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Lara Judah

Staff Writer

Take a second to listen to your surroundings. What can you hear? Perhaps it is the loud hum of the metro as you take the green line to school. Or maybe you’re reading this edition of The Plant in a busy cafe, the familiar hiss of coffee machines tickling your eardrums. Wherever we go, we are bound to be enveloped in an array of sounds — the scratching of pen against paper, the strident screech of your alarm clock, leaves crunching underfoot, planes roaring overhead.

Despite the substantial presence of noise in our lives, we often underestimate its impact on our well-being. In his recently published book Clamor, Chris Berdik investigates how our noisy world is affecting our health and concentration: “Increasingly, scientists are connecting the biological dots between noise exposure, chronic stress, and the physiological precursors of disease.”

And though we may not always be conscious of its impact, we still feel it. Berdik states that “sleep studies […] suggest that noise can splinter our slumber below the level of our conscious awareness, harming health even among people who claim not to be bothered.” Noise cannot physically enter your system as other pollutants can, but it is not wrong to think of it in a similar way — a toxin building up in your tissues with the passing of time. Studies have shown that chronic exposure to moderate-decibel noise have increased levels of cortisol in the bloodstreams of mice and humans, increasing blood pressure and inflammation in the body. Additionally, a meta-analysis of 14 studies established road traffic noise as a significant risk for cardiovascular disease.

Noise is, in fact, a pollutant, and its effects are most evident when contrasted to its opposite: silence. Think of the unexpected relief that is felt upon finally turning off your oven fan after cooking an extravagant meal, or stepping out of a packed concert venue into the still street, ears buzzing.

In a world full of noise, then, it is important to also reevaluate and perhaps even reclaim our relationship with silence. “There is tremendous value in quiet,” Berdik writes, “and the appetite for sonic refuge grows in tandem with rising volume.” And yet, when faced with quiet situations, we often find them awkward and uncomfortable. In conversation, we seek to bypass moments of silence by engaging in small talk, or even interrupting one another.

This is especially true in “speaking cultures,” which emphasize verbalization and talking quickly. Silence is avoided, as it can be perceived as a sign of disinterest or misunderstanding; it is seldom appreciated or conserved. On the other hand, “listening cultures” view silence as a sign of respect and reflection — it is something that is valued as an integral part of communication, rather than something to be avoided. “Speaking cultures” tend to be associated with individualistic societies, such as Germany, whereas “listening cultures” are more common in collectivist countries like Japan. A cross cultural study conducted in 2008 found that Japanese conversations contained more than four times the amount of pauses that German conversations exhibited.

Just as silence can be interpreted in various ways on a social level, we each possess our own individual relationship with silence as well.

In a 2003 interview, author David Foster Wallace mentioned that “it seems significant that we don’t want things to be quiet ever anymore.” Listening to music, for example, is an auditory experience that we seek to pair with everything that we do, filling our ears with sound as we cook, study, walk, and even sleep. However, there is still a part of ourselves that craves the long bouts of silence that are needed to properly digest our experiences, and it does not get fed when we are constantly surrounded by noise. As Wallace puts it, this “makes itself felt in the body in a kind of dread.”

Noise and silence can often be treated as mutually exclusive concepts, but their coexistence is vital. Just as a constant influx of noise can be exhaustive, so too can a prolonged period of silence start to feel suffocating. A healthy connection with our sonic environment starts with questioning our current relationship with noise and silence, and how we can reshape it in order to fully benefit from both of them. Our gentle moments of quiet reflection are just as important as those cacophonous social outings, and we could not fully appreciate one without the other. Though noise can pose harmful risks, through proper mitigation we can create an environment for ourselves that treats silence and noise not as auditory opponents, but rather two sides of the same coin.