SIlence is Olden

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”  (Blaise Pascal, 1623--1662)

“Mental reflection is so much more interesting than TV it’s a shame more people don’t switch over to it.  They probably think what they hear is unimportant, but it never is.”  (Robert Pirsig, 1928 --2017)



The Chosen, written in 1967 by Chaim Potok, is a story about silence.  One of the characters, Danny, is brilliant but with an unfeeling heart.  His father knows he must teach his child to feel for others, and to do so imposes a difficult father-son silence.  Potok narrates the pain of silence, both for the father and for the son.  But as the story develops, we witness Danny’s transformation of character, the process of growth catalyzed by his father’s silent discipline.  As the story ends, Danny, with a broken yet now compassionate heart, begins a new journey, to study Freud.

Sigmund Freud appreciated the transforming power of silence.  In Freudian psychoanalysis, the therapist maintains a silence, instructing patients to report uncensored any and all thoughts and feelings that enter awareness.  In the supportive environment of the analyst’s office, patients are instructed to do the hard work of self-reflection in order to begin their journey of personal growth and discovery.

The transforming power of silence may also have been recognized in biblical times.  After the exodus from Egypt, Moses and the Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years.  The Bible tells us of the journey’s beginning and the journey’s end but says little about the 38 years of wandering in the middle.  A biblical commentary says that God and Moses were silent during those years, but we are not told why.  Was it silence in anger?  Was it silence as punishment?  Or was it silence that helped transform a wandering generation?

Thirty-eight years of silence was hard discipline imposed upon a people who needed to turn inward in order to begin their journey of growth and transformation.  As slaves they were conditioned to wait passively for their master’s instructions.  Once freed, they had to learn to listen to their own inner voice.  Free will and moral choice come not from obedience to a master, but from an ability to feel, to think and to reason.

And where there is no silence?  Authors such as Orwell, Huxley, Bradbury and Vonnegut imagined dystopic future worlds where people are enslaved not by the lash, but by constant noise.  They imagined worlds in which minds are filled and controlled by the constant drone of meaningless chatter, gratuitous imagery and programmed misinformation.

In my quiet and contemplative moments, I worry about the noise that occupies our children’s minds.  Developmentally critical hours are spent bombarded by fast-paced, action-oriented, mindless noise.  Children come to school transfixed in their electronic virtual reality.  Glassy eyed, they come numbed and unprepared to do the hard work of thinking and learning.  Children need silent time in order to develop their minds, their imaginations and their emotions.

In a modern world, we are all bombarded by electronic sights and sounds.  In contrast, silence is olden.  But we need silent time.  It doesn’t take 38 years.  Just a bit of time to silently wander, every now and then, would do miracles.