The Death of Silence
I swear, if I hear one more corny, inane comment about how cell phone use is responsible for everything bad or evil that happens in the world, I’ll be tempted to add my portion of ultra-violence to this already toxic stew. Yeah, yeah – I know all about it; ‘cell phone use causes brain cancer’, ‘people are too loud and rude when on the phone’, ‘they don’t have anything to say anyway’, etc. ad nauseum. It’s ironic, if you think about it, how the very people who severely criticize modern technology, are in fact the ones who need it the most.
Maybe it’s just an Anglo thing, or maybe even a generational thing, but most Americans, and at least prior to the advent of the cell phone, were silent about almost everything. Call it being communication – challenged, or emotionally repressed, or psychically constipated, or whatever, we generally never had much to say about anything. And please, don’t even start that conversations were more ‘profound’ prior to the advent of the cell phone. No – the reality is that there was just a helluva lot more silence. Dull and duller, one might call it. Or sadder and sadder.
So, let’s keep talking. Anytime, all the time. And about whatever. We’ve been quiet for too long…and it shows. Ever notice how some older couples can sit through a two hour meal in a restaurant and say absolutely nothing to each other? Is it because they’re all talked out? Burned out? Too blasé about the world and everything in it? Is this what we aspire to? I think-or at least hope- not. We need to talk, laugh, argue, to communicate, to express who we are and even how we really feel at any given time.
If we’ve learned nothing else over the past several years, it’s that the ‘strong, silent type’, isn’t so strong, after all.
One of the most obnoxious, and repressive terms I ever heard as a young lad was “Children should be seen and not heard”. So, I can certainly see your point about the more chatter, the better!
Thanks
Victor Kipling said this on December 7, 2009 1:45 am