Aldous Huxley On Silence

The twentieth century is, among other things, the Age of Noise. Physical noise, mental noise and noise of
desire -- we hold history's record for all of them. And no wonder; for all the resources of our almost
miraculous technology have been thrown into the current assault against silence. That most popular and
influential of all recent inventions, the radio is nothing but a conduit through which pre-fabricated
din can flow into our homes. And this din goes far deeper, of course, than the eardrums. It penetrates the
mind, filling it with a babel of distractions, blasts of corybantic or sentimental music, continually repeated
doses of drama that bring no catharsis, but usually create a craving for daily or even hourly emotional
enemas. And where, as in most countries, the broadcasting stations support themselves by selling
time to advertisers, the noise is carried from the ear, through the realms of phantasy, knowledge and
feeling to the ego's core of wish and desire. Spoken or printed, broadcast over the ether or on wood-pulp, all
advertising copy has but one purpose -- to prevent the will from ever achieving silence. Desirelessness is
the condition of deliverance and illumination. The condition of an expanding and technologically
progressive system of mass production is universa craving. Advertising is the organized effort to extend
and intensify the workings of that force, which (as all the saints and teachers of all the higher religions have
always taught) is the principal cause of suffering and wrong-doing and the greatest obstacle between the
human soul and its Divine Ground.

Aldous Huxley
(written in 1946)