Can we please have a moment of silence?
— Quan
Biological systems have not evolved to match the speed of advancing technology.
Smart organizations can harness this slow progress to achieve their desired goals. Netflix, for instance, reports that its biggest competitor is sleep. It should worry you that a company wants to reduce your most rejuvenating hardware reset to achieve its goals.
While sleep may be their target, noise is the medium. Our brains did not evolve to notice rectangular screens where animated features of what we are somewhat familiar with executing actions we are somewhat familiar with, ad nauseam.
Just as wombs were designed to push babies down the birth canal, brains were wired to be aware of a richly diverse, 3D environment.
For millennia, our environment was nature-rich. The sounds of birds in the morning, the whistling breeze in the savanna, the sound of rain at its zenith, and the drops from leaves when it abated, the roar of the wild mammals and the hiss of the slithering reptiles, the buzz of flying insects, and the crackling of fires in the thick grasslands. Tranquility subsumes us when our brains notice these sounds.
Edward O. Wilson once described the kind of environment humans prefer to live in. The house is to be situated atop high ground with a panoramic view, overlooking a large water body, like a river or lake, surrounded by low-growth vegetation. This is the most tranquil homestead, the kind I appreciate when I travel back home.
Our grandfather, from my mother’s side, bagged a huge chunk of land next to the second-largest freshwater lake in the world, Nam Lolwe. Depending on the time of the year, we would visit its shores to bathe and swim, engaging all growing muscles, to commune with the tides. The walk back home would stitch our bond with nature through engaging our sensory inputs — the visual landscape, the taste of the air as it soaked into our olfactory senses, and the plants as they snapped their twigs at our exposed limbs, and the creatures that lived in the hidden shadows as we waltzed back home in the open country.
This is nature’s silence.
The blue light, notification pings, and rectangular screens have hijacked our slow evolutionary processes inside cages with invisible bars and robbed us of nature’s silence. The good news, however, is that we still have control, if we are willing to seize it.
Natural silence: far from our virtual homes
Ivar the Boneless was a mighty Viking warrior legend, remembered for his military genius. Before engaging his enemies, he would corner them in battle into positions where his army would have the upper hand. Caught flatfoot, he would swoop in and claim victory. These tactics, once used against large numbers, are now being exploited to catch the individual unawares.
The last sense to lose function when one dies is hearing. How is that so? I can think of several reasons. Of all sensations, hearing and vision are the only ones that have been amplified in humans. Taste varies from one individual to another. Touch is relatively standard, with receptors scattered all over the skin. Our olfactory mucosa, located at the upper third of the nasal cavity, is small compared to that of our mammalian relatives, as we switched from focusing on smell to relying on vision. Our visual cortices have increased in surface area relative to our archecerebral olfactory region, as we need to detect prey, mates, and our environment to continue persisting in preserved and new habitats.
Visual amplification happened in the cortex. When one dies, one of the signs we use to detect brain death is the pupillary reaction to light. Since our brains enlarged only recently in the evolutionary period after we began handling tools, the amplified cortical space is a relatively new region. Hearing, however, is tied to balance. The eighth cranial nerve, vestibulocochlear, is a combination of two functions: Vestibular, responsible for balance, and cochlear, important for hearing. Balance is a core trait in ensuring survival in the wild.
Aside from balance, hearing is amplified at several intervals. Our ears are shaped into fans to concentrate sound waves. Mammals capable of noticing sound signals and adjusting their ears make the most of this amplifying quality. Inside the ear, various levels and windows further augment the incoming signals. What the brain eventually deciphers has been amplified significantly because it needs to convert air vibrations in our external ear into fluid oscillations at the inner ear.
We have two ears, and not a single one, because they give us a sense of where we are in relation to nature’s sounds. Our brain, ever predicting, can then associate our position in space and its surroundings. Balance and hearing go hand in hand. Notably, patients who have lost their hearing do not remark, “I can’t hear!” Their first question tends to be, “Where am I?”
Hearing, therefore, is tied to positioning and a sense of spatial awareness. Knowledge of one’s space is, by extension, an acute awareness of oneself. Which joints are flexed, and which muscles are active? Sound guides balance and awareness.
In the presence of noise, we try to separate ourselves from the environment. We either cover our ears and slouch or move as far as possible from the estimated source of the commotion. Noise, by this metric, is an uncontrollable and unpleasant stimulus that numbs the other senses. Noise is the unpleasant, uncontrollable sensory preoccupation.
Have you ever found yourself lost, say, while inside a car, and wanted to re-orient yourself? The first thing you do is stop or slow down, then reduce the volume of the music playing in the background, or ask everyone around you to be silent. Sometimes, you don’t need to ask them — they intuitively quieten. By reducing noise, or its degree, one gets an acute sense of one’s surroundings to know “where one is”.
Natural silence, therefore, is not devoid of sound. It is the sound our brains have been used to for millennia. Nature’s elements. A visit to nature soothes the psyche because it reverts to its origins, where things were familiar. Biophilia. This is nature’s silence.
We typically don’t like places with a lot of noise. We, however, like familiarity. Familiarity breeds favourability. Heart rate reduces, breathing improves, vision clears, hearing is amplified. In contrast, an unfamiliar environment is found inside our virtual homes.
Unlike Edward O. Wilson’s nirvana, most houses are not atop a hill. With flats clogged close to each other in cities, we have no panoramic views. We have no large water body. We only have a single screen, with objects moving through an infinite scroll. In reality, we can stand and get grounded; online, we’re always on the move. We cannot accurately answer the question, “Where am I?”
Our visual receptors get fully occupied with everything we consume. A preoccupation of one of our senses is, as we have already derived, noise. The kind of noise our reptilian brains were aware of was not the common noises we encounter online. Lions basking in the Serengeti could tell when the wildebeests were on the move. Noise was not the norm; it was the outlier. It was noticeable. For that reason, one could tell where it was coming from, aided by other sensations.
Online, the noise floods the visual senses. It is a noise of the kind our brains are not evolved to handle effectively. We may log into our online social media accounts, but find it difficult to escape. The curvilinear movements from one post to the next do not mimic a heavily branched tree bending to the force of the afternoon winds. Flooding your screen with posts is effectively creating noise for your neurons, an unfamiliar feeling.
During foetal growth, the brain undergoes an exponential expansion relative to the body. Images of a growing foetus show a big head with a small body that gradually changes so that by the time the baby is born, the relative sizes have shifted. During the early stages, the brain undergoes a process known as synaptic pruning. Every nerve tends to form every potential connection. It is not an efficient strategy. Pruning is necessary. In its absence, what the child will experience is neuronal noise.
Neuronal noise occurs when the nerves fire uncontrollably. It can, for instance, often give the wrong output for sensory modalities that might not be triggered by external stimuli. When the body fires uncontrollably, it cannot know “where it is.” Thus, as the baby grows, and synapses are pruned and connections intentionally arborized, the body begins to get a sense of self and its position. It then takes a while before the baby can balance their head, sit, stand, crawl, and eventually walk.
At a biological level, noise thus makes us unaware of our environment and ourselves. We cannot make sense of where we are. Some background sounds, referred to as noise but which I here call nature’s silence, are, however, used by nerves to anchor their functions based on their surroundings and interactions.
Behaviourally, noise makes us detach from our environments. We slouch, bend our knees, and cover our ears.
These two ways of looking at noise show how they preoccupy our senses, pushing us to separate ourselves.
Factoring all this in, we can begin to see how flooding our devices with posts can lead to alienation or a deep sense of loneliness.
The force-feeding of posts makes it difficult to know where exactly we are. That’s noise. Making sure we hardly leave the platforms cages us, creating a neuronal preoccupation, a state that I have already mentioned, is not efficient. The brain pruned its nerves to avoid global noise. Staying locked in on social media counters the earlier forms of synaptic pruning.
When you don’t know exactly where you are, disoriented in space, unaware of your surroundings, anyone can knock you down. An evil way to do this is through in-streaming advertising. You won’t know that a product or service has been incepted into your brain.
Mindless consumption through doomscrolling material gives the impression that you know where you are, but it’s a clever trick that takes over a brain that has not evolved as quickly as technology. This is the silent kind of noise. Neuronal noise. A noise so powerful, it bypasses our primary detecting organs — our ears.
Fully ensnared and without knowledge of who and where you are or who you’re interacting with, connections become an easy way out. We tend to seek these links by clicking on the online buttons, most of which are fake. Making a friend request. Following. And even one which I myself seek from those who read my work, subscribing (most buttons are fake, but subscribing buttons shake you back into reality, as you have to decide if you will like or tolerate what will always be landing in your personal space — your email).
Since in the presence of noise, you don’t even notice those around you, the kind of noise we consume online takes this further. We hardly acknowledge whose post it is we have consumed. It is quick, on to the next one. We may share memes, but forget the creators just as fast. If noise had a scale, this kind of content would rank on the lower side, like the bacteria we hardly see with our naked eye, but which influence our everyday lives.
Then there are louder ones. Nature’s noise is shaped such that we can notice the obvious differences. The loud trumpet of an elephant, the stampede of zebras, the sexual calls by the birds of paradise. Our online lives have taken virtual noise and then introduced the equivalent of the trumpeting of an elephant — notifications.
Earlier, I mentioned how Netflix tries to compete with our natural superpower — sleep. They ensure they get a portion of it through notifications.
I pay for the regular Netflix streaming for my family. I, however, have little access to it. All the devices used to stream from the platform excluded my previous phone.
Before my powers were snatched, out of love, I must add, I would get notifications on the regular. In retrospect, I am thankful I escaped that prison of mental masturbation. “Are you still watching?” Well, I left years ago, thank you very much.
That question, I am inclined to consider, is a means of establishing your level of wakefulness. When you’re not awake, you’re either engaging in other activities, fully awake, or asleep. And whose Netflix’s biggest competitor?
This question is a form of notification, although one that is smoothly introduced into your consumption stream. Like all notifications, the only way to clear them is by answering their call.
Most apps have notifications. These are the loud noises we heed. The virtual equivalents of a horn at close range to your ear. It’s either we duck or extinguish it. Ducking is out of the question. The alternative is to confirm what the notification is all about.
Loud noise is no longer the endless chatter of birds that signals the presence of a snake; it is the ping of the phone that alerts you that there is something that may be worth your attention. In essence, nature created its silence so we can notice the noise. Our virtual spaces have created a subtle noise so we can notice the loud ones. Like Inception, just when you think you are out of one dream, they catch you in the other one. I may have left the chokehold of Netflix, but there is still WhatsApp. After noise destabilizes and throws you off balance, anything far from it can be a consolation.
Consider the Gruen effect. This is a psychological phenomenon marketers use to flood the senses of buyers. Buyers then lose a sense of where they are and will cling to anything that invites a modicum of personal familiarity. Impulse buying soon follows. We’ll cling onto anything to get a sense of where we are or something familiar, since familiarity reinforces cognitive ease, a state distant from noise. Noise is a state where one’s senses are acutely flooded. Social media reinforces that effect on our brains.
By extension, noise makes it difficult to think for oneself. Protective measures kick in. First, you isolate. In isolation, you don’t know who or where you are in this virtual space, nor do you know most of the people you’re interacting with. Game theory dictates that in these one-off interactions, the best option is to defect. Selfish interest.
Our online interactions do not leave us as mindful of others as we once were. When you talk smack in front of someone, you could return home with a broken nose. Isolated from the physical blows, we can rest and sleep soundly at night after stirring chaos.
One way to foster cooperation is through repetition. If I groom you today, and I know you will be there tomorrow, I can ask the same favour of you, and you will be forced to reciprocate. If you run away, then you would have consumed my energy to look good, a selfish endeavour. Online noise has isolated us so much that we begin to reap benefits through selfishness rather than cooperation, despite the repetition.
The online consequences of noise may appear subtle, but a more physical one is relatable. Again, notifications. When your phone rings, you more often than not have to answer it. We have no cues besides the notification sound of how the person on the other side is interacting with us. So we anchor.
Firemen, completely preoccupied, will hold firmly onto their tools when the fire becomes unbearable. When flooded with a tonne of detail in the terms and conditions segment of a contract, we anchor by asking where to sign the damn thing. When thrown at charts and numbers about the supposed benefits of a drug or an investment, we anchor by asking questions we are more familiar with — is it safe? Will I benefit? Do I like it? When in a noisy environment, we anchor.
When exposed to noise throughout doomscrolling, we will readily anchor to a notification as soon as it pings. Why? The notification noise is familiar. There is always something that, so we convince ourselves, needs our attention. It all gives the impression of clever engineering. The burden of proof lies with the companies to convince us otherwise.
This may be the worst state to ever be in, because anyone can offer assistance, and it will look “good”. Literally anyone. You then become the market for anyone who can sell their products or services. The platform owners hold the cards. They will likely listen to the top bidders and optimise their platforms to benefit them. They bring the money, not the free users. Free users offer an opportunity to create a ready market, cleverly orchestrated through noise creation and anchoring.
Out of greed or the drive to continue playing the game, platform owners will not exclude the small sellers either. They will sell heaven to anyone trapped in a noisy environment.
But all hope is not lost.
By understanding how noise can be manipulated to one’s interests, we can reverse-engineer the process.
Reverse-engineering
Yeah, and can we have another moment of silence?
— Nas
Experts continue to insist on unplugging. That is the functional equivalent of pruning.
Anu called it intermittent fasting. We don’t have to wait for Tom Cruise to save our world. This one is easily soluble. Unplug.
It does not have to be the total, cold-turkey way. You can detox gradually. You don’t need to spend the whole day away from online engagement. A few minutes is all it takes. These minutes can continue to increase — four becomes eight, becomes sixteen, becomes half an hour.
How I do it is I fix it in my routine. Rather than order an Uber to work, I walk. I keep my phone inside my pocket. I then know where I am. I soak in nature’s silence. By noticing the cool breeze, the children as they scatter to school, the smell of canteens cooking or charcoal burning, the gravel underneath my feet, the sunrise in the distance, I can channel my attention.
Nature’s silence does not take control from you, it restores it.
I get my best ideas when walking to and from work. Through unplugging, I reconnect with my ancestors’ desires. Something familiar. Biophilia.
Gradually, you start to see notifications for what they genuinely are — loud noises whose sounds have become so familiar that we anchor to them when exposed to the undetectable online noise. You can then schedule when to go through them rather than have them control you. Taking a step back is no different from reorienting yourself, knowing where you are, turning down the radio to find your footing and position.
Hardware resets are much more effective than software ones. You may think you need to focus by watching a movie, which will demand your attention, but that is software resetting. As we have already seen, they can be hijacked. Our brains evolve slowly. We need to prioritize our hardware resets.
Sleep is one of the most vital ones. Good sleep beats the most motivating talk by Anthony Robbins or Alan Watts any time. A long walk can diffuse anger. Picking a book instead of scrolling through Instagram can create a healthy distance between you and your notifications.
The question is: Where can you create a space where you cut out the noise?
In our modern world, these spaces are continually being colonized. The place that used to be the sanctuary of silence in urban centres was the library. Speaking in a library was sacrilegious. Today, events are held at libraries. I launched my book inside a library. It didn’t hit me that I was contributing to the effacement of the previous sanctity of libraries.
Before my fallout with the Catholic faith, I used to walk to Holy Family Basilica and take my time at the chapel. I may have my issues with religion, but I love the tranquility inside a church. It can be before mass or in the absence of a congregation. That silence centres you down to your breathing. Controlling your breath inside that space feels like pumping your being with fuel from the air surrounding you.
Contrast that with the new online churches. In comparison, they are noisy. They are software resets, often manipulative ones. They cannot compare to a solitary trip to the altar. An altar doesn’t have to be tied to the old Catholic ways. You can find your space and something to dedicate your time to, far from the online droning forced on us.
This is perhaps the core lesson we can learn from noise. It rids us of agency and power. It leaves us rudderless and powerless. But we can take control.
What I’m trying to say is…
In a world full of noise, we have to ask ourselves why it is not being controlled.
The Shirky principle offers some insights — institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution. Reinforcing noise is an easy way of creating a growing market for multiple entities. If you’re the platform that controls this noise, the will to continue existing will strong-arm you to preserve the noise.
Unlike the physical changes in evolution, which are hardly reversible, these adjustments are not outside our control. Because it is largely online, we can reverse engineer the entire process. We can switch from the online noise to nature’s silence.
In the words of Nas and Quan, can we please have a moment of silence?
This song inspired some of the lines used in this essay. Source — YouTube