we often live at significant distance from those we hold most dear. Hence the digital communication tools mentioned above become increasing vital in initiating and maintaining relationships. All kinds of relationships.
The covid pandemic drove significant segments portions of the population "home." Business, school, shopping, all found themselves becoming internet activities. As such, they became more vulnerable to unique, often unwelcome, interruptions as hackers and scammers took advantage of their ability to hide their nefarious activity behind their internet anonymity and keyboards. Both businesses and software applications have taken steps to insure our privacy when communicating via those digital avenues. And significant protective progress has been made in those reciprocal initiatives. But that is not the weaponization arena that concerns me - it is in interpersonal communication.
Let me provide an unintentional example of which I found myself a part. We have dear friends both of whom just celebrated their 90th birthdays. They still live in Raleigh, NC which is where our friendship was initially nurtured with shared dinners. He is an accomplished artist and luthier, still turning out commissioned paintings and repairing damaged string instruments for local colleges and orchestras. He is, however, and not terribly surprising, completely computer illiterate. She continues to take care of the house to the best of her ability, which has become increasingly compromised by swiftly failing sight. This also curtails another of her favorite activities - surfing the internet. She has gradually increased the font size and magnification on her screen. But now the situation is such that most relevant content gets shoved beyond the margins of her screen and so out of sight. Actual phone conversations are also difficult. He has memory and hearing issues that make following a conversation difficult and we have learned that she - because of similar issues - used lip-reading to a far greater extent than we had previously realized. A strategy severely compromised in phone-based conversations. As a result our interactions with them have, sadly, decreased markedly. So meaningful interactions are possible only when we make one of our own increasingly rare trips back to Raleigh. And on those instances when we appear at their door we are inevitably greeted with wails of "We thought you were dead ! We thought you didn't love us anymore!" Hence much time must be spent with assurances of our continuing affection.
Now, it is important to remember that all this is the result of unintended communication glitches among folks who really wanted to remain "in touch." That is not the case in what I refer to as the weaponization of silence.
I have relatively recently become aware of something called "ghosting." It is far from the cuddly notion of Casper the friendly ghost or the Halloween decorations of the season. For those of you who are, as I was, unfamiliar with this phenomenon let me provide a brief description. First we need to realize that often the internet is a primary mode of communication between intimate couples. A situation significantly accentuated by the recent, and somewhat continuing, covid pandemic, and the resultant disruption of traditional avenues of communication with a loved one. Provides a whole new spin on "Romeo, Romeo wherefore art thou Romeo?" "Ghosting" is a modern, high tech version of a lovers quarrel. In "ghosting" one person in the couple feels they have been slighted. It is not always evident who "started it," but as the song says "somebody done somebody wrong." And the aggrieved party breaks off communication with the "wrong doer." And often it is the technology aspect of the quarrel that weaponizes this type of interaction. In the BI - "Before Internet" - days it was not terribly difficult to find a route to your lover's side and hopefully repair the rift in a face-to-face interaction. But pandemic mandated lockdowns, or the reality of long-distance relationships decrees that "ghosting" takes place is the digital domain. In digitized "ghosting" s/he who is doing the "ghosting" breaks off all digital contact with the "other."
In old mysteries or police procedural movies, where one of our protagonists is in prison, ghosting was accomplished by tossing the protagonist into "solitary confinement." No contact with the outside world. Ghosting is a digital, personal version of solitary confinement. The ghoster, or in this case, jailor, alienates the prisoner from any digital contact between the prisoner and the jailor. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways. Easiest, but still irritating to the jailor, is to simply ignore any attempts at communication from s/he who is being ghosted. More complicated, but perhaps more effective in the long run, is to block the prisoner's email and other contact information from the jailor's communication applications. This not only keeps the prisoner in his/her specific cell, but spares the jailor from any future reminders of his/her existence.
If you find this weaponization strategy repugnant - as do I - it may be because it stands in direct opposition the the first and primary tenet of Distilled Harmony: Foster Harmony. Obviously, it is impossible to foster harmony with someone whose existence you are essentially denying. If we explore the tenet of foster harmony more closely we soon discover that it is conceptually linked to another related idea: forgiveness.
The current scope of human callousness, reflected in the "news stories" in our morning emails and TV news shows, does tempt one to see the concept of forgiveness as, if not a fantasy, then at least a sadly futile undertaking. How does one forgive a nation, a government, a multinational corporation, whose behaviors are harming the physical integrity of the planet and endangering if not actually terminating the lives of millions of inhabitants - human and non- human but potentially sentient entities? Perhaps by reducing our focus. By attempting to doing more to forgive on a smaller scale, on a one-to-one scale. Most, if not all, "somebody done somebody wrong" fights are a matter of perception. Both sides see themselves as the wronged party - and are loath to give up that argumentative "high ground" by admitting to fault, seeing that as a step too far.
Forgiving is compromise. It stems from the consideration that perhaps one's life was better with the other in it. As Willie Nelson sang: "Love is hard to find. Love of any kind." Forgiving opens the door to the possibility of loving. The mechanics of forgiving can be complicated and are unique to each relationship. But there is one element that is common to every act of potential forgiveness - communication.
Forgiveness cannot occur in a "ghosted" environment. Back in 1987, President Reagan, standing by the wall that had divided East and West Germany for decades said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" To world's amazement Gorbachev did just that, and friends, families, and lovers streamed across the newly-opened divide into each other's arms. Ghosters should ask themselves, "Is what separates me from this formerly precious person more intractable than the wall which divided an entire nation?"
Tear down your walls.
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