Forget global warming. We’re facing a much more serious problem.
Sensory overload is blocking out the sun, dimming the stars and melting the polar ice caps. In the process, we’re losing our vision, our hearing and, worst of all, our ability to think.
The prime offenders are familiar: the blockbuster movies devoted to ever-louder, mind- numbing mayhem rather than the hush of human drama; television and radio and their endless streams of chatter where rudeness and noise drown out thoughtful debate; newspapers where trivialities like Ward Churchill and the Jen/Brad break-up earn multipart series and garner front-page headlines; and, of course, the video game industry, where violence and lawbreaking behavior flash before impressionable eyes for hours on end in an orgy of excess.
The fact all of these have become multi-sensory – deafening, numbing, more glaring, more stomach-churning – isn’t surprising. After all, the engine that drives our free market system is, and always has been, fueled by excess. Today’s pitchman is yesterday’s P.T. Barnum.
Only the methods have evolved (or degenerated, depending on your point of view). To succeed in the marketplace, priority one is to be noticed. So you stuff your retail center with more merchandise than it can hold and then shout, act out, neon-light, sound-effect your claims through every mass media channel ranging from traditional (television, radio, print, outdoor) to non-traditional (urinals and the doors of lavatory stalls, tattoos, headbands, paper cups, megaphones, charitable events, and every square inch and moment of sporting events – “This fly ball brought to you by … “). For your pitch people, you solicit the bottom feeders of our so-called culture: serial philanderers, radio talk show hosts, and even convicted felons. The more notorious, the more outrageous, the better.
Sold.
But even at its ubiquitous most, sensory overload is merely a symptom of a more acute sickness: our cultural fixation on the moment. The predatory, sensory-bloated sales and entertainment culture we’re bequeathing to our children promotes personal and instantaneous gratification while ignoring the inestimable value of silence and thoughtful reflection. For example, it’s a truism of the time-share huckster culture that if the salesman doesn’t secure a commitment before you leave, then the sale isn’t going down. Why? Thought and reflection removes you from the moment and douses the need for the immediate thrill. Thought and reflection = no sale.
The “right now” mindset worms its way into our work cultures, as well. A staff member of a department I oversaw once told me that the value of work was only in the experience of it. That comment struck me at the time as a sad one, but I couldn’t determine exactly why. Now I understand. It conveyed the self-serving sentiment that once the novelty wears off, it’s time to move on to the next experience. Forget any outward-looking commitment to a cause or to coworkers and, more importantly, the inward-looking time and thought it takes to understand them fully.
Six weeks later, that staffer had left in the continuing search, I suppose, for the next moment.
And now for the bad news: It’s far too late for the vast majority of us to master the language of silence and contemplation. For the most part, our lives have been deep fried in noise and instant gratification, from which we’ve emerged, crusted over, semi-conscious, but with nerves atwitter and perpetually, desperately asking, “What’s next?”
And the good news? There’s a whole generation that has yet to be completely submerged in the mania of the moment and our cultural creed that more is better. A whole generation that has yet to have every minute of its days and nights filled to capacity with soccer practice, play practice, band practice, ballet lessons, piano lessons, scouting, fundraising, partying, shopping, video-gaming, hooking up, all in fast-forward time, all in a mind-numbing blur, and all built on our perverse, Puritan-driven notion of productivity. A whole generation for whom we as parents/guardians can provide the sacred gift of time to be filled by, that’s right, nothing. Nothing at all except silent thought marked by the intimate rhythms of breathing and a beating heart.
A modest proposal: The next time you’re tempted to commit a child to yet another activity, or to grant permission for another three hours in front of a video screen, consider instead providing extended time for silence and thought. Give the gift of nothing. In this era of moment mania, nothing – as the antidote to sensory assault and as an act of splendid subversion – may indeed mean everything.
Chuck Reyman is public relations director for The Children’s Hospital in Denver.
