#433： The Adventure of Silence
Episode Stats
Summary
Arlene Kage was the first person to walk to the North Pole, the South Pole, and Mount Everest alone. She s also the author of the new book, Silence in the Age of Noise. In this episode, Arlene talks about the value of silence, and why we need more space for quietude in our lives.
Transcript
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offer today. Don't miss this. Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of The Art of
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Manliness podcast. We live in an age of noise, not just audible noise, but visual noise as well.
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Seems like you can't go anywhere these days without something or someone buying for your attention.
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My guest today thinks all this noise has made us a bit crazy and that we need to recapture the power
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of silence in our lives. He came to this realization while traveling alone by foot for 50 days to the
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South Pole. Since having that experience of what he initially found to be a disturbing level of
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silence, he thinks that other people need more space for quietude in their lives. His name is
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Arlene Kage. He's an adventurer, philosopher, and the author of the book Silence in the Age of Noise.
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Today on the show, Arlene shares his adventures of being the first person to the walk to the North Pole,
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the South Pole, and Mount Everest alone, and why he thinks adventure is within reach of anyone who
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desires it. We also discuss why creating intentional friction and discomfort is a necessity in our
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modern world. We then shift gears to discussing the exploration of a different kind of terrain,
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that is silence. Arlene shares what experiencing the silence of being alone in the South Pole is like,
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what philosophers have said about silence, why people should embrace the challenge of seeking
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silence, and how to find it even in our noisy modern world. After the show's over,
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check out the show notes at aom.is slash silence.
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So you have a new book out called Silence in the Age of Noise, where you philosophize about silence. But
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what's interesting about you, you have an interesting background, because besides being a philosopher,
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a writer, you're also an explorer and adventurer. You were the first person to complete the Three
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Poles Challenge. For those who aren't familiar with that, what is the Three Poles Challenge?
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It is the North Pole, South Pole, and Mount Everest, which is called the Third Pole. So I guess the Third
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Pole was something the Brits came up with when the Brits managed to reach the North Pole,
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South Pole. They invented the name Third Pole for Mount Everest. So yes, I was the first to get to
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On foot. And I'm curious, what led you to exploring? Was this something you always wanted to do as a
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child? Or was there a moment in your young adult life where you thought, it's a good idea to go
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by foot to the North, South Pole, and Mount Everest?
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I think we're all born explorers in the sense that when I look at my own kids or other kids,
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you know, they want to have more space around themselves. They're wondering what's hidden
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behind the door. And, you know, we'd like to see what's beyond the horizon. So I think, you know,
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we're all born in that way. But somehow, when we grow up already when we're three, four, five years old,
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that spirit start to diminish because we have so many expectations from parents, friends,
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not to mention schools. So, but it never goes to zero. So, but it's, it's slowly diminishes
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through early life and through your teenagers. But somehow, I kept that spirit. It's enterprise of,
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a spirit of enterprise. And I kept on dreaming about seeing the world.
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And besides those feats, have you done anything else? Explored any other mountaintops or
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Yes. Through the 80s and the first half of the 90s, I sailed across the oceans, like the Atlantic
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Ocean a couple of times. I sailed from New York to Panama and down all the southwards,
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down to Antarctica next to South America. And I did long hikes. I went to many mountains.
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I did all kinds of adventures. And I think, you know, it's life is very much about
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fulfilling, fulfilling your own potentials. And for me, curiosity has always been a very
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important thing. So, yes, I kept on doing it. And I still do some of it.
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And what's interesting, too, during this time, you were also working as an attorney, as a lawyer.
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So, I mean, how did you balance all your adventuring with your work a day life? I mean,
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Yes. I think, you know, obviously, I traveled to many remote areas, but I also traveled to
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many cities and met people throughout the world. And my experience is that most people underestimate
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their own possibilities in life, put too many limits on themselves. Of course, some people
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overestimate themselves, but I think most common thing is that people don't see their own
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possibilities in life. And as I said, for a while, I worked as a lawyer. I enjoyed it,
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but it was not for me kind of to sit in the backseat and try to tell people what to do,
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mainly after they did some mistakes. I enjoyed it. And yes, I also got three teenage daughters.
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Obviously, I'm not living with the mother, but she's living in the next street here in Norway. So,
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I have my daughters living with me half the time. And that's, of course, that's kind of the
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fourth pole, even more demanding than the three first poles. But, you know, that also gives life
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Yeah. So, yeah, I think a lot of people, when they hear, because we've had other adventurers and
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explorers on the show, and a lot of these guys, they don't do it full-time. They also have day
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jobs. And what you said about not putting limitations on you, they all say that too,
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is that if you really want to do something, you can make it happen for you if you really
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Yeah, I think that's a very good attitude in a sense that some people say, I think maybe the
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most important and most common thing I heard as a kid was that, you know, this is not possible,
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you can't do this, you're not going to succeed, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And somehow,
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it's just as, you know, correct to say to a kid that, you know, this is impossible, or everything
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is impossible, as to tell a kid that everything is possible. But somehow, I never listened to those
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people who said that this, you know, you will never succeed. Of course, sometimes they were
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right, but quite often, they were incorrect. And I think that's, you know, that's, that's an
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experience that we explorers kind of have in common. But I also think it's an experience
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that, you know, most people have in common, that if you first decide to go for something,
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and you're also willing to suffer on the way, it's quite likely you will reach a goal.
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So after you completed the Three Pulse Challenge, you decided to attend Cambridge University to study
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philosophy. Was there something about those adventures that led you to start studying
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philosophy? Or was that something you always wanted to do?
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I think life very much about curiosity. I try to keep up my curiosity. It's very easy to forget
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in a daily grind in life, because of some of the things that kind of seems more important than to
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explore your own mind, try to understand and getting to know yourself and also try to
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fulfill your own potentials. But fortunately, after being on expeditions for years, and I also
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became the first to walk alone to the South Pole, which was kind of a believed experience for me to
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walk in total solitude for 50 days and nights without any radio contact under midnight sun. And especially
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after that expedition, I felt more for exploring my own mind. And then I was fortunate to become a
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so-called visiting scholar to Cambridge and read philosophy for a year. I think it's in one way,
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although it doesn't have the physical dimension, I think it's still some of the same challenges as I
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met as being an explorer, putting one foot in front of the other.
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What kind of philosophy were you focusing on while you're at Cambridge?
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I was focusing on moral philosophy, because my supervisor at the time, that was his field.
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But for me, it was more about testing my limits, trying to understand, try to dig into something,
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which I found really complicated. And I'm a strong believer in making life more difficult than
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necessary. Obviously, if you're born in Southern Sudan, you don't need to have that attitude,
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because life is extremely difficult. But living in Norway, which, you know, in the Western world,
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I think it's important to voluntarily make your life more difficult than it has to be.
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Why is that? Is it because we atrophy if we don't? What do you think about that?
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Yeah, I think it's because I think it's because the kind of the struggle to survive, to have a fairly
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good life, material-wise, that you have a place to live, which is okay, at least. And you also know
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that you're going to have sufficient of food every day. In Norway, you probably get a job. So in that
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sense, many of the things that used to be a struggle a hundred years ago in my country is now kind of
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something obvious. It's something that most people experience. But I think we're born in a way that
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we want to explore. We want to suffer a little bit. We need to suffer a little bit to reach our goals.
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We need to, if life becomes too easy, it somehow feels meaningless. And life is very easily, you know,
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filled up with boredom. Not boredom in the sense that I had as a kid that there was nothing to do,
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that I was, and boredom was about being left out, not having anyone to play with. Nothing was happening.
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It was about sadness. But when I look around today in 2018, boredom is very much about having too much
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to do. It's too many TV series, games, apps, Instagram, Snap, Facebook, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
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But that's another form of boredom. And those two boredoms are quite, you know, the result is quite the
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same, that life feels empty. And you get this feeling that life moves very fast, that life is
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very short. And I think life is short if you do the same things and kind of meaningless things every
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day. While I think if you turn around and start to do more difficult things, challenge yourself,
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have more variety in life, then life doesn't feel short anymore. Life feels long.
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That's a nice segue to my next question, or to your book, discussing your book, Silence.
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You mentioned this boredom, other type of boredom, where there's too much going on in our lives,
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too much noise. And silence is the antidote. So before we discuss the benefits of silence,
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how do you define silence? Is it simply the absence of sound, or is it something bigger than that?
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Yeah, it's, when I sat down to write this book, which doesn't have that many words,
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but I still spent a year and a half to write it, and in my life so far, the experiences to be able
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to do it. I was focusing on silence as no sounds, being a quiet place. But after a while, I understood
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that the most silence is the inner silence, not silence that surrounds you, but silence in your
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mind. And at the time, I had, as I said, three teenage daughters. And I understood that those girls,
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they did not know what silence is at all. Their life is filled up with noise. Not noise in the sense of
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sounds, but noise in the sense of distractions throughout the whole day, that are always connected.
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They're always living through a device. They kind of always try to be someone who they are not.
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And they have all these expectations about being part of something and living through other people.
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And all this is about noise. And then I think, and then again, of course,
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noise is always easier to relate to than silence. So, but noise still is about forgetting yourself.
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It's about living through your device. It's about living through other people. And the opposite to me
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is silence is about turning around 180 degrees and focusing on yourself. Not in the sense that you
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got to live a more egocentric life. I think silence is very much about seeing yourself. It's about
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understanding the world. It's about respecting other people. It's about loving the earth even more.
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So you studied philosophy. I'm curious, have philosophers said anything in regards to silence?
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What do they think? Is it something that they value? How do they describe silence? How do they
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describe the benefits of it? I think that's a very good question that I also asked myself when I
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started to write a book because I had not read any philosophers writing, you know,
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something really interesting about silence. And I kept on asking philosophers about it because
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I didn't find it myself. And then I understood that somehow philosophers in general, at least the ones
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I can buy, they have not been interested in silence. And I think that's based upon a
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deep or grave misunderstanding in the sense that the first year when you read philosophy, you learn that
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nothing comes from nothing. And of course, that's correct. It's also easy to think about
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silence as nothing. And I think that's what many philosophers have been doing. But in my book,
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as I try to show that silence is not nothing, silence is something. So something comes from something.
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So I think that's, you know, maybe it's a mistake that philosophers have been doing for quite a few
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hundred years. But of course, in the old days, like Aristotle and Plato and others, they said that
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beyond the words, we can't find any more words, there's getting quiet, there's good silence.
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Silence. That's then where you will experience the truth.
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So you experienced silence, I'm sure, in the way you're talking about when you walked by foot in
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the Antarctic, the South Pole, you were alone for 50 days. What was that like? I mean, what did that
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experience of silence feel like? And also, I mean, what did you perceive, I guess? I'm just asking,
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like, what was the phenomenological experience of silence, of being alone in the South Pole for 50
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days? I think, you know, it's what was interesting. I think I experienced the same as most people have
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done in the same place, that for the first hours or first couple of days, I found the silence disturbing,
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especially the first day, my, also maybe the second day, my head was filled with noise. It was
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absolutely silent around me. It was white all the way to the horizon. The skies were blue,
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not the sun, but I still had all this noise in my head. I was thinking too much. I was not totally
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present. But then I slowly started to adapt to circumstances. I stopped thinking, I started more
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to experience the world as it was there and then. And then I started to feel more and more comfortable.
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And as the days and weeks passed by, I started to see that it's not totally white in Antarctica,
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after all. It has this small variation of bluish, greenish, yellowish, pinkish colors in the snow and
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the ice. And it's not totally flat either. I start to see more and more details, stretches in the snow
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and on the ice. So in that sense, the nature or the experience of the environment became richer and
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richer. And I also became better and better at having a dialogue with the nature that comes
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sending some ideas out and getting all the faults back again. And of course, many of these experiences
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our experiences are kind of hard to put words on. That's also one of my points in my book, that
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quite often words put limits on your experiences. If you've got to describe everything you go through
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in life in words, you put limits on yourself. Because I think it's many things in life which is
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which is beyond words. So for me, the silence through those 50 days and nights became, you know,
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silence became somehow my best friend. And silence has its own language. So I think, you know,
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it's very healthy to be alone for a while and be silent for a while. Of course, some parts of life,
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it's not possible. But all the parts of life, you don't have to walk to the South Pole. Somehow,
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you have to find your own South Pole. When you say you say you stopped thinking,
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do you mean like you just stopped having that internal dialogue in your head?
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Is that what you mean? Yeah, you know, it just started. I was still thinking about
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life back home, worries. I was thinking about this girl I was in love with. She was not in love with me.
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All, you know, this kind of daily struggles that we have. But then, you know, all this
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worries somehow disappeared. And I became more and more present in my life, that the past didn't
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matter. I didn't care about the future. It was only life there and then that mattered to me. And I
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think that's, you know, that's a great luxury. I'm not interested in living, you know, having
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that kind of life the rest of my life, because I think we're all born to be social. We're born to
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be together with other people. But for me, it was a very healthy experience. And I quite often asked
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from people that are wondering how I think they will react to me in such circumstances.
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My answer is that I think, you know, most people would experience it more or less the same
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way as I did. Not exactly the same way, but I think most people find it
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enriching to be in silence for such a long time.
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And I'm curious, if you came to this feeling of being present, the past, the worries of the past,
00:23:03.480
the worries of the future no longer, because I'm sure we've all experienced that in fleeting moments.
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And I'm sure you got a little bit longer while you're there. How long did that last when you came
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You know, you got back to daily life really quickly. You get home. It takes a long time
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before, you know, quite a few weeks before you actually get home. But when you get home,
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it's daily life again. I mean, your washing machine doesn't work. You get to have it repaired.
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You need to pay your bills. You need to start to work. So then it goes really back to normal quickly.
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But, you know, we are part of all that we have met in life. So in that sense, the experience remained
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with me. And I still have it after all these years. And when I sat down to write a book on silence,
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it was my experiences from the ice, from the oceans, from the mountains, from urban life,
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from being a family father, from being an entrepreneur, being a lawyer for a short time.
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All these experiences kind of made it possible for me to write about silence. If I only had been a
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polar explorer, I think I could still write a book about silence, but I think it would be pretty boring.
00:24:21.000
Yeah. I thought it was interesting, too, how one of the observations you made about your experience
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of the Antarctic alone was similar to, we wrote an article about Richard E. Byrd, who was at the
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South Pole for five months by himself back in the 1930s. And one of the things he commented on
00:24:43.000
was that he stopped swearing. Like, he didn't use curse words. And you had that same thing. Like,
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you didn't feel the urge or need to curse when you were by yourself.
00:24:54.200
Richard E. I didn't know that. That's interesting. I haven't read so much about birds, but it's,
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yeah, that's, that's correct. It's, when I'm on an expedition, I never swear. I hardly,
00:25:07.960
I hardly utter a negative word. And it's not because it's blasphemy. I could be, you know,
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good enough reason. But it's because it's so negative. When you swear, it drags you down.
00:25:21.720
And especially when you're alone, then you feel it much stronger than when I'm with other people,
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because then I can swear and life goes on and the dialogue, you know, keeps going. But being alone
00:25:33.000
or being with one or two other people in this very kind of life on, you know, it's that you're very
00:25:40.840
much present in the situation through the whole day. If you're not, you know, it's, it could be very
00:25:46.040
dangerous. And then when you're so present in your life and live there and then, and you swear,
00:25:53.080
that feels like a totally stupid thing to do. If it's dangerous or if you're pissed off because
00:25:59.960
you did something silly or things that didn't work out the way you wanted. And then if you swear,
00:26:06.360
the situation is only getting worse. And if it's very more, you know, it keeps on swearing,
00:26:10.600
it's just gets worse and worse. Yeah. I remember on my expedition to the North Pole with my friend,
00:26:16.040
Berger Olsland. He decided not to swear, but on later expeditions, I never decided. I just don't do it.
00:26:23.560
Yeah. Just don't do it. I just thought that was interesting that you both had the same experience
00:26:28.040
in the South Pole. Yeah. And today, in daily life, I hardly swear anymore because when I was a kid,
00:26:35.720
a teenager, I was swearing. I thought that was cool. But today, I hardly swear at all.
00:26:41.720
So you mentioned earlier, you mentioned that when you first started your trek to the South Pole,
00:26:48.280
the silence was frightening, but then it became comforting. Why is that? I mean,
00:26:53.880
I think for a lot of people, silence is extremely frightening. The silence that happens when you're
00:26:59.080
in conversation with someone, for example, and there's that awkward silence and you feel uncomfortable.
00:27:04.680
What is it about silence that makes a lot of people feel uncomfortable?
00:27:08.680
Yeah, I think, you know, I agree. I also mentioned that when I was a kid, silence for me
00:27:16.680
was awful. When I was lonely, when I was sad, when nothing was happening, that was silence for me.
00:27:24.360
And of course, later in life, silence is very much about sadness. It could be about one minute of silence.
00:27:31.880
But many people have been writing about this kind of silence. And when I want to write about silence,
00:27:36.440
I want to write about this different silence, this silence which is enriching, which is good for you.
00:27:42.840
And I think the reason people try to avoid this silence. I'm writing about this course, this inner silence,
00:27:51.560
is because in this silence, you meet yourself. And a man has always tried to avoid silence.
00:28:00.600
And if he sits in a room in silence doing nothing, he will always try to start to do something.
00:28:15.960
And that's the beginning of all his problems. So this is not something new. And it's, as I said,
00:28:23.240
it's easier to live through noise than turning around and start to look into yourself. And I think
00:28:31.640
that's why it's quite tempting to go for easiest option to avoid yourself.
00:28:41.640
Yeah, I think I've read experiments there where they've had people sit alone by themselves. And all
00:28:48.520
they had was this button where they could push it and it would shock them. And people ended up like,
00:28:55.080
they'd rather shock themselves than be bored, right? So it's like they couldn't go very long
00:29:02.280
without some sort of stimulation, even though that stimulation was uncomfortable and unpleasant.
00:29:06.520
Yeah. And you know, it sounds always insane that people, instead of sitting in total silence,
00:29:14.280
not having anything to do for 50 minutes, rather have an electric shock than remain sitting. And I think
00:29:23.960
it's actually doesn't only sound insane, I think it is insane. And I think in one way, the world,
00:29:30.040
whole world has turned insane the last 20 years with internet, not to mention the last 11 years with
00:29:37.640
smartphones. If my grandmother, who died more than 20 years ago, if she had seen how we're living today,
00:29:45.880
she has seen grown men walking down the streets, having a phone close to the air, kind of like,
00:29:54.680
looks like, you know, all kind of carrying around all teddy bears, kind of taking them to over,
00:29:59.560
you know, to overhead them in the concert. I think she would think they're turned absolutely nuts.
00:30:06.440
And, but of course, if everybody is insane, insanity is the new normal. So I think, you know,
00:30:13.160
I think that's gone too far. I'm not negative to technology, not at all, but it's a way we relate
00:30:20.840
to technology, which is, I think it's not only strange, but I think it's, it's bad for us. It's
00:30:28.360
makes us even more lonely. It's like it's all even more depressed. It's like it's all even more
00:30:33.880
desperate. While I'm not negative technology as such, but I'm also very concerned that some of
00:30:40.200
the brightest minds in the world work day and night to make us addicted to different apps and
00:30:48.600
different technology. Yeah. No, I've, I've seen that too. Like the difference between say my generation
00:30:54.200
or our generation and my grandfather, my grandfather passed away a few years ago. He was 101 and my
00:31:00.760
cousin and I were having the discussion about how it never seemed like my grandfather was like anxious
00:31:08.520
or like there was some sort of like pent up anxiety in him. It was just really like centered, calm,
00:31:16.360
et cetera. And I mean, the one difference, I'm sure there's a lot of difference, but the one difference
00:31:19.800
was he never owned a smartphone. He never, he never had all, he never had all that noise constantly
00:31:26.360
bombarding him. Exactly. And it probably also had, you know, it was a different time in America. So
00:31:30.920
probably also had, you know, all the obligations that, you know, his life probably was, you know,
00:31:35.640
tougher in many ways than your life. And that also, you know, gave his life much more meaning
00:31:42.360
right away because, you know, it was the data struggle was different from your data struggles.
00:31:48.120
So besides, uh, being a lawyer, a philosopher and explorer, you also are an art collector. So you
00:31:56.200
are, you know, you're like the most interesting man in the world here. I'm curious, what can art
00:32:01.800
teach us about silence? Because it's art is like, we're talking about like paintings
00:32:10.040
You know, it's, I first have to say that, you know, it's a privilege to be interviewed by you,
00:32:14.040
but you know, for me, what we talk about now, you know, I just find it a true privilege that
00:32:20.600
people are interested in all in this thoughts I have about silence. And it's, to me, it's a great,
00:32:27.400
you know, positive surprise. But in terms of art, yeah, I think art is also very much about silence.
00:32:34.600
Let's say great art is about silence. I think quite often lousy art is about noise, but it's great art.
00:32:40.280
And I think about, you know, when you see it, if you're going to understand any of it,
00:32:44.840
you need to have some silence. Of course, some people can explain things to you. But if you're
00:32:49.640
going to appreciate great art, you need silence, inner silence. And the reason I'm saying this is
00:32:56.360
is because an art piece, it's a painting, sculpture, insulation or video, somehow has to contain
00:33:04.280
the artist's defeat, the artist's humor, the artist's love affairs, the artist's lovesickness,
00:33:11.800
the artist's loneliness, the artist's victories, the artist's doubts, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
00:33:18.440
And somehow, a lot of this has to go into the art piece. And then, of course,
00:33:24.040
it's very difficult to grasp what the art is about. And maybe it's not supposed to understand,
00:33:30.760
you know, everything about an art piece. But somehow, this art piece is a thinking box,
00:33:38.680
just this kind of item that has, you know, all these faults in it. To understand any of it,
00:33:45.400
I think you need to be silent. Yeah. I mean, one of my favorite things to do is go to an art museum
00:33:53.240
and just to look at, look at art. And what's interesting about art is that sometimes what
00:33:58.280
you see depicted, you can tell that there would be a lot of noise there, right? Like one of my
00:34:05.000
favorite paintings or something you see quite a bit, it's, it's a lot of artists have done is,
00:34:09.640
is Cato the Younger committing suicide, right? He decided, you know, he didn't want to be under the
00:34:15.240
rule of an emperor, commit suicide. And you see the, how the artist depict all this. You can tell
00:34:20.040
there's a lot of commotion and noise going on, but like, you don't hear anything. And you don't,
00:34:25.400
I don't, it's, it's a weird thing. Like you can, you can, you don't hear anything at the same time,
00:34:29.800
you, you can, you can hear what's going on in the painting. Exactly. I love that combination
00:34:35.640
because somehow, as I say, you know, this frozen moment, you know, taking off, you know,
00:34:42.760
and made into a painting, which is of course, sonless. And, and I, you know, I just, I just
00:34:50.760
like that, that, that combination that you can stand in peace, in the silence, and see a great piece
00:35:00.600
of art. And, and you, in your case that you know the story about Cato and why he committed suicide,
00:35:08.360
and see how the artist had interpreted that story. And of course also put so much of herself,
00:35:14.680
himself into the piece of art. That's great. So it's, I think that's, you know, something that
00:35:21.800
makes life even more meaningful. In my book on silence, I included several paintings by
00:35:27.560
your fellow American, Ed Rouchet. And one of those paintings is a blue background. And then it says
00:35:34.200
in huge yellow letters, noise. And the reason I had it because the painting is quiet, it's silent.
00:35:45.080
And then it just had this strong word all over the painting, and nothing else. So kind of the words
00:35:52.520
contradict the painting, kind of one to one. So that, that's something I found really interesting.
00:35:58.280
So you said earlier that people don't need to walk all the way to the South Pole to experience
00:36:05.160
the silence that you're talking about, the benefits of it. And then they can find their
00:36:09.160
own South Poles. Like, so how, how can regular people who just live in their work a day life,
00:36:14.760
experience silence on a regular basis? And does it have to be for extended periods of time? Can it,
00:36:20.280
can you just catch it in just a few minutes and still get the same benefit?
00:36:23.560
No, I think that's a very good question. It says that, that's, that's a question I'm asked quite
00:36:29.240
often. And then again, as I said earlier on, I think most people underestimate, underestimate
00:36:36.440
their own possibilities in life. Because even you're having kids, or if you're having a very busy job,
00:36:43.960
or if you have a complicated relationship, blah, blah, blah, you know, you can still experience
00:36:49.320
silence. And I find silence in the morning when I wake up in my bed. Of course, if you have kids,
00:36:55.720
babies screaming, it's not so easy, but still. And then I find silence when I prepare a breakfast
00:37:01.960
for my kids. Then I find silence when I, I quite often walk to my office, which takes
00:37:07.880
half an hour, but you can't always walk to your office, of course, but then can still find silence
00:37:13.480
walking the stairs up to my office. And then on the way back again from the office,
00:37:18.440
I can find silence during the stairs, or instead of taking the metro all the way home, I can jump
00:37:23.560
off from a station earlier and walk. And walking is very good for silence. And then cooking again,
00:37:31.160
I can find silence. And I find silence when I'm listening to music. I think that's quite often,
00:37:36.120
if it's too much noise in my life, I just turn on the music with a high volume. Then I find in the
00:37:42.760
silence, I find silence when I'm having a shower. I find silence when I'm breathing.
00:37:47.960
You can find it in the silence when you're having sex. You find it in the silence when you go to bed
00:37:52.760
to sleep again. Sometimes it is for two minutes. Other times it's for longer, like on the weekends,
00:37:58.440
I do hikes in the forest. So, you know, to find this in the silence, you know, you really have to
00:38:05.400
want it. And of course, you can find it also by having yoga, mindfulness, meditation. All that is
00:38:15.480
very good, I think. But somehow we have to prepare for it. You know, it requires a technique. But when
00:38:22.600
I sat down to write about silence, I want to write about this silence, which is there all the time.
00:38:28.760
It's inside you, waiting for you, but you have to go look for it.
00:38:33.640
Yeah. And one thing I noticed that all those examples you gave, you could interrupt it,
00:38:39.080
interrupt the silence by bringing your smartphone along. Because there are people
00:38:43.400
who will take part in all those activities, be in the forest. I've even read having sex,
00:38:48.280
and they'll still use their smartphone, which to me is ridiculous.
00:38:51.800
Yeah, it's ridiculous. I met a guy on the street the other day, and he said to me,
00:39:01.320
when I'm doing a walk, I shouldn't have nothing in my hands. That's the whole thing.
00:39:07.080
Of course, if you walk with your phone in your hands, you know, and you're not going to have
00:39:12.680
any silence. But if you turn off your phone, preferably leave it back home, or turn it off
00:39:18.440
and put it in your backpack or in your pocket, then it's so much easier to relax. Because I think
00:39:23.480
as long as the phone is on, and it's available, you're so attracted to that phone, and it's so
00:39:29.080
much complicated not to look at the phone, that you will do it. I read this article that people
00:39:34.760
on average touch their phones 2,600 times a day. That sounds a lot, but I have to say,
00:39:40.040
when I look at my daughters, and sometimes I look around at the metro, to me, it seems like people
00:39:45.640
touching their phones even more. Yeah, no, it's true. And it's like, I think it's important to
00:39:49.960
keep in mind that it's a total waste. No, yeah. It's not about not being connected to the world,
00:39:58.280
but you know, you Google something, you find what they're looking for, and 20 minutes later,
00:40:03.320
you're still Googling. You're checking the news, you see the news, and you keep on checking the news.
00:40:08.280
And you know, the news are quite alike throughout the whole day. Actually,
00:40:12.520
I think the news are always the same every day. So you know, it's about wasting this huge,
00:40:21.320
fantastic opportunity to have, to live a rich life.
00:40:24.920
And it's that fear of the silence. So like, once you feel that fear, you gotta embrace it.
00:40:31.400
It's a fear of the silence, a very common fear of the silence. And you can always say that it really
00:40:37.240
doesn't matter. But, but I think it's a bit sad, actually, that people are living through,
00:40:44.040
you know, that kind of, you know, running away from the self. And, and, and I've said that,
00:40:49.960
you know, sometimes I do it, do it too, that, you know, it's, I, I kind of get, you know, so much into
00:40:57.480
my phone or into a device that I check it all the time that I'm, you know, watching all this series,
00:41:04.280
that I'm checking the news again and again and again. And, and, you know, just after half an hour,
00:41:11.640
one over a few hours, I start to feel this, you know, having this really uncomfortable feeling, but I
00:41:18.200
still do it because it's, it's, you know, you get, you get, you get addicted. And of course,
00:41:23.400
every app is made for the user to get addicted. And, you know, so then they had to give, you know,
00:41:32.120
great promises and then you're going to be satisfied for a short period. They can't be satisfied for long
00:41:37.880
because that's of course, the basic of capitalism that you should be satisfied for a while. And then
00:41:43.720
you need to desire something totally new. So I'm not skeptical, skeptical to capitalism and blah,
00:41:50.360
blah, blah, but you know, you just have to be aware that's, that's the whole trick. And we have
00:41:56.840
to look through it and we have to, you know, choose a slightly more narrow path.
00:42:04.200
Is there some place people can go to learn more about your work in your book?
00:42:07.960
You know, absolutely. And I think, you know, I don't think people should listen too much to me,
00:42:14.200
because that's also why I want to write a little, really short book on silence. I asked three
00:42:19.160
questions. What is silence? Where is it? And why it's more important today than ever? And I tried to
00:42:26.280
give 33 really short answers so you can read it in one evening. And then after that, I think, you know,
00:42:33.240
you need to find your own path. Swamarga, as you know, as I said in Sanskrit, that it's not complicated
00:42:40.600
at all. As I said, the silence is there, but I think it's, you know, to read, spend one evening
00:42:46.120
to read about it, and then think through it. I think you will find your own silence. And I think
00:42:50.760
you need to keep in mind that you need to create your own silence and you need to keep that spirit.
00:43:00.600
Arlene, thanks so much for coming on. This has been a great conversation.
00:43:04.160
My guest here is Arlene Kaga. He is the author of the book,
00:43:06.780
Silence in the Age of Noise, available on amazon.com. Also check out our show notes at
00:43:11.480
aom.is slash silence. And if you're looking to embrace friction and discomfort, like Arlene was
00:43:17.500
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00:43:30.000
uncomfortable, a little more discomfort and getting you out of your comfort zone. So go check it out,
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00:43:41.300
Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and
00:43:57.340
advice, make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. And if you enjoy
00:44:00.660
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00:44:08.340
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