Talk Cheapens
On the Value of Silence
There is something garish about our garrulous society. Everything can be talked about, and everything is. No experience is so private, so personal, so serious, or so sacred that it cannot be endlessly dissected, vivisected, violated, and exposed. This strikes me as a distinctly ugly and unseemly way to live. Better and more beautiful was the attitude of the ancients, well described by Pierre Hadot on page 174 of his Selected Writings:
Generally speaking, from the fact that the ancients spoke little, or at least with great sobriety, about certain experiences that we moderns describe with such emphasis and abundance, we must not conclude that they did not live these experiences, or that they experienced them only in a vague and imperfect manner. On the contrary, it is this half-silence which betrays the importance that such experiences had for them. There was in ancient culture a tendency to remain silent about what was essential.
Someone will quote Wittgenstein: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.” Yet there is a vast distance between his “cannot” and the “should not” of the ancients.
Talk cheapens.
I hear you.😉
Yet, monkeys swing a lot because they’re good at swinging and birds fly a lot because they’re good at flying; it makes sense we’d do a lot of talking because we’re good at language. The real mystery is why so much of our speech is unsatisfactory. But a friend of mine who had been a monk for awhile tried the silent practice for about three months. He hated it. Go figure.😏
I come from a culture of talkers, story tellers, soapboxers, opinionated about everything, who speak without thinking, and commander conversations, which they consider battles to win or lose. So, I talk too much, but now I know it, and, working to get better.
My husband is a well-mannered watcher and listener. When he first met my father, my dad talked, nonstop, for five hours. Never asked Leif a question nor invited a response. I was there. When I chastised Dad, he said - Well, Leif plans to be part of the family, he better learn to interrupt.