The still small voice

Recently I read an online essay by reincarnation theorist Dick Sutphen. The title was "Everyone Is Soooo Angry." His point was that people seem to be angrier than ever. The essay was more than two years old, but unfortunately it seems to be even more true these days.

I was just out for a very short drive to run a simple errand. In the course of my ten-minute excursion I witnessed two examples of road rage. In one case a stressed-out driver in a hulking SUV was blasting his horn hysterically at someone who was hesitating to make a tricky left turn. In another case someone in a beat up hotrod tailgated another driver, jabbed his arm through the sunroof and gave him the finger, and finally swerved onto the gravel shoulder and passed him illegally on the right, blowing up a cloud of dirt.

Why are people so impatient, so frustrated, so prone to let their anger boil over in antisocial ways? It's not as if we have it bad right now. The economy is chugging along. There have been no domestic terrorist attacks since 2001. Crime statistics are down. People are living longer than ever. So why all the madness?

I'll throw out a hypothesis. Maybe anger simply builds up in the absence of any calm moments. And maybe there just isn't enough calmness or stillness in our lives today.

Because of the information revolution and related technological developments, we are bombarded with sensory data around the clock. We carry cell phones and pagers that, like ticking bombs, may go off at any time. We're hooked up to the Internet. We've got a hundred channels or more on our TV sets and hundreds of channels on our satellite radio systems. We plug ear buds into our ears and listen to iPods as we walk down the street. We're constantly playing phone tag with voicemail systems and answering machines, or exchanging e-mails or instant messages, or diving into chat rooms and message boards, or reading blogs that deliver angry or hysterical diatribes, or watching as talking heads scream at each other on 24-hour cable news channels, or listening to radio talk show hosts inveigh against the latest threat to the Constitution and our way of life.

Even if we relax into escapism by watching a TV sitcom, we find ourselves immersed in coarse humor, prurient jokes, and "edgy" attitudes, bracketed by streams of rapidfire ultraviolent commercials with flashing lights and stroboscopic imagery and pounding soundtracks. When we go for a drive, we've got one eye on the dashboard's digital readouts and another eye on the animated billboards flickering around us -- that is, if we're not chatting on our cell phones or even tapping in a text message while steering with our elbows.

The quintessentially American assumption that "more is better" has been applied to our lives with a vengeance. We have more TV, more phone calls, more e-mails, more faxes, more information and entertainment and noise and light coming at us in every waking moment. People complain about violent movies and TV shows and video games, but I think the content of entertainment is less important than the sheer quantity of images and sounds and opinions and facts and ideas with which we are inundated day in and day out, with no respite.

I once heard a political consultant say that when he was running a campaign he loved to fly commercial - because, for those few hours in the air, he was out of reach of any phone calls or other distractions and could just relax and think. But now there's talk of allowing people to use their cell phones even on airplanes. No escape! Imagine you're on a six-hour cross-country flight, crammed into a coach seat the size of a baby's stroller, while the passengers on either side of you scream nonstop into their cell phones. Air rage, anyone?

At some point, if we want to regain our collective sanity, we have to realize that uninterrupted exposure to sensory stimulation is not healthy. It gets us frazzled, agitated, nervous, jumpy, angry, even violent.

Convincing people of this is a hard sell. The very idea of relaxing in quiet solitude is anathema to our workaholic ethos. And yet the Hebrew Bible wisely tells us that God is found not in sound and fury, but in the "still small voice" we hear only in quiet interludes.

Not many of us are listening for that voice today. And it's making us crazy.

Comments

[Michael Prescott]

And here's a postscript - urinals that spout public service messages. What's next? Pillows that whisper advertisements to us in our sleep?

[william]

What is next? When I go to the grocery store and place my items on the belt those pieces of plastic that separate my items from the person ahead of me now have advertisements on them. As a favorite author of mine stated: “if the world were perfect where would you go to school.” Silence can be as deafening to our minds as a Harley Davison with straight pipes. By the way why are Harley riders allowed to ride their motorcycles with no mufflers? Could it be the power of paradigms? The public believes that Harleys are just loud. My lawnmower would be very loud without a muffler.

[DaiyoukaiOfTheNorth]

Heh, urinals that contain public service messages... personally, I'd put something funnier and more... poetic than anti-drunk driving messages on it. Like... "Two Shakes is all it takes!"... perhaps not as socially conscious, but I'm sure it would elicit some giggles and perhaps the odd guffaw from people. Or perhaps that's taking potty humour a bit too literally?

Also, this is rather off-topic, but since you initially mentioned mentioned reincarnation I thought this was as good a place as any to post this. Unfortunately, it seems that Ian Stevenson passed away on February 8th. Just thought I'd inform you, given that, if I recall correctly, you've mentioned him once or twice in earlier posts.

[cara]

I agree with you totally! Perhaps because we are so connected to machines most of the time we are becoming more machine-like. Our souls cry for stillness but our minds seem to be busy with continual thought. So we have forgotten how to reach that silent place within because we are so busy thinking. Why are we so afraid to just be still or for that matter, just be?

[Michael Prescott]

>Unfortunately, it seems that Ian Stevenson passed away on February 8th.

Thank you for the information. I was unaware of that. Stevenson had a long life and enjoyed vigorous health throughout most of it, and I hope that his passing was peaceful. I think he'll be remembered as a pioneer, and vindicated by future researchers.

[Ulysses]

The news about the passing of Ian Stevenson was published on the Paranormal Review site:
http://www.paranormalreview.com/
This is a good paranormal news site, BTW.
Curiously, Wikipedia was also updated very quickly:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Stevenson