Foo - Silence: The new sound.

How much of your day (awake hours of course) is spent in total silence? No TV, radio, mp3 player, cellphone, lawnmower noise, traffic noise, vacuum cleaner, crying baby, annoying spouse, dogs, sirens, manufacturing etc.

Can you even find silence if you wanted to? It seems odd to me that a hundred and fifty years ago, most people in this country spent a good part of their day, if not in total silence, at least surrounded by natural noises, like nature etc.

Apparently that was something we needed to change because in the last century and a half we have filled our worlds with noise. Why do we need to be surrounded by artificial noises so much? I have to admit that the silence can be deafening some time, even if it only occurs for a couple of minutes.

My bike rides are pretty mellow. Chatty wife and cellphone screw things up a bit. everything else I can control.

I wonder if there have ever been any studies done, that concluded why we need to surround ourselves with so much noise?

I'd love to be rid of noise, but it's a fight I can't win. I have a touch of tinnitis. :(

You can find silence in the same places you can find darkness, another rarity these days.

Drowning out the outside world with some good music is about as close as I can get on a daily basis.

Simple solution for silence.
http://www.hacofamerica.com/ear_plug.JPG

Permanent solution ---> stab your ears out.

Simple solution for silence.
http://www.hacofamerica.com/ear_plug.JPG

Permanent solution ---> stab your ears out.


Yeah, it's a fairly easy skill to attain near complete silence. I think my thread was more directed at "why we feel the need" to surround ourselves with so much noise.

You would think during sleep, however - I'm single - I've grown accustomed the last couple of years to just relaxing in front of the TV and falling asleep - and waking up at 4 am to peel contacts out of eyes and ... turn tv down, making sure I have one of the main news channels on so I get the weather ... and get up and listen to weather - dress for it and then go get bike out of basement and ride to work in traffic, work in a busy college all day and...

I think you know WHO (:D) just filled in one of the first spots on this poll ....

Such a boring life - and one that has taken on some quirks of singledom.

You can find silence in the same places you can find darkness, another rarity these days.

Underground in caves, then.

My first post might have been a bit preemy. Since then I have thought about where I work
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v207/glenngertz/treepics1032.jpg


And here

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v207/glenngertz/flyitruck020.jpg

I`m screwed and going deaf. At least the other bits work

As I live alone in a city on a busy road and work in the city centre I am almost always surrounded by man made noise. I have become almost immune to the sounds of traffic and trains.

I tend to listen to music at home to provide some noise though otherwise the quiet would eventually drive me mad.:p

I enjoy the sounds of silence when I am tramping in the bush or riding on a quiet road and when I'm reading at home.

You need to add "Not as many as I would like" to this poll.


I have to admit that the silence can be deafening some time, even if it only occurs for a couple of minutes.

What I've come to refer to as deafening silence is when, if it gets quiet enough, and I mean dead silent, I get what feels like a tremendous, sometimes painful, pressure in my ears, like descending rapidly from a high altitude.

Living in central Shanghai (pop. 18-20 million), I have no respite from noise. At work, it can sometimes get pretty quiet, but there's always the hum of fans, or someone typing on a computer... always something.

Beijing is interesting because while it's also home to 15-20 million people, it is actually possible to find complete silence even in the centre of the city. It's a weird and wonderful thing when it happens.

I'd love to be rid of noise, but it's a fight I can't win. I have a touch of tinnitis. :(

I empathise with you. I've got a freakin themerin playing in my head

I have whole days with nothing but me and my dog. Okay, a horse too at times. Hours soaking in a tropical river enjoying the jungle sounds. When I am walking the fincas - which I like to do past 3:00 pm because it starts to cool down and all the workers have gone home, there are no man made sounds - except of the biological kind.

A headset playing music would seem like heresy to me at this time.

One reason I think people fill their days with songs and radio, etc. is so they DON'T have time to think. If they thought too much about their life they just might be miserable enough to change it.

Oh, and in the tropics, there is no such thing as silence. You should hear a flock of parrots sometime. :eek:

I live downtown and work in a large high rise. I wouldn't say that there's any of my day where I'm not exposed to a very high level of man-made noise. OTOH, I notice a huge difference in the noise level when I visit my girlfriend's house. She doesn't live way out in the boonies, but she does live on a much quieter tertiary residential street. It's somewhat nice when I'm there, but I really can't say that the noise bothers me at my house.

If I am home alone and no appliance is on, the only man made sound left is the ticking of some old clocks we have that we keep running. Surprisingly, the UNH campus has some pretty quiet parts between classes.

Interesting experiment, just to highlight the amount of noise generated by various plugged-in appliances:

Light a few candles, then take a flashlight and go turn off the main power breaker for five minutes. Listen.

I know that this is what happens when the power goes out, but by doing it intentionally, one can intentionally listen. The results may be surprising.

i wrote the book on keeping quiet.

Chatty wife and cellphone screw things up a bit. everything else I can control.

Chatty wife? Sometimes I just have to excuse myself and go outside to work in the yard when the childbride just won't stop stating everything that comes to her mind.

Years ago I used to squirrel hunt. I would go way out in the country and be in the woods well before daylight. That quiet time sitting in the woods just before daylight was magical and, sometimes, a little spooky.

On a cold, clear morning you could hear the sounds of the world coming to life at a great distance. I would be a half mile from Uncle Bill's milking parlor but I could still hear him talking to, or cussing at, the cows.

i wrote the book on keeping quiet.

:roflmao:

Though I am constantly surrounded by some man made noise, I have the ability to block it out pretty well. I can go into a trance like state where I don't hear anything around me, all I do is focus on the work I am doing or the book I'm reading and the rest of the world just does not exist at that moment. This annoys the h@ll out of the wife and kid cause they'll start chatting and I won't even hear them....they'll talk for like 10 minutes before I even know they are there. This of course makes them feel like I don't pay attention to them and don't care about them, which is not true.

I enjoy a quiet nap by the fountains at school whenever possible. The light water noise drowns out most of the chitter chatter of a college campus... that's close as it gets.
I sleep with the radio on at home (alternative music too, so it's nothing surreal/classical or anything)... although no music when I stay at my girlfriends.

Silence? What is that?

my job basically requires me to be in a soundproof room at least 4 hours a day. I do have music, but I can turn it down if I want. pretty silent in there.