There’s nothing quite like a noisy outburst of protestation: upset voices bursting forth as a rhetorical freshet drenching all in the vicinity with a cold shower of unhappiness.  Conflicts trigger us to misery so effectively because there’s unpleasant noise everywhere in society adding to the turmoil of grinding gears within our mind.  These inner dialogues can be as noisy and fraught as any external conflict; the trick is to tease out what concerns and disputes merit our full attention, and what deserve the proverbial palms over eardrums and tangy singing of “I’m not liiiiistening!”  As thinkers, we can diagnose the validity of this or that fusspot circumstance without being mystical readers of tea leaves; a light squeeze of our critical thinking skills will do.

Because sometimes strife is deadly serious, there’s comedy and levity to be had by a jestful tempest in a teapot.  A fuss over nothing reminds us that, all too often, people exaggerate their concerns as an expression of their inner anxieties divorced from the topic at hand.  These allow us to see that, for every mountain, there’s an awful lot of cultural mole hills.  Lately, the British and American embassies have engaged in mock strife, making a lot of noise over a pseudo-feud.  The topic?  Studies claim that tea (that most hallowed English beverage) is best consumed with a sprinkling of sodium.  Encouraging us all to take international relations with a grain of salt, the UK’s diplomats gave the following fussy press release: “Tea is the elixir of camaraderie, a sacred bond that unites our nations.  We cannot stand idly by as such an outrageous proposal threatens the very foundation of our special relationship.  Therefore we want to assure the good people of the UK that the unthinkable notion of adding salt to Britain’s national drink is not official United States policy.  And never will be.” What a lot of bluster over nothing, we might say.

With a chortle everyone goes home pleased with themselves from that little disturbance.  Yet not all clamours go quietly into the night.  Like a psychological intruder seeking to disturb our placid countenance, social disturbances can ruffle our minds when grating sounds abound amidst the complexities of industrial modernity.  Traffic is top on that scale of intrusive nuisances.  And nature has those pesky dawn birds living as alarm clocks in many a backyard.  What separates song from noise is, in the end, a matter of perspective.

Aural realms of sound input run an emotional gamut ranging from tranquil waves on a sunny beach to industrial yelps screaming a frenetic screech.  What we hear as a species has changed drastically since the 1800s, concurrently with the rise of global temperatures.  Sometimes it feels culturally like there’s smoke coming out of society and the earth’s ears.  The nature of brazen sound’s complexity expresses that most human of desires: the wish to be heard, thereby to feel seen.  Those diplomatic embassies, rarely in the news, thereby found themselves part of countless news feeds by concocting something to faux-fuss about.  Yet, in essence, the capacity to make sound is a byproduct of that innermost dialogue whereby we think human thoughts thereby to do human things and to manifest our human being.  Silence isn’t only compliance, as activists say, a silent mind is literally a mind turned off, unplugged, as unaware of its presence as a rotting tree stump.  What’s required isn’t an absent mind, the stuff of levitating gurus with mantras of mindfulness, so much as an understanding of what we really think – and why, and how.

To begin with, as nonsensical infants, our wailing is a survival mechanism.  From tiny baby robins to lumbering humpback whales, the animal kingdom is replete with beasts whose ontological manifesto includes the production of sound.  Yet, as my Grade 2 class report on pandas taught me, the general character reference of one’s appearance is quite different than the unscientific aesthetic nature of another category: looks.  To be heard in a symbolic sense is to, through symbolic garb and tone and content, say something in a thematic, cultural, sort of way.  To win as a human, we combine the raw facts of our bodily appearance with the purposeful manner we present our self to others.  Our look matters with or without the motion of our mouth and coinciding noises.  In this sense, body language and concepts like a power posture extend language into the corporeal realm.  Dancing too, be it in jest or in sensuality, expresses nonverbal meaning that bypasses the ear’s eustachian tubes and tunnels right into our human souls.  Things get really interesting when groups of individuals together clamour for the collective fulfillment of this or that expressive desire.  What counts as noise or music certainly depends on the audience, on who one asks, and in what discursive climate one’s expression prevails.  It remains for us to decide what we really want to say, as students and as citizens.

References

Evans, G.  (2024).  ‘US Embassy Steps in Over ‘Outrageous’ Tea Research That ‘Threatens Special Relationship’.  Indy 100.  Retrieved from  https://www.indy100.com/news/us-embassy-tea-salt-research