Silencing The Machine

Few disciplines, however, are more uncongenial to contemporary man than the intentional silencing of the noise machine. This gibbering mechanism ceaselessly pouring out its flood of inner conversations, arguments, schemes and aimless chatter, has come to occupy so large a place in man’s awareness that he often regards it as his very self. If this noise is switched off accidentally or if he switches it off intentionally, he has an uneasy feeling of non-existence. Contemporary man, using this term somewhat loosely to describe the mass produced semi-automata that make up the bulk of the world’s large man-swarms, fears inner silence and avoids places that induce inner silence, be they deserts or mountains or empty stretches of ocean. In case their inner noisemaker ever fails them and by some accident falls silent, they carry with them portable radios, drowning any awareness they might happen to develop in a wash of senseless sound. Should this recourse fail, they hasten to some party where, in an atmosphere poisoned by the fumes of alcohol or tobacco, they exchange at the tops of their voices a stream of inanities concerning their own or other people’s lives.

 

 

– Robert De Ropp. The Master Game