June 13th, 2009 Plugged In, Tuned Out World
As I leave my house in the morning I pass a couple of teenagers walking side by side, each with a phone in their hands –one seems to be receiving a text, another seems to be sending one. Further on I pass a jogger with a fixed, glazed, expression on her face. She has a plug in each ear and an iPod taped to her arm with Velcro. A black SUV is approaching me. The road narrows between us but it shows no inclination to slow down. I pull to the side – losing this game of chicken – as they pass I look through the window and see a tight jawed blonde with a cell phone stuck to her ear. A couple of nasty thoughts race through my head, to drown them out I turn up the radio.
It seems that these days we all need to be plugged in, and tuned out from the world around us. Silence has become unbearable to us. We need stimulation. We need it not just some of the time, but all the time! |If for nothing else we need it to block out all the other noise around us. After all, it’s better to be listening to our noise than theirs. Maybe that’s what freedom means in our society: the God given right to choose our own noise.
We might choose the brand of noise, but we have an absolute need for some noise, any noise! Why is it that we need this noise fix so badly?
Is it to distract us from something? Something so unpleasant, so distasteful, that we cannot bear to think about it even for a second? For each of us it might be something different. What is it for you?
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