The Assault Against Silence

 

The Institute for Personality and Ability Testing has certified Robert Fettgather as a Stress Management Trainer, and Medical Hypnosis Seminars of the Los Gatos Institute has certified him in Clinical Hypnotherapy. At Santa Clara University, Graduate Department of Education and Counseling Psychology, Robert Fettgather studied Health Education and Behavioral Medicine. Robert Fettgather is an instructor in psychology at Mission College.

Much attention has been directed in recent years to Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel, Brave New World. Here we will consider another source, his Perennial Philosophy, and observations on NOISE. In today's world media obliterates peace of mind. Interestingly, Huxley had the topic squarely in his sights in 1944 when he wrote that: "The twentieth century is, among other things,"the Age Of Noise". Physical noise, mental noise, and noise of desire-we hold history's record for all of them. And no wonder; for all the resources of our almost miraculous technology have been thrown into the current assault against silence. That most popular and influential of all recent inventions, the radio, is nothing but a conduit through which prefabricated din can flow into our homes".

Huxley goes on, "It penetrates the mind filling it with a babel of distractions-news items, mutually irrelevant bits of information, blasts of corybantic or sentimental music, continually repeated doses of drama that bring no catharsis, but merely create a craving for daily, even hourly, emotional enemas."

Of course, today is so much worse. What was once daily or even hourly doses has been reduced to seconds, even milliseconds, in contemporary doom scrolling. Huxley called it an "assault against silence" and, indeed, it is one of many crises of his time and especially our own.