this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2024
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Such is the case with most things in language. We really are translating thought through an imperfect medium to reassemble it on the other side in someone else's brain. Linguistics being what it is that imperfection leads most of the time to pedantry. The idea of "silence" as an absense of sound translates very differently when you start looking at sound with the technological equivalent of a magnifying glass versus just the naked ear.
Well sure most lexicon discussions can turn into hair-splitting, but I would like to make a special case for the word 'silence' as a term with more than an average amount of emotional weight and semantic specificity.
Its use is often quite subjective while myopically considered obvious by the user, because it is intrinsically confusing. It can be very politically loaded when referring to reticence or censorship. In physics it's a problem of absolutes, and in psychology a phenomenological conundrum.
Then there's zen, sufism, and mystic shit like that. Rabbit holes and silent all the way down.
To the naked ear, silence is always relative to a previous soundscape, since even at the quietest moments you will still hear your heartbeat, breath, digestion. It's neurophysiology and psychology and philosophy and more when talking about silence to the naked ear, all using different definitions of the word.