Learning to Press Mute: The Study of a Society Fueled by Political Noise

Silence. Nothing but unabridged silence; the absence of noise, of hate, of war. Nature is at peace. You are at peace.

You’ve just created an image in your head, perhaps of a quiet stream of water yearning for its destination or a happy place in the woods, where the fracas of the outside world can’t penetrate the calm. Wherever your mind goes when it hears the word “silence,” it always seems so much better than where you are now.

Sometimes the closest thing we have to silence is imagining it. Often the noise is just too much to block from our minds. There’s always something happening: a jackhammer doing its job down the street, a plane flying overhead, or a noisy renovation upstairs. And in our modern world, background noise is only one category. It gets worse: the ceaseless shouting of politicians and activists throwing blame to the other side—and sensibility to the wind—is exhausting. I’ve heard enough of it.

I grew up listening to political podcasts. My dad would listen to them during his work or while driving, things he needed to do that day anyway. And for a long time, I treated them as simply background noise, until soon I was old enough to pay attention to their contents.

Some of the podcasts were interesting. They made me enjoy history in a way I never expected to. I learned to think critically about technology through the voices and perspectives of others who had studied the topic extensively. My dad would occasionally put on a podcast he knew I’d enjoy, whether about Greco-Roman mythology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, or whatever other topics interested me. But the other half of the podcasts were political. Right-wing commentators would spend an hour of their lives exposing the flawed ideas and ideologies of the left, and I would sit there wondering what the left would have to say about us. Spoiler alert: nothing good.

And then there was the ten-percent: that occasional Dan Bongino podcast consisting of forty-five minutes of relentless shouting. I’ve had at least one emotionally exhausting car ride listening to the mindless, outraged screams of these same commentators as they become a shell of their previously levelheaded selves. I’ve heard violent swears escape the running mouths of those who, five minutes later, profess the Christian faith, causing me to inwardly chuckle and think, “You’re a believer? Then why do you act like Democrats have no place in the kingdom of God?”

None of this is intended to paint my dad in a negative light. His interest in current events started in his childhood, when said events weren’t nearly as hideous and polarizing as they are today. This interest kickstarted a fruitful career in politics. Because of the nature of this career, my dad has had to interact with people who disagree, often strongly, with him, yet in his job he remains respectful and rational, always offering a listening ear. My dad no longer listens to Dan Bongino, and I couldn’t admire him more for it.

But there are others who do, and soon enough I began to see the world the same way I saw those commentators. Our country is filled with so much political noise that it drowns out truth—it drowns out love. We need love now, more than ever. We need to start seeing the brothers in our opponents, rather than throwing stones and pretending we’re infallible.

Noise is an issue. At the very root of the problem are the serious mental and physical health problems that come with overexposure to too much abrasive noise. According to a 2022 Harvard Medicine article, tinnitus and hearing loss make up the surface level of negative health implications (Dutchen). What people often fail to realize is that their mental health and cardiovascular diseases are all tied to an excess of sound.

But what makes an “excess”? How much is too much? It can be regular attendance of concerts, it can be an annoying life-of-the-party neighbor, or it can be a droning air-conditioning unit just a little too loud for comfort. Oftentimes, however, it can be something much worse, something that sticks with you for life.

A sizable percentage of American adults today grew up in homes where noise was the norm. Too many children today live in the shadow of abusive parents, who yell and shout to get their way with no love or consideration for those under them. Without knowing it, these parents have seared the next generation, creating a frontier for noise and a nation whose only instinct is to shout.

And shout it does. Debates used to be organized and sensible. Now, they’re simply a vehicle for political noise, a way for politicians and campaigners to dish it out in front of an audience, allowing their feelings to escape but never actually addressing the important issues facing our country. It truly is a “debate,” but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a “discussion.” Politicians scarcely listen to the other side speak, using alternate arguments to form and shape their own. Instead of critiquing ideas, we attack the people with those ideas. How many times have you heard the word “idiot” thrown around? In my case, every other day. But if you strip away the politics and think about it, calling someone names is never justified. Strip away the politics, and he who was previously an idiot is now just someone with flawed ideas. And what we often fail to realize is that, as sinners, we all have flawed ideas. We’re not the ultimate judge of what is right and wrong, true and untrue.

We can attack ideas, but never people. When people become our target, opponents become enemies. This is exactly what the modern movement of cancel culture is all about: people with hateful ideas become hateful people, and for the contempt we treat them with, they might as well be lepers. But cancel culture isn’t just a rejection of individuals. It’s a rejection of free speech, of rationality, and of justice. We’re a country built on the right to speak freely—at least, we’re supposed to be. But the second someone says something controversial, or otherwise not in line with what mainstream media thinks, it’s over. That individual is cut off from the world, their words and ideas no longer valued, and their existence as a citizen of this great country erased and ignored.

Political noise is literally a movement. And of course, social media is here for it.

We’ve all heard the rumors: social media algorithms are smarter than you are and know you better than you do. But they’re not rumors; they’re completely and totally true. Social media knows our generation is prone to outrage, and cancel culture is just one big dollar sign. Robert Smith wrote an article on USA Today about the gradual shift from careful criticism to blind outrage, and how algorithms target specific people with specific information so as to generate as much rage—and as much revenue—as possible (Smith).

And what happens when social media normalizes outrage? What happens when the very medium through which we experience the world nowadays perpetuates hatred? The negativity launches an earthquake, opening a chasm between Republican and Democrat, white and black, male and female, where before there was a bridge.

Let me say it again: noise is an issue. Noise is as much an issue as prejudice, mental health, you name it. This is our culture, and it’s wrong. The very core of our culture is fundamentally wrong. And why shouldn’t it be? We as humans are flawed and broken, and the group of sinners we gather together and call a “nation” will inevitably produce a culture that is likewise flawed and broken.

I wish that was the entire story. I wish that, out of all the terrible effects sin has had on God’s perfect creation, that division didn’t have to be one of them. I wish we could enjoy silence together from time to time, without having to worry about sending an entire household into disarray simply by turning on the news.

Alas, a deafening culture bent on outrage, opposition, and political correctness can only ever degrade, becoming inconducive to reason and judgment and all the while converting every individual to a fatal mindset of “us-versus-them.” With the snap of a finger, discourse becomes discord, free speech and justice become canceled, and popular opinion of Christianity plummets from the foundation of Western society to a hateful, exclusory religion. The remedy: a lifestyle that listens before it speaks and, above all, cherishes the value of not speaking at all.

It sounds like a utopia: a place where everyone thinks before they speak. As much as I wish it were that easy, there are quite a few steps to take before we can get to that point. The best place to start is the root of the problem: noise in its most basic form, as pollution.

“Noise pollution” is a commonplace yet obscure term in today’s society. You’ve likely heard it buzzing around the internet but have never paid much attention to it, much less wondered why the internet is talking about it. I was the same way, unsure of its existence and ignorant of its implications. Put short, noise pollution is the same concept as regular pollution: that noise, much like carbon dioxide gas, is encroaching on our daily lives while we are none the wiser. We don’t notice just how loud and abrasive a highway or a nearby train really is because they’re everyday occurrences, things we’re used to. Unfortunately, this also means we fail to notice the subconscious effects that a soaring airplane or roaring motorcycle has on our minds.

An article from the Brown Political Review references the history of Futurism, the artistic movement from the 19th-20th Century, which focuses on the technological advancements of the time and the everyday lives of the generations ahead (Harris). “Within the sounds and light of new industry,” Tristan Harris writes, “the Futurists optimistically sought new forms of experience.” As Luigi Russolo, a contemporary painter put it, Futurists were to “walk across a great modern metropolis with ears more attentive than eyes.” Futurists looked toward modern technology with a childlike optimism, something for which I admittedly feel envy in an age where technology is often corrupt.

“While the Futurist’s desire to inspire acceptance and admiration of frightening new machine age technologies is admirable,” Harris continues, “it is now hard to retrospectively look at the Futurists without noting their obliviousness to the pollution inherent in the technology for which they were calling.” I do agree with the author; Russolo and other futurists were indeed ignorant of the repercussions of such a noisy world. Little did they know that the noise they thought invigorating, we would hear as exhausting.

But the author misses a critically important point: we’re often just as oblivious as the Futurists to the noise that has now integrated itself into our day-to-day experience. Noise is pollution, not an epidemic; it’s a problem that’s rarely addressed because it’s so easy to miss. We’ve become desensitized to the sounds of our routine existence.

Only a few select individuals have taken action to bring light to this issue. Stephanie Dutchen, the manager of feature content and multimedia for the Harvard Medicine Magazine, writes that “the threats posed by noise remain ‘often underestimated,’ according to the International Commission on Biological Effects of Noise” (Dutchen). Researchers, in their efforts to raise awareness and find solutions, have linked noise to more than simply hearing loss. Think tinnitus, cardiovascular disease, obesity, cognitive deficits, attention deficits, the list goes on.

But perhaps the most striking in this list is the dent that noise pollution leaves in a passive listener’s mental health. Mathias Basner in his TED-Talk on the issue summarizes noise as “unwanted sound,” and claims that any sound which irritates you, either consciously or not, will cause stress (Basner). And because the mind is always listening, even while asleep, noise can cause brief, unconscious awakenings in the night that nevertheless can wreck your sleep schedule. And as we all know, a poor sleep schedule can have brutal health implications, both physical and mental.

In addition, Mark A. W. Andrews, a physiology professor at Seton Hill University,
remarks that droning background noise prompts the brain to excrete cortisol and hinder dopamine production. (Rugg and Andrews) Andrews writes that “excess cortisol impairs function in the prefrontal cortex—an emotional learning center that helps to regulate ‘executive’ functions such as planning, reasoning and impulse control.” Additional evidence suggests that the prefrontal cortex also plays a part in concentration and the storage of short-term memories, so a cortisol excess may also weaken the brain’s ability to retain information. Worse yet, all of this happens beneath our consciousness. We are so oblivious to the effects of background noise that we can’t even see how it affects our mind’s ability to function. Silence is a necessity so crucial yet so underestimated. Don’t lose hope, however. When faced with a threat to their everyday dose of silence, people fight. A trend emerges: individuals begin to realize that silence is a critical function of society.

In Stuart Sim’s book, Manifesto for Silence, he cites the phenomenon dubbed “Downtown Uproar,” in which the unique shapes of skyscrapers interact with wind to create a whistling or even screeching sound, actively disturbing those living nearby in apartment buildings. (24) “It does not help,” Sim writes, “that little has been published on the topic to guide architects and building engineers...a mere two conference papers and one journal article in the last 25 years, for example...” (25). Nonetheless, there has been retribution. The Cityspire Building in Manhattan once interacted with the wind in such a way that the louvers at the pinnacle of the skyscraper generated a screeching noise reminiscent of an air-raid siren. Soon enough, the owners were fined for nothing other than noise pollution. The building’s designers tweaked the louvers, redesigning them to mitigate the noise.

But not everyone is an architect, or an engineer. Not everyone gets a chance to see (or hear) the issue up close, or make executive decisions. Often, the people who recognize the problem are the ones with the power to change it, and though their efforts are much appreciated, they’re scarcely enough. The battlefield against noise is empty without the support of the general public.

In 2016, London’s Heathrow airport announced plans for a third runway, and immediately the residents of nearby neighborhoods gathered in protest of the apparent assault on silence (Fraser). “London is already one of the noisiest cities in the world,” Giles Fraser writes, “a beleaguered environment of continual mechanical roar and clatter.” Not only this, but he circles the argument back to the psychological. “[T]hose living under the flight path...will suffer long-term consequences for their health, and children in schools will find it more difficult to concentrate.”

Silence is necessary. The people know this. It’s not only a necessity in our cities and communities but in our lives. Prayer flourishes in silence. Creativity flourishes in silence. Why do teachers require that their students be silent during tests? Because noise inhibits concentration, and pulls your focus away from the end goal. Silence, on the other hand, lends itself to a focused mind. “Silence is not a luxury,” Fraser writes. “It is crucial to our physical and mental health. We need it to think, to sleep, to recover from life’s frenzy.”

I couldn’t agree more. More than once, I’ve found myself unnerved by the surrounding noise, as though the TV turned on downstairs somehow had the capacity to harm me if left on for too long. More than once the silence of being awake late at night has caught my attention. I would sit and simply take in the silence, forgetting the troubles of the day behind me and the anxieties of the day ahead.

I’ve always preferred the dark. Nighttime is downtime, and downtime means quiet. It’s almost like God himself set the day and night in motion, reserving the nighttime for human rest. It’s almost like God himself intentionally subjected us to nightly silence. If that were true, then why do we fill each and every night with parties, deafening karaoke, and earsplitting concerts? Why do we feel the need to “light up the night?” It’s dark for a reason. It’s silent for a reason. Instead of interspersing the regulation, hustle, and abrasive noise of the daytime with more abrasive noise by night, why not use the downtime to decompress? Why not enjoy being alone with God and His soul-refreshing silence? It really does sound like paradise: a time when all the world is at peace, and you are just one partaker of the collective silence, relishing God’s quiet yet ever-present love.

Sadly, the world does not work like this. It seems as though the world runs on noise— and not just the noise of a high-speed freeway or a concert hall booked to the brim. Lately, it seems as though the world runs on the very noise we scream from our throats, calling for the condemnation of the other side as though everything would be better if they were eliminated from the picture. Whatever happened to being rational? Whatever happened to thinking things through before we say them?

We’ve all heard the adage. “If you don’t have anything kind to say, don’t say anything at all.” I have a rocky relationship with this saying—kindness and truth don’t always overlap. Sometimes, the other person may interpret the harsh truth as offensive, or overly critical. And in a society where so many things have gone wrong, so many truths derailed and erased from the popular mindset, now more than ever there is a gateway for people to tell the truth.

And tell the truth they have. But often this comes in the form of rants, out-of-pocket jabs, and just about any other invective you could think of. Imagine if, instead of this unrelenting “honesty,” we took after Jesus and balanced the truth with grace. As Psalm 86 says, “O God, insolent men have risen up against me; a band of ruthless men seeks my life, and they do not set you before them. But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (English Standard Version, Ps. 86:14-17).

Notice the distinction: the insolent fail to set God first, but David immediately highlights God’s grace, only suggesting retribution for such men two verses later. This is an important point: retribution is not the priority. Winning is not the priority. Grace is the priority. We can and should tell the truth. But it should always be for the sake of understanding and exposing the other side’s flawed ideas, never to stomp them into the dust. Political noise, however, is the pinnacle of the latter.

To step into the discussion on political noise, it’s necessary to first understand it. Why is political noise such a serious issue? Why does noise seem to be everywhere at the same time? It can’t be that over the past five or so decades we’ve simply decided to be angry at each other. The story doesn’t start in year 2020. The story doesn’t start with individuals or families, but at the moment, that’s at least where the discussion starts.

In an article for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, author Hilary Jacobs Hendel shares her experience consulting a woman by the name of Marta, who grew up under the shadow of a verbally abusive mother. The catch is, Marta was never attacked physically, only yelled at (Hendel). Nevertheless, the shrill, deafening screams and the hateful expression on her mother’s face traumatized her even into adulthood. Marta also noted the “flip of the switch” phenomenon—how her mother unpredictably became “someone else” in the blink of an eye.

It's not just abusive parents or a troubling home life. I’ve seen this phenomenon everywhere, as otherwise perfectly respectable people become outraged, unrecognizable shells of themselves in an instant. What follows is a shrill tone of voice and a look on one’s face of a sinful, unnatural hatred for someone else. Five minutes later, after all their feelings have escaped, they go back to their lives, emulating all the kindness that’s expected of them.

Hendel brings up an interesting point. When we’re surrounded by yelling, our brain excretes stress hormones like cortisol both into the brain (primarily the prefrontal cortex) and into the bloodstream, which can cause plenty of cardiovascular problems and obesity later in life. And because “the brain wires according to our experiences,” we hear the voice of our abusers again and again, even long after we’ve left the home (Hendel). The brain has been seared, its neural pathways formed, and that abuse is all we know. We are conditioned to shout from a young age, despite knowing and feeling the trauma—despite knowing this is wrong.

Let me say it again: we are literally wired to shout.

But that’s not all of us, right? Many of us are fortunate enough to have grown to adulthood in a home with decently loving parents. But no amount of love can—nor should— shield us from the hard truths of the world forever. Outrage is everywhere, and as it becomes increasingly prevalent, it becomes increasingly effortless to join the ranks at any age. If we are conditioned by our surroundings, and our surroundings consist of so much division, it can be hard not to take part.

That certainly doesn’t mean we enjoy it, however. In fact, just the opposite. The growing majority of Americans find themselves dissatisfied with politics as a whole, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center (“Americans’ Dismal Views”). The survey asked United States citizens to describe the entire political system in just one word. The most common response? “Divisive,” with “corrupt,” “messy,” and “chaos” rounding out the top answers. Sixty- five percent of Americans say they feel exhausted just thinking about politics. Over half of us feel angry. Less than ten percent claim to feel hopeful or excited. And a dismaying 28% express discontent with both political parties. It’s clear I’m not the only one who dislikes politics, yet we all participate, engaging in this cycle of exhaustion and resentment toward ourselves, each other, and the political system. Unsurprisingly, both the causes and effects both have to do with mental health.

A study at the University of Toronto concluded that “the political is very much personal— a pattern with powerful consequences for people’s daily lives” (Arranz). As with the Pew Research Center’s study, the author writes that simply thinking about politics or current events arouses negative emotions, “even when [participants] were asked not to think about negative political events.”

These negative emotions are the same ones we feel when watching the news or reading an online magazine. And what happens when we’re exposed to those feelings all day and every day? They become chronic. With each day comes a new blow on our mental health, until we’re not even aware of the problem anymore. We consume and we don’t think. We respond and we don’t think. We fight the other side as an outlet for the quiet battle taking place in our souls. We think the real skirmish takes place up there, in the political battlefront, but the truth is that our souls are just as turmoiled as Washington, D.C.

And with such troubling mindsets, there are some of us who live election-to-election. Immediately after an official we dislike is elected to high power, we begin wondering how long they’ll last, and how the next President could undo their mistakes. And when an official we like wins the race, we wonder how the next President could undo their triumphs. When the President of the U.S. is inept to lead just because they’re from the other party, another brick is added to the wall which divides the left and right. Campaigns for the 2024 Presidential Election are in full swing, and outlook is already bleak.

In hindsight, the controversial 2016 election was a lose-lose situation—a negative-sum game (Bush). “When you looked at voters who disliked both candidates, Trump did better,” says Republican pollster Robert Blizzard. The same is true for Biden in 2020. Similarly, Blizzard predicts that “voters [will be] going to the polls in a sizable portion picking the lesser of two evils...This will be the most negative, aggressive, disgusting presidential campaign of all time.” That’s a bold claim, but Blizzard says it with confidence. “It’ll be a race to the bottom.” Scary thought, huh? That America is spiraling, its candidates racing to defame the other, gain the advantage, and win at the expense of the other side. No wonder we’re overcome with such dissatisfaction.

But it’s not just the candidates. Animosity toward the opposing party is everywhere. In recent years, reason and sound judgment has been replaced by outrage and blaming. Two centuries ago, debates were sensible and informative, and noise from either the candidates or the crowd was discouraged. Nowadays, noise is normative. It’s accepted as a viable means of communication in circumstances where it’s plainly not. And when I think of current-day examples, there’s none more prominent than cancel culture.

I especially disliked hearing the term back when it was on the rise, partially because I was unsure what it meant. Cancel culture refers to the mass rejection of individuals based on things they’ve said that mainstream media deems “problematic” or “hateful.” To be canceled is to be cut off from the world outside of your own will, no longer welcome to speak. It’s the ultimate defense mechanism. In his book Cancel Culture: The Latest Attack on Free Speech and Due Process, political author Alan Dershowitz references the phrase, “free speech for me but not for thee” (31). It is senseless to express your opinion freely while shutting down someone else’s right to free speech, something we all in this country enjoy and often take for granted.

That said, there are veritable exceptions to the right to free speech, as in the case of shouting “fire” in a crowded, yet otherwise perfectly safe, building (Dershowitz 33). It sounds like a harmless prank, until those around you are thrown into a very real panic, endangering lives. The difference is that advocates of cancelation expand those exceptions. Now, offensive speech is considered an abuse of First Amendment rights, just as much as a riot, as shouting “fire.” And the cancelers are the victims.

In the chess game of cancel culture, being the victim is like converting a pawn to a queen. Suddenly, you’re the one in the most powerful position, with control over the board. You can decide what offends you, and what gets people canceled. “They call it ‘hate speech,’ but what constitutes hate is in the eye of the beholder,” Dershowitz writes, “and the Supreme Court has ruled that hate speech is within the core protection of the First Amendment.

Well, so is Christianity. Yet that, even as a faith shared by almost a third of the world, seems to have been canceled as well. We as Christians disagree with the practice of homosexuality, and that is seen as a widespread rejection of homosexuals as people. We believe in the inherent value of unborn life, but that is perceived as a sexist move against a woman’s right to choose her own path.

It's easy to throw rationality to the wind when you’re the victim. It’s easy to rally others behind your cause. It’s easy to take to the battleground of emotions—particularly negative ones such as rage and indignation. Author and speaker Joe Dallas writes that “our cultural landscape is becoming less reasonable and more risky because this is the age of the Tantrum, not the Adult” (21). This is tangible; this is now. Too many Christians nowadays land themselves in hot water simply by expressing their countercultural beliefs. So, how do we react? According to Dallas, there are right ways and there are wrong ways.

Christians are not immune to culture. When faced with opposition, with outrage, it can be difficult to stay calm, and altogether effortless to give in and join the ranks. This is a phenomenon that Dallas calls “raving,” when a switch flips and sharing the gospel becomes a war where the only objective is to win. “When we’re pushed too far,” he writes, “it’s easy to...lose interest in winning others to Christ. Instead, we just get hooked on winning, rhetorically and politically.”

Then, there’s the opposite tendency, called “caving.” Though being kind and friendly toward unbelievers is biblical, it is of low priority in comparison to integrity and honesty. Softening the truth in favor of getting along is not short of sin. It’s allowing fear to take over: fear of conflict, consequences, or both. Dallas tells the story of Lauren Daigle, a Christian artist who, when asked during an interview on the sinful nature of homosexuality, found that she could not give an answer (qtd. Dallas 29). “In a sense,” she says, “I have too many people that I love that are homosexual...I just say read the Bible and find out for yourself.”

Why is this a problem? Raving wins, caving gets along. It sounds like the best of both worlds. The issue is that, in both extremes, we return to the world where we don’t belong. As we match the raving of the masses, we join them in their outrage. And as we relent and merge biblical doctrine with worldly falsehood, our worldview becomes blurred. We pick apart the cohesive narrative of Scripture by giving in. Think back to the grace-versus-truth argument. Give your opponent an avenue to the redeeming grace and love of God. Get along, be kind, but never sacrifice the harsh, unpopular truths for the sake of getting along.

Sometimes, this can be even more difficult online, hiding behind the safeguard of anonymity. Cancel culture is often more widespread on social media than in the real world because we’re exposed to more current events than just those occurring around us. There’s more to be angry about, more celebrities with hateful viewpoints to cancel. So it’s no wonder that social media often shapes itself to fit the movement of outrage that it’s being employed for.

Neil Postman, in his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death, puts forth the then-wild claim that “the content of much of our public discourse has become dangerous nonsense” (16). We speak in nonsense, debate over the smallest things, join in on the stampede of online outrage until it’s all we know how to do. Amusing Ourselves to Death was written in 1985, and its subject is not social media, but show business. And yet, it remains applicable to today, perhaps now more than ever.

Social media is self-aware—perhaps not in the same way as a sapient human being, but the intelligence of the algorithms running our feeds is impressive. However, “impressive” doesn’t always equal “beneficial” or “considerate.” In fact, social media is often just the opposite. On USA Today, leading up to the 2020 Presidential election, Robert Elliot Smith wrote an article about this very subject, claiming that political polarization is fueled by what we see online (Smith). The catch is, my feed and your feed are not the same. Given any two social media users, the information the algorithm allows them to see will change based on where they are and who they are. A “recommended” page on a social media platform is indeed a window into reality, but it’s a window for your eyes only: “a constantly shifting mirage,” Elliot says, “evolving in real-time, depending on my likes and dislikes, what I click on, and what I share.”

According to the Pew Research Center, black users tend to receive more news relating to race. Why? Because it interests them; it’s personal to them. Our media feeds are curated to engage us, and often that means targeting us with information that ruffles our feathers a little too much. Hence the outrage begins and snowballs as the news is shared and re-shared with like- minded individuals. Another article on The Conversation agrees: “content that sparks an emotional response—positive or negative—is more likely to go viral” (Susarla). Out there waits a surplus of information, but only a small portion of that can be presented to any one person. And because keeping users engaged is the number one priority, each link is crucial, each image an emotional trigger. From just one post, the outrage spreads. We are trained not to think, simply to shout. Ashley Charles writes that “when we’re online...we are habitual conformists, willing to follow the crowd off a cliff. We don’t fact-check or question. We repost and agree” (Charles 92). The algorithms don’t care. They know us inside and out. They’re designed to treat each account as a dollar sign, not as a person. Each account is an abstract, faceless source of money, something that the algorithm must keep invested to earn as much revenue as possible. So what if we damage their mental health in the process?

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not angry at the algorithms, the engineers behind them, or the companies paying the engineers. They’re simply doing their job. It truly is an impressive feat, more so a marketing strategy. The issue arises when we spend so much time on social media, exposed to this rampant polarization, that we become conditioned to do the same whenever we experience something similar in the real world. We conflate with the real world the limited window of reality and truth we receive online, until that polarization is all we see.

God’s everyday graces become secondary to noise. His love for you, and subsequently your love for others, is obscured by political correctness. Reason—the element of our very nature that separates us from the animals beneath us—is put aside for the sake of being right. Argument has given way to argument.

There is a time and place for anger. But it should come after the facts have been checked and the accusation’s validity verified. Discern whether anger is worth it: perhaps our world would be quieter if we recognized that some things just don’t matter. Often, what we see as an offense is really insignificant, both to you and to others. Instead of assuming anything that aggravates you is justifiably outrageous, give that outrage a checklist. Calm down and check the facts.

Take the case of Julie Zimmerman. A video released from the National Mall in Washington showed several white boys racially harassing an older black drummer, and by that night the video had gone viral (Vedantam). Naturally, Zimmerman hopped onto the bandwagon. Soon after, a longer video was released showing that the exact opposite was the case: an unseen group of protestors alongside the black man had been the ones harassing the students. Julie Zimmerman wrote an article for The Atlantic detailing the situation and apologizing for her initial response. “I was afraid to tell people, initially,” Zimmerman said, “that I had changed my mind, which is crazy.... But I knew some people would be upset because it’s as though you’re giving your enemy ammunition....” Apologizing is a difficult thing to do, even in the real world. Some rare individuals may understand, but what’s to stop the rest from jumping on you for “ammunition,” as she calls it?

Just as anger has its place, so too does noise. None of this is to say that political involvement is a sin, that being a force for good in the outside world is secondary to the stress it causes. The authors of the University of Toronto study agree that politics, in and of itself, is not the problem. “Far from encouraging political apathy, the authors stress the importance of contemplating the mental health costs of political commitment...” (Arranz).

Furthermore, the authors note the difference between active and passive political involvement. In the words of Matthew Feinberg, co-author of the study, “The passive consumption of political noise negatively affects mental health.” Passive involvement is draining, conditioning you subconsciously to contribute to the noise. Active participation, however, means finding ways to change things in your sphere of influence, however far-reaching that may be, while also taking time for silence and solitude. Healthy disengagement is crucial for healthy engagement. You cannot have one without the other.

But what is silence? Is it simply the absence of noise? A choice to step back? In 2016, Andrew Sullivan wrote an essay called, “I Used to be a Human Being,” about the nature of modern interconnectivity and the ongoing spiritual degradation we’ve been experiencing since the release of the smartphone. For fifteen years, he had been “living on the web,” as he calls it (Sullivan). With the need to course correct weighing heavily on him, he attended a weeklong session of guided meditation. His phone was confiscated, and few words were spoken to him. He began to notice things again, to pay attention to nature rather than to a screen. His humanity restored; he felt freer than he ever had, relishing in his silent corner of the world.

The threat of noise “is not so much to our minds, even as they shape-shift under the pressure. The threat is to our souls.” Under the ceaseless waves of noise, spiritual health takes as much of the brunt as mental health. Our soul steadily weakens under the onslaught. “At this rate, if the noise does not relent, we might even forget we have [a soul].” The only way to replenish our spiritual health is to take time alone with God, savoring the gift of His silence. And never more does the absence of physical noise feel more like the gift it is than at the end of a long day, filled with the hustle and hurry of day-to-day life. Neil Postman, in reference to Lewis Mumford’s book Technics and Civilization, wrote, “[B]eginning in the fourteenth century, the clock made us into time-keepers, and then time-savers, and now time-servers” (11).

In fact, hurry has its own connections with noise. According to pastor John Mark Comer, our culture’s number-one roadblock is not distraction, but hurry: the turmoiled spiritual life (19). The similarities between noise and hurry are striking. Think of a parent who transforms into an outraged shell of themselves piling their kids into the car on their way to church on Sunday: a clear example of that “flip-of-the-switch” phenomenon.

Silence is the remedy for distraction, hurry, and ultimately noise. To answer the question, I would argue that silence is not the absence of noise; noise is the absence of silence. Noise, and our unrelenting involvement in it, is a rejection of God’s gift of silence—and it’s the norm. We think of willfully being silent as a weakness, a mistake, a tragic flaw in one’s capacity to express themselves. The choice to stay silent, however, is a choice not to engage; not to fight. The choice to stay silent is one which we are forced to make, and one which often doesn’t have a clear answer. Sometimes fighting for what’s right takes priority over getting along. But tearing each other down? That never takes priority. Truth is just one side of a two-faced coin with grace as its tails.

If only the online world stepped out of the refuge of anonymity and learned the value of grace and truth. Perhaps then, the snide, supposedly harmless remarks aimed at the opposing party would grow fewer and further between. Perhaps then, we’d be slower to cancel and quicker to forgive. Alas, political noise rages on, transcending the merely political. Now, everything you do or say becomes ammunition.

How do we react? The cacophony of a thousand voices, all of them seldom saying anything of value, is simultaneously growing more prevalent and less unified, an entropy on the state of our politics—and our souls. Noise encroaches on our lives, the hatred banging back and forth, ever louder, ever closer. With every day comes a new crash, an explosion of content, of information, a new war to wage, an argument to win, a human to reject.

“Where’s the mute button?” I often find myself asking. Is there anywhere on earth where silence prevails, where this worldly chaos is unwelcome? Wherever God is, there will be the source of calm. Silence, as with His gifts of grace and love, flows from Him. Take time to be present with God, and there you will find silence and peace. There you will find life again, as it was meant to be: quiet, loving, life-giving.

In a society run by and bent on political noise, this is how we learn to press mute.

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