Ketut Subiyanto/Pexels

Source: Ketut Subiyanto/Pexels

I am excruciatingly sensitive to noise: I always carry earplugs and fantasize about living in the middle of the woods. Is the problem with me or with the world?

As a misophonic [“hater of sounds”], I’m in pretty good company. Kant hated noise, as did Proust, Kafka, and Darwin—and even, ironically, Wagner. Kant fled his lodgings on account of a crowing rooster, and Proust went so far as to line his bedroom with cork. Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus secluded themselves in large private parks, and had only to contend with the baby-like cries of hedgehogs and maybe the murderous screams of vixens.

The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) wrote an essay, On Noise, in which he linked misophonia with intellect and creativity:

Certainly there are people, nay, very many, who will smile at [my predicament], because they are not sensitive to noise; it is precisely these people, however, who are not sensitive to argument, thought, poetry or art, in short, to any kind of intellectual impression: a fact to be assigned to the coarse quality and strong texture of their brain tissues.

Schopenhauer railed hardest against the cracking of whips in narrow resounding streets (the 19th century equivalent of revving motorbikes): “Hammering, the barking of dogs, and the screaming of children are abominable; but it is only [his emphasis] the cracking of a whip that is the true murderer of thought.” To him, the cracking of whips was all the more unbearable for being unnecessary and, worse than unnecessary, useless.

Not every noise is noise, so to speak. I enjoy certain natural sounds such as birds singing, a stream burbling, or waves lapping or breaking; but not, say, an air conditioner humming (unless it is very hot outside), children crying, or people shouting or talking without saying anything useful, interesting, or amusing. If I believe that something is important or meaningful or beautiful, the sound that it makes is much less likely to constitute noise; and contrariwise if I think that it is ugly or meaningless or destructive. Noise, then, is whatever I don’t think is worth hearing, and exists on a spectrum. In the final analysis, it is whatever ends up dissipating rather than concentrating my energies.

For Schopenhauer, genius is the ability of the mind to concentrate itself on a single point and object. But as soon as this bunched-up mind is interrupted or distracted or dispersed, it is no better than an ordinary mind. It is, says, Schopenhauer, as with a large diamond, which, if shattered, loses most of its value; or as with an army, which, if dispersed, loses most of its power. It is not merely a matter of genius but also of happiness, because, as every creative person knows, there is no happiness greater than that of the mind at play. Aristotle famously conceived of God, the traditional fount of all reason, as a mind that turns blissfully upon itself. In contrast, people who are too frightened to put two and two together, or are unable to, use noise to help occupy and numb their minds (see my related post on the psychology of music in restaurants).

Was Schopenhauer being fanciful in linking misophonia with intellect and creativity? In recent years, researchers at Northwestern University have found that real-world creativity (although not, interestingly, academic test scores) may be associated with a reduced ability to filter “irrelevant” sensory information. “Leaky” sensory gating may help our brains integrate ideas that are outside the focus of our attention, thereby promoting creative thinking. So Schopenhauer may have been on to something…

In my next post, I will look at Seneca’s advice for coping with noise.



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