Jabberwacky

Have you been way out in the countryside recently?  Other than the observation that the corn fields have been cut, I'll bet the quiet made an impression.  Before the Industrial Age, there must have been a lot less noise all around.  In some environments -- public places, cities, big stores -- for the sake of your inner balance you can try to tune it out, but you do expect it in those environments.  Why then do people consciously add to the cacaphony  seek it out and, it seems, need it?

I'm thinking about two things:  voluntarily listening to an endless stream of chatter from media which one could turn off, and voluntarily using that portable phone 16 hours a week (on average).  It's said we endure 4,000 to 5,000 advertisements a day, also.  Wouldn't those three things, going on constantly or simultaneously, drive any normal person nuts?  Once, on a bus trip, I had to listen to a woman talk for the entire three hours at, not with, her seatmate.  I could not possibly think of enough to talk about for three hours straight.

That's irritating, but jabber has been getting dangerous:  cell phone use in vehicles leads to 1.6 million crashes a year.  Pedestrian deaths and injuries are up significantly also, and here's how that happens:

And believe it or not, texting and driving is six times more likely to cause an accident than drunk driving.  So, what's so important about jabbering back and forth that you'd risk it all for?  It's a mystery to me, except that it might just be another example of addiction in humans -- which of course makes no sense either, but it's deep and wide in our species for sure.  I ran into two teachers from Texas recently, and they said their students are so tied to their phones they have ceased to learn much of anything, have no context outside of their bubble, and don't seem to know how to actually do things.  That's scary.

         Your ears are soft and small
         and listen to an old man not at all...

                             -- John Crowe Ransom