White Noise

Although I'm really enjoying learning languages, oddly enough, I'm finding more and more that I don't really like talking to people. It's almost always the same thing: such and such is annoying me, isn't the weather unusual, did you see [insert tv show here] last night? So the language thing is kind of an existential pursuit but so is most of existence I think (hence the name) -- and a little bit more won't hurt any. Probably.

But perhaps I think I've been too negative about the white noise of our lives. What if people didn't have mindless blather to camouflage what they really think? People are nice enough on the surface, but look carefully and you can see racism, selfishness, superficiality, and the lack of self discipline, empathy, consideration for others... and that's just with people who are really are quite nice people. What about people who are jerks? I shudder at the thought.

It's also a great evolutionary advantage, in that it distracts from the general pointlessness of existence. If everyone shut up and really thought about things for a bit, half the population would probably commit suicide with despair. But when you're prattling on about how nice the weather girl's outfit is today (I'm guilty of this particular crime, I must admit; and equally shocked and appalled if she or any other member of the news team is badly attired) it very conveniently drowns out thoughts like, what's my purpose in life? This permits a lack of massive suicides and at the same time propogation of the species because we're all a bit horny after looking at the well dressed weather girl.

[An aside: If I'm to be totally honest, this has been taken from an e mail I wrote to a mate of mine, rather than being written expressly for the blog... but I was so pleased with it I thought I'd share!]