Manifesto for Silence

Book excerpt: This book makes an urgent demand for silence. The ability to think, to reflect, and to create are all highly dependent on regular access to silence. Yet in today's noisy, 24/7 society silence and quiet are under threat. And the business world only makes this worse with cynical marketing strategies abusing the power of noise: ever-diminishing oases of calm are hard to find. Stuart Sim argues that we need more, not less, silence. He explains why silence matters, where it matters--in our environment, in religion, philosophy, the arts, literature and science - and why the human race will suffer if we do not make space for it. The confrontation between the politics of noise and the politics of silence affects all of us profoundly: we cannot stay neutral on this issue.