I suspect a yogi or other experienced meditator would have little problem exceeding that "record" of 45 minutes. And then there's the experience of John Cage, whose time in an anechoic chamber led him to eventually write his famous "silent" piece 4'33", and his various prose writings about how there is no such thing as silence.
That this is presented AS a problem by the journalist, or the lab itself, is a comment on how overstimulating our world has become: how addicted many people have become to being constantly stimulated by visual and auditory input, fed newsfeeds via the internet, listening to their MP3 players, radio, TV, etc. People live in a constant swarm of background sound, especially city people. It's no wonder they don't know how to cope with silence.
I suspect a yogi or other experienced meditator would have little problem exceeding that "record" of 45 minutes. And then there's the experience of John Cage, whose time in an anechoic chamber led him to eventually write his famous "silent" piece 4'33", and his various prose writings about how there is no such thing as silence.
ReplyDeleteThat this is presented AS a problem by the journalist, or the lab itself, is a comment on how overstimulating our world has become: how addicted many people have become to being constantly stimulated by visual and auditory input, fed newsfeeds via the internet, listening to their MP3 players, radio, TV, etc. People live in a constant swarm of background sound, especially city people. It's no wonder they don't know how to cope with silence.