Silence: when stillness becomes the lost art of contemplation

Source: Voices of stillness in the whirlpool of words

In the incessant clamor of the battle of opinions and views raging in Israeli society, it is fitting to remember those realms of consciousness that the clamor attempts to invade, yet which repeatedly repel the relentless assault of the media, politics, and even literature and poetry. The provinces of silence belong to those realms of consciousness that prefer stillness over clamor, as a central tool for shaping memory, forgetting, or identity. Silence is not forgetting. It may, in the course of time, become forgetting, if national memory so decrees, assuming that a collective memory or collective forgetting exists… The current generation is a generation of breaking silences in broader cultural senses. It is a generation of incessant chatter, whose members share with one another on Facebook every hint of an experience. The media's tireless search for thrills leads to heightened exposure and the amplification of guilt, sin, pain, or loss... Silences, to the extent that they exist, relate more to war anxiety, the exposure of fear, hesitation in battle, and mistakes that cost human lives. They also relate to the endurance of soldiers' camaraderie under conditions of distress. Today, it is difficult to find silences in civil society that extend beyond family drama. The norms have changed, the ethos has shifted. The time of silence is over.

(Anita Shapira, On Silence)

Explanation: When chatter prevents memory from taking shape

Prof. Anita Shapira describes the personal and collective internal war in the State of Israel, between speech and silence. The endless clamor of chatter in the country's tribal war leaves no room for silence, and without silence, memory cannot take shape, and naturally neither can identity. The endless talk never rests for a moment; it alters versions, moves along, and forgets yesterday's talk. There is no time for internalization, because one must speak and get excited, refresh and transform—and so identity and memory never crystalize, nor is there any forgetting. The only ones who fall silent are those with post-trauma, those who saw the killing fields and the distress of war; everyone else is on Facebook, babbling, putting up post after post, and nothing matters except the moment.

Perspective: Being inside things: the philosophy of silence

Stillness does not need words; it is a gathering inward into the things themselves, without verbal description. Speech leaves the speaker outside of things—talking about them but not being inside them—whereas silence allows one to step inside, into the things themselves, into internalization and intent. "Words exist for the sake of meaning, but once you have grasped the meaning, you can forget the words. If only I could find a person who has forgotten words, so I could exchange a word with them." (From Voices of the Earth, Zhuangzi). Hesitant, silent speech contains vast charges of meaning; a single word carries a wide semantic field, whereas lengthy words hold nothing beyond what is stated—no secret, no searching, and no depth. Silence nowadays, Shapira says, belongs to those who have lost the ability to speak, not because they are beyond words, but because they have lost the ability to be inside things, to live a real life, and are outside of reality.

Going Deeper: Speech as silence: the empathic dimension of communication

Girls begin talking sooner than boys, and their vocabulary is richer. As they grow up, they become more communicative than men and more adept at expressing their feelings. Studies have shown that women's skills surpass men's not only in verbal communication, but also in nonverbal communication, listening, decoding facial expressions, responsiveness, and understanding nuance.

Women's conversation, according to British-Jewish professor of psychology and psychiatry Simon Baron-Cohen, is collaborative, reciprocal, emotional, and considerate. A men's conversation might go like this: "I'm sorry, but you're wrong." What might be seen in women's discourse as a difference of opinion can be interpreted in men's discourse as a matter of fact, where there can only be one correct answer.

Prof. Baron-Cohen also argues that women are much more empathetic than men. And indeed, a recent study examining data from 90 countries conducted by the Hay Group found that women are perceived 45% more often than men as consistently demonstrating empathy.

The fact that women talk does not signify shallowness, because women also listen more. Speech is not merely a tool for explaining or requesting, but for communication, empathy, and consideration. It is everyday talk that is actually also silence: the talking is not the point; the connection is. The scientific reliability of the study matters less to us, because both men and women can benefit from the possibility of speaking—a kind of speech that does not create distance, but is inward, like meditation.

Culture: The art of silence: when the void fills with meaning

In the early 1950s, two good friends decided that silence contains sounds and images. One, John Cage, composed a musical piece whose score instructs the performer not to play their instrument at all for its entire duration. The piece lasts 4 minutes and 33 seconds, hence its title, 4′33″. The other, Robert Rauschenberg, painted in white on canvas—a series of paintings entirely composed of white on canvas. Various artists, from the late nineteenth century to the present day, have occasionally chosen to find art precisely in silence. Cage claimed that this was his most important work, and naturally faced sharp criticism alleging nihilism and charlatanism. (Noam Sheriff, "Concert Without Sounds," Maariv, 1982. From the National Library of Israel Archives).