I have found that Modern Man’s addictive need for incessant stimulation and activity, planted by cultural norms and reinforced by social expectation, gives him a natural aversion to the entire idea of monotony. Our generation is specifically trained (quite successfully) to see it as the supreme enemy of life, creativity, excitement, and success; monotony is to be rejected in all its forms and shaken off like any other obsolete cultural construct left over from the unenlightened past of our naïve forefathers. But beneath our magnificent campaign marching ever onward into the NEW (a word which has become unquestioningly synonymous with “good,” God knows how or why), there lurks a subtle fear – a fear planted deep in our cultural consciousness, operating unseen yet with supreme authority: the fear of the quiet.
Perhaps we fear that in facing the silence we may find the very existential unrest we are always so desperate to convince ourselves has been eliminated by our careful observance of the Law of the New; and that in the silence we might hear clearly an unwelcomed message of dissatisfaction, and that perhaps our own lives and modes of thinking are the things in need of change rather than the world around us.
Perhaps we are so averted to simply thinking, to really thinking, not because we fear we’d be wasting our time (the greatest of modern crimes) on unproductive silence, but because we fear we just might find answers waiting for us there. Indeed, it takes great courage to be quiet.
I can think of few venues better fit for the true practice of silence than my current occupation, working second shift at a steel factory. My job is immensely boring – literally, monotony down to a science. I normally work alone, long into the night, among the steady hum of machinery and the unwavering rhythms of my labor.
Despite how unendurable such a life may seem to many of my generation, I cite the above reflection as my champion defense. If true thought can be achieved here, the kind that does not merely wash over our superficial cognition and pass the next moment like a fleeting fad or just another New Idea, but which really penetrates the person and is allowed to abide, to take root, and to transform us for the better through lasting change of habit or worldview… then my job is indeed full of meaning.
So in answer to the many resounding pressures and promptings (however wishful or misplaced) from friends and peers, I’ll go ahead and use this blog to jot down some of the thoughts, reflections, philosophical ponderings, theological musings, and random strains of pensive considerations which I am often visited by and find myself tinkering with for hours on end in the delightfully monotonous silence of the factory. Special thanks to Joe Houde for braving the technological terrors and setting it up; we all have our fears to face and I dare not confront this one alone.
– Justin Seng
Look Before You Live 