Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you wasn't it Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb. Hey, my name
Speaker 1: is Julie Douglas. Julie, have you ever gone on a
Speaker 1: silent retreat? Now? It's one of those things I really
Speaker 1: really want to do and I really really don't want
Speaker 1: to do. They can explain what this is for people
Speaker 1: who are who are unfamiliar with the term. Um. It's
Speaker 1: usually you'll you'll find it kind of like a Buddhist
Speaker 1: retreat in which you go and it's usually like a
Speaker 1: woodsy environment and you and your other retreaters sit in
Speaker 1: absolute silence, usually in meditation. But the point is is
Speaker 1: whether or not you're eating, walking, meditating, silence prevails. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it for like ten days, why not just go
Speaker 1: by yourself on a trip somewhere and then you can
Speaker 1: have as much silence as you want, because apparently the
Speaker 1: deafening silence is so maddening that a lot of people
Speaker 1: struggle with it the first couple of days, and that
Speaker 1: even in that contained environment. So can you imagine just
Speaker 1: trying to do this on your own and you're like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'll just go to San Francisco and have my own
Speaker 1: silent retreat. You're going to break out of that. You're
Speaker 1: gonna belly up to the bar and be like, I can't,
Speaker 1: I gotta talk to someone. So you need the communal
Speaker 1: support to remain silent, to drown out the maddening thoughts.
Speaker 1: You know, this reminds me of The Leftovers. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've been watching this or read the book
Speaker 1: upon which was based, but there's not ready there's there's
Speaker 1: a cult in the in the in the book, and
Speaker 1: in the and in the TV show, and they remain silent.
Speaker 1: They also wear white and they smoke all the time.
Speaker 1: I'm not finished with the first season, so I don't
Speaker 1: know what their deal is yet completely, but but it's
Speaker 1: but certainly it's something to keep in mind as we
Speaker 1: go through this episode. That'd be something, you know, a
Speaker 1: smoking Buddhist silent retreat. Yeah, I mean, certainly you have monasteries.
Speaker 1: There's a long tradition of of nks taking a vow
Speaker 1: of silence in the Western tradition, So so you have
Speaker 1: the idea that there is something to be found, something
Speaker 1: holy about silence, something therapeutic about silence. Is a is
Speaker 1: a very old concept but also something very uncomfortable about silence.
Speaker 1: And we all have had that before. We have experienced
Speaker 1: that awkward moment and conversation. And apparently this is actually
Speaker 1: like a thing that people have tried to fit into
Speaker 1: a phenomenon, right, this idea that if you are in
Speaker 1: a group, that a hush will fall over the room
Speaker 1: after about twenty minutes or so, yeah, twenty minutes after
Speaker 1: the hour. Even is is this specific version of this
Speaker 1: which was news to me, the idea that you're hanging
Speaker 1: out with a bunch of people, it's going to suddenly
Speaker 1: be uh, you know, one twenty and everyone's going to
Speaker 1: go silent. And there's some crazy ideas for why this
Speaker 1: crazy thing could possibly be happening. And you know, this
Speaker 1: interesting thing about that is I bet that everybody listening
Speaker 1: has experienced that. You know, you've been in a group situation,
Speaker 1: everybody's talking, chatting, and then then that hush falls over.
Speaker 1: But you probably have never set yourself, ah, it's twenty
Speaker 1: minutes after the hour. It must be because one of
Speaker 1: two crazy superstitions. Yes, now that the first one is
Speaker 1: the one that I'm I'm more into, And that's the
Speaker 1: idea that. Okay, first of all, buy into the idea
Speaker 1: that there are angels in the world, Okay, supernatural beings
Speaker 1: that do God's will, or perhaps don't do God's will
Speaker 1: because they fall from grace and live in hell. Now
Speaker 1: it depends on which version of the story you go with,
Speaker 1: but there are angels. Maybe we can't see them, maybe
Speaker 1: we can. And they like to sing. And when they sing,
Speaker 1: their otherworldly voices are so beautiful, even if we're only
Speaker 1: hearing them with the with the the subconscious mind, it
Speaker 1: just forces us to be silent. It just it just
Speaker 1: chills us to silence. What I love about this is
Speaker 1: that apparently they start their heavenly do wopping like twenty
Speaker 1: minutes after the hour, and that's why we would instinctively
Speaker 1: falls silence that we could hear. Are the clocks in
Speaker 1: heaven like twenty men? It's slower than they're singing at
Speaker 1: the top of the hour, or do they they They're
Speaker 1: they're being patient, you know, waiting for us to be
Speaker 1: quiet so they can sing, and then they give up
Speaker 1: and they're like, all right, let's just start the show, right.
Speaker 1: Is there a heavenly course of angels for each time zone?
Speaker 1: How is this working. Yeah, and I never I don't
Speaker 1: know when I think of the angels, I mean, when
Speaker 1: do they have time to sing? They have a lot
Speaker 1: of death instruction to lay out on mankind. It seems
Speaker 1: like it's a pretty busy work schedule. Why are there
Speaker 1: enough angels just to stand around in sting. I like
Speaker 1: to imagine it's the cherubic um, like fat baby angels
Speaker 1: that are doing this. Oh well, okay, I can imagine
Speaker 1: that that the bones that are in stein Mart. You know,
Speaker 1: they're like a wooden cut out with their hands underneath
Speaker 1: their their chins because the original cherubs and uh and
Speaker 1: when you really go back into the mythology, they're terrifying.
Speaker 1: They're they're beastual human hybrids that that are there to
Speaker 1: lay waste. So and but who's to say they don't
Speaker 1: have a nice singing voice. I'm talking about the cute
Speaker 1: version here. Now, another superstition here is that because Abraham
Speaker 1: Lincoln was killed at seven twenty pm, that we again,
Speaker 1: somehow instinctively will commemorate the death of Lincoln at twenty
Speaker 1: past the hour, which this one has all sorts of
Speaker 1: wholely logic in it. And if you if I had
Speaker 1: not heard this yesterday. If I had not read about
Speaker 1: this online yesterday, I would think you were making this
Speaker 1: up right now, because this is even crazier to me
Speaker 1: than the angel idea. Because for the angel idea to work, Okay,
Speaker 1: I have to I have to accept that there are angels.
Speaker 1: I have to buy into the supernatural and admit that
Speaker 1: their supernatural beings out there that are singing and causing
Speaker 1: people to go silent, and they're beying some sort of
Speaker 1: crazy schedule. Okay, I can buy into that on some level.
Speaker 1: I can buy into that. But to say that Abraham
Speaker 1: Lincoln's death resonated so strongly in human culture that it
Speaker 1: causes everyone to fall silent twenty minutes after the hour
Speaker 1: every hour apparently, And and then you have to ask questions, well,
Speaker 1: then does it is it only in the in the
Speaker 1: United States? What happens if you were pro slavery? You
Speaker 1: know what happens if you're just you just don't have
Speaker 1: a good understanding of history. Or is it something so
Speaker 1: powerful that it moves forward and backward in time. Well,
Speaker 1: that that was the thing I was going to say.
Speaker 1: In a linear way like that also supposes that before
Speaker 1: Lincoln died there was no group hush, right, Like there
Speaker 1: was just a continuum of conversation and no one ever paused.
Speaker 1: But we were coming up with a different theory here earlier,
Speaker 1: and I guess you could call it the theory, yes,
Speaker 1: because that's another twenty minute after um trope that comes up, right,
Speaker 1: is the time to to consume cannabis? Right, And so
Speaker 1: the idea there maybe is that after the consumption, it
Speaker 1: takes about twenty minutes for the wall of stone ery
Speaker 1: to set in, in which the group hush becomes apparent.
Speaker 1: So people are actually lighting up at four as opposed
Speaker 1: to four. They lit up at four, and at four
Speaker 1: twenty is when the crushing silence of stonerism set in. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, I could see that that possibly being so
Speaker 1: as you think it could be the cause of the phenomenon,
Speaker 1: because another read would be that it stems from the phenomenon,
Speaker 1: like suddenly everybody's quiet, and so out of that social
Speaker 1: anxiety they light up. You know, these are just amusing,
Speaker 1: These are mid morning musings over coffee. Probably the better
Speaker 1: explanation is that it's just a natural arc to our narratives,
Speaker 1: and maybe twenty minutes into a conversation we've kind of
Speaker 1: plumb the depths of a joke or a topic. Um.
Speaker 1: There is another explanation, however, that is called the protection postulate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this one is pretty good. This one is significantly
Speaker 1: less crazy though also, uh, you know, not completely proven out,
Speaker 1: but this is the idea that you know, again, take
Speaker 1: who're going to travel back in time to primordial age.
Speaker 1: We're out there around the fire, around the fire, yeah,
Speaker 1: and we're talking about our day at work, killing animals
Speaker 1: and foraging for food and uh, and then a hush
Speaker 1: falls over us because we have to stop and listen
Speaker 1: to for the the sound of approaching predators coming to
Speaker 1: eat us at our fire, or the the or approaching
Speaker 1: rival tribes people coming to slay us in the night.
Speaker 1: You know what, I think there may be something to that.
Speaker 1: I have to say. I think there's something to an
Speaker 1: arc of a conversation. And I think there's something to
Speaker 1: a group falling silent as a sort of instinctive measure
Speaker 1: to gauge what's going on outside that environment, because because
Speaker 1: you know, we've all had those conversations that are so good,
Speaker 1: you're just completely wrapped up in it, and you're gonna
Speaker 1: kind of reach the height where you have to fall
Speaker 1: down again. You have to realize that I'm just I'm
Speaker 1: standing here in the room and who's kind of awkward
Speaker 1: actually because they don't really know this person and I
Speaker 1: was just really drilling into them with my whole diet
Speaker 1: tribe of about the Ring movies or something. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: now they're crouched in a corner and the silence has
Speaker 1: fallen over the room. I love that though. I love
Speaker 1: when the silence falls and everybody's kind of like nervously
Speaker 1: titters and there's that one person who's like, whoa ye,
Speaker 1: gotten quiet, and then they call off the awkward silence.
Speaker 1: In any case, all the silence leaves us, uh with
Speaker 1: something that feels, you know, very intimate, but sometimes very isolating.
Speaker 1: It's like this bubble that surrounds us. And so we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about this today, this idea that within
Speaker 1: silence there's a merit to it and then there's also
Speaker 1: kind of, um, a demerit I guess you could say
Speaker 1: to it. Yeah. It kind of calls back to our
Speaker 1: episode A Splendid Isolation that we did back in the day,
Speaker 1: where we talked about how a little isolation is great,
Speaker 1: a lot of isolation not so great, you can have
Speaker 1: the same as the and we encounter a similar situation
Speaker 1: with silence. So let's start off by discussing the merits
Speaker 1: of silence, the benefits of silence, blissful silence. Well, and
Speaker 1: we see this a lot in terms of education, people
Speaker 1: exploring the idea of silence and reflection um as tools
Speaker 1: in the classroom. And if you look at Helen E.
Speaker 1: Lee's work, she's a research fellow in educational theory at
Speaker 1: University of Stirling. She posits that classrooms silence really helps
Speaker 1: college students to consider, retain, and reflect on her lectures.
Speaker 1: And she actually brings an egg timer into the classroom
Speaker 1: with her and sets it for three minute intervals twice
Speaker 1: during the class. And I thought about that. I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, that is actually, I think a very helpful
Speaker 1: concept because anyone who's ever been in a lecture, any
Speaker 1: sort of situation, well there's a ton of information coming
Speaker 1: at them. You can't help your but you know, listen
Speaker 1: to your brain, try to react to that information, draw
Speaker 1: conclusions and connections. But if you're just trying to keep
Speaker 1: up with the material itself, it's hard to really let
Speaker 1: all of that coalesce. And indeed, I mean just thinking
Speaker 1: back to say, some of the World Science Festival panels
Speaker 1: that that we've attended. You know that you're you're being
Speaker 1: hit with so many great concepts in different ways of
Speaker 1: looking at history or the scientific world, and you just
Speaker 1: need to stop and digest it. But instead you're moving on,
Speaker 1: You're rolling under the next come and you just like,
Speaker 1: I really hope that I got my notes down on
Speaker 1: that one and I can check all this later. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Philip our Golden, he's a researcher. He says, parents and
Speaker 1: teachers tell kids a hundred times a day to pay attention,
Speaker 1: but we never teach them how. And so what some
Speaker 1: of these schools have been doing is they've been drawing
Speaker 1: on the work of John cabot Zen, who is a
Speaker 1: molecular biologist who pioneered the secular use of mindfulness at
Speaker 1: the University of Massachusetts UH, initially to help medical patients
Speaker 1: cope with chronic pain and anxiety and depression. So what
Speaker 1: you see is his mindfulness work beginning to be used
Speaker 1: in K through twelve schools here in the United States.
Speaker 1: And the idea is that those kids have a little
Speaker 1: bit of time um to focus on what they call
Speaker 1: a design element, which is solitude and reflection. And even
Speaker 1: my kid in kindergarten does this in her classroom. But
Speaker 1: you'll see it at different levels as you go up
Speaker 1: through the grades. The degree to which some of these
Speaker 1: kids will actually engage in mindfulness. Now, it's worth noting
Speaker 1: when we look at mindfulness and meditation some of the
Speaker 1: core health benefits that have been proven out in studies
Speaker 1: to the lowest blood pressure and it lessons agitation, which
Speaker 1: which even though that those are concepts that definitely have
Speaker 1: a role in the treatment of ailments, they also have
Speaker 1: a key role in education and reaching students, particularly students
Speaker 1: who may be themselves agitated. Yeah, and um, this is
Speaker 1: we've kind of touched on this before, that students aren't
Speaker 1: getting educated in how to live their lives per se.
Speaker 1: That's largely left up to guardians and parents. Um, so
Speaker 1: you can't really treat a kid's depression, but you can't
Speaker 1: give them a couple of tools to work through that anxiety,
Speaker 1: say in school, and be able to focus themselves better
Speaker 1: on schoolwork. There's something called the Mindful Life Projects, a
Speaker 1: nonprofit that's based out of Richmond, California, and it teaches
Speaker 1: mindfulness in yoga and therapeutic art and hip hop performing
Speaker 1: arts to elementary students in underserved schools and communities, and
Speaker 1: all the schools have seen drops in detention and referrals.
Speaker 1: But in one school, eighteen kids eighteen accounted for eighty
Speaker 1: two per cent of the suspensions, and at the beginning
Speaker 1: of their mindfulness training, those kids were suspended sixty two
Speaker 1: times in the first trimester. Now after three trimesters of
Speaker 1: this mindful practice, that rate had dropped to twenty. Which
Speaker 1: think about these kids, Um, they obviously are acting out,
Speaker 1: they're they're exhibiting certain behaviors because they are agitated, because
Speaker 1: there are some root problems going on. To know that
Speaker 1: exty two times down to twenty was the drop and
Speaker 1: just having these moments of silence and reflection is really
Speaker 1: powerful stuff. And that's just this really tiny corner of
Speaker 1: this pocket of the educational world. Yeah, I mean, certainly
Speaker 1: when you start thinking about I mean really all all
Speaker 1: ages of children, but especially middle school, high school, there's
Speaker 1: so much angst. You know, there's so much to to
Speaker 1: distract yourself with in the in the even when you're
Speaker 1: in the classroom. That being able to just stop everything
Speaker 1: and still everything and then kind of teach in the aftermath,
Speaker 1: in the wake of that silence, that that would be
Speaker 1: incredibly beneficial. Yeah, and we've talked about how behavior has
Speaker 1: this kind of group contagion quality to it. So if
Speaker 1: if that's the sort of thing that you're doing in
Speaker 1: the classroom, that and everybody is stilling themselves, then you
Speaker 1: began to see that positive ripple effect. Now here's another
Speaker 1: study that that consent to the use of silence in
Speaker 1: the classroom and fronment. And this just comes down to, uh,
Speaker 1: not so much the noise inside the mind mind, but
Speaker 1: the noise outside the head and even outside the school. UH.
Speaker 1: Two thousand five study from the University of London aimed
Speaker 1: to understand the psychological impact that noise might have, and
Speaker 1: in this experiment, researcher studied children in eighty nine schools. Now,
Speaker 1: some of these schools were located next to airports, while
Speaker 1: others were not. Chill. They found that children exposed to
Speaker 1: high levels of aircraft noise had much poorer reading skills
Speaker 1: than children in quieter neighborhoods. UH and the researchers use
Speaker 1: the term cognitive fatigue to describe why reading skills might
Speaker 1: suffer in children living in noisy environments. So in these conditions,
Speaker 1: their long term memory is interrupted and they simply stopped
Speaker 1: paying attention. So we see the importance again not only
Speaker 1: the of some inner silence, some inner peace, so you
Speaker 1: can actually digest the information coming at you can actually
Speaker 1: shut out some of the angst and take it in.
Speaker 1: But also, you know, we're we're organisms that exists in
Speaker 1: a world of sensory bombardment. And if you can cut
Speaker 1: out some of that bombardment, if you can cut out
Speaker 1: some of the environmental noise coming at you from trains
Speaker 1: and planes and whatever, then then that can have an effect.
Speaker 1: You can take just a little bit off of the
Speaker 1: cognitive load so that you can handle some more of
Speaker 1: the concepts. And that's kind of interesting because you can
Speaker 1: then apply that to what Felicity Miller, who is a
Speaker 1: senior lecturer in Science, Communication and Imperial College, says when
Speaker 1: it comes to people in the sciences and their intellectual progress,
Speaker 1: Because what she's saying is that there is a big
Speaker 1: initiative to enforce interaction. Yes, and we've talked about this too,
Speaker 1: and open office spaces trend all over really yeah, and
Speaker 1: you're just gonna spark and you're just gonna collaborate all
Speaker 1: the time, and the genius will arrive. It comes from
Speaker 1: a good place because we thought we've also talked about
Speaker 1: the importance of interaction, the importance of collaboration. How the
Speaker 1: coffee houses of old were, you know, a place that
Speaker 1: sparked innovation because for drinking coffee and sharing ideas together.
Speaker 1: But you can't take that to the extreme and say,
Speaker 1: all right, we're gonna do that everywhere. Every office is
Speaker 1: going to be a coffee house of ideas, every classroom,
Speaker 1: every laboratory. You know, you just can't it. One size
Speaker 1: is not fit all. Yeah, And that's what Mailer is saying,
Speaker 1: especially in the academic setting. And she says, hey, you
Speaker 1: have to have some sort of silence and solitude to
Speaker 1: really make all of those ideas coalesced into something meaningful.
Speaker 1: And to make her point, she says, hey, look at
Speaker 1: Sir Isaac Newton. She said that he was a proponent
Speaker 1: of isolated working, shutting himself away in his rooms, publishing reluctantly,
Speaker 1: and restricting his audience to only those he thought capable
Speaker 1: of appreciating his work. You know, he also had cat
Speaker 1: doors so the cats could come in and out without
Speaker 1: this disrupting him will flaps another reason why he was
Speaker 1: a genius. And uh. She says that you know, if
Speaker 1: you look at physicists today, they don't quite have that
Speaker 1: level of solid two in silence, and that they do
Speaker 1: best by striking a balance between silence and communication. And
Speaker 1: she gives a couple of other examples. Wrener Heisenberg, she says,
Speaker 1: retreated to the island of legal Land to escape hay
Speaker 1: fever and the constant chatter of his colleague and mentor,
Speaker 1: Neils Boor, who knew that that the quantum theorist with
Speaker 1: such chatter box. And she's not to be confused with
Speaker 1: Lego Land, of course, the horrible place to go and
Speaker 1: try and work. Yes, Heligo Land isn't not Lego Land. Um.
Speaker 1: She says that it was here that Heisenberg was able
Speaker 1: to reflect on these discussions that he had with bar
Speaker 1: and laid down the basic foundation of quantum mechanics. And
Speaker 1: another great example, Peter Higgs has claimed that he would
Speaker 1: not have been able to complete his Noble prize winning
Speaker 1: work in this current research environment. Uh. You know, he
Speaker 1: insists that the peace and quiet that he had in
Speaker 1: the sixties, Uh, in order to to actually tackle his
Speaker 1: work he just would not be able to have today.
Speaker 1: So that's interesting to think of as well. And so
Speaker 1: the idea is that if all we're doing is engaging
Speaker 1: and engaging and engaging, which is really easy for us
Speaker 1: to do in this day and age, particularly with social media, um,
Speaker 1: then we're missing a key part of reflecting on our
Speaker 1: experiences and then the formation of new ideas with those
Speaker 1: novel associations. That we have to have that silence in
Speaker 1: that time. And you could argue that, hey, you can,
Speaker 1: My brain doesn't when I sleep. Yeah, but as we
Speaker 1: have talked about before, we're like probably less efficient at
Speaker 1: sleep now in this day and age and we ever
Speaker 1: have been before. Yeah. Yeah, if you're falling back on
Speaker 1: sleep alone for your information processing, then you're really welking
Speaker 1: a fine line. You're gonna fall. All right, we're back.
Speaker 1: We're talking about silence and the role of silence blaze
Speaker 1: in our lives in our world. So far, we've talked
Speaker 1: about the importance of silence when it comes to u
Speaker 1: quieting inner turmoil, quieting outer turmoil, its effects on our
Speaker 1: ability to learn in school, our ability to get things
Speaker 1: done at work, to tackle new concepts, and turn them
Speaker 1: around and and ultimately work on an inventive new concepts.
Speaker 1: But there's a different kind of silence that people experience,
Speaker 1: and and it's more in a social situation, but it
Speaker 1: can actually color um our experiences and cultural experiences. In fact,
Speaker 1: it can color history. And what I'm talking about is
Speaker 1: the spiral of silence. This is an interesting theory that
Speaker 1: comes to us from German political science. Elizabeth Noel Newman
Speaker 1: UH developus in nineteen seventy four, and basically the idea
Speaker 1: here is that people have the tendency to remain silent
Speaker 1: when they feel that their views are in opposition to
Speaker 1: the majority of view on a subject. And it's very interesting,
Speaker 1: of course that this comes out of Germany in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four, you know, definitely coming in in the wake
Speaker 1: of the Second World War, in the wake of the
Speaker 1: rise and fall of the Nazis, in the wake of
Speaker 1: the Holocaust, where you have you know, individuals inside and
Speaker 1: outside of of of the German people asking the question, know,
Speaker 1: how how could this have happened? How does how does
Speaker 1: this extreme UH take on global affairs, and how does
Speaker 1: this become the norm? How does all of this rise
Speaker 1: to power? Right and and so this is in a
Speaker 1: way an attempt to look at that, you know, just
Speaker 1: to to say, well, you know, why why didn't people
Speaker 1: speak out when when there were these extreme opinions in
Speaker 1: their midst Why did they remain silent instead of saying,
Speaker 1: you know, that's actually a really dangerous idea. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the the the extreme actions that in sued in This
Speaker 1: is what Newman was predicating her model on. And the
Speaker 1: model is based on three premises. One that people have
Speaker 1: a quasi statistical organ a kind of sixth cents or
Speaker 1: the ability, I could say, the ability to read the
Speaker 1: room to figure out what the prevailing in public opinion is.
Speaker 1: Two that people have a fear of isolation and they
Speaker 1: know what behaviors will increase their likelihood of being socially isolated.
Speaker 1: And three, people are reticent to express their minority views
Speaker 1: because of that fear of isolation. And she says that
Speaker 1: the spiral is created or reinforced when someone in the
Speaker 1: perceived opinion majority speaks out really confidently in support of
Speaker 1: the majority opinion, and then of course those in the
Speaker 1: minority kind of recede to the shadows. What I love
Speaker 1: about this the theory is that we can pretty much
Speaker 1: everybody can plug their own experiences into this, unless you're
Speaker 1: one of those individuals that I can scarcely imagine who
Speaker 1: is always in the majority. Uh you know who is
Speaker 1: who's who has never had an opinion that differs from
Speaker 1: those around you. Um, for instance, you're you're hanging around
Speaker 1: some people you don't really know, and uh, they're talking
Speaker 1: about a movie that you really like, except they hate it.
Speaker 1: You may not feel comfortable saying, hey, actually I really
Speaker 1: like that movie because of X, Y and Z, because
Speaker 1: as you are, you're already uh um outnumbered by those
Speaker 1: who dislike it. Yeah, And I'm sure everybody has been
Speaker 1: in a social situation situation before in which your minority
Speaker 1: view is how old and you don't necessarily want to
Speaker 1: speak out to the majority, even if you feel like
Speaker 1: what the those opinions that they're expressing are terrible, you know,
Speaker 1: because again there is this idea that the majority is there.
Speaker 1: You might be socially ostracized and you see this like
Speaker 1: from say, you know, just your cultural taste to something
Speaker 1: as terrible as the Holocaust. As Newman was trying to
Speaker 1: figure out, like how do these what sort of models
Speaker 1: in place here to to keep people under wraps. And
Speaker 1: so I think that's why this idea or theory is
Speaker 1: so powerful, because it sure does show how people tend
Speaker 1: to express themselves or not express themselves. And one of
Speaker 1: the perceived weaknesses of this theory is that you have
Speaker 1: minority views that are expressed like super exceedingly expressed by
Speaker 1: some members of the group, which I guess you could
Speaker 1: say would then become known to the group and then
Speaker 1: that minority view would be expressed and cancel out this
Speaker 1: idea of the spiral of silence. So that's that's one
Speaker 1: idea here that kind of goes against the model. Another
Speaker 1: idea is that the Internet, the Great Internet, is leveling
Speaker 1: the playing field. There's all these different pockets of um
Speaker 1: opinions out there, and therefore they should all be expressed equally, right,
Speaker 1: But no, that is not the case. So that is
Speaker 1: sort of an outmoded idea of one of the criticisms
Speaker 1: leveled at the spiral of silence, because it turns out
Speaker 1: that the Internet is actually, at least in one study,
Speaker 1: mimicking the model for the spiral of silence. You know,
Speaker 1: before we get into that, I also have to add
Speaker 1: it in my own experience when I find myself in
Speaker 1: a group that's you know, among people that are not
Speaker 1: my group. You know, Um, I'm often don't engage with them,
Speaker 1: like first, I feel like some other reasons as well,
Speaker 1: like and a lot of it comes down to, you know,
Speaker 1: me versus other. So it's like, I know that that
Speaker 1: you guys have a different opinion on things than me,
Speaker 1: and I am not going to try and convince you
Speaker 1: because you are the other and why would I. You know,
Speaker 1: I know that I cannot convince you, and I don't
Speaker 1: want to convince you because you're basically a different species
Speaker 1: than me. You know. It's kind of it's like if
Speaker 1: I hear some people talking about how great football is.
Speaker 1: I don't particularly like football, but why am I going
Speaker 1: to even chime in on that conversation? What's what's my
Speaker 1: possible agenda and contributing and creating some sort of artificial
Speaker 1: argument over that. This is why common ground is so
Speaker 1: incredibly important, this ability for for each of us to
Speaker 1: find that common ground. So you like wrestling, Yeah, And
Speaker 1: this is another example, like that's something that I often
Speaker 1: don't bring up. I generally don't think it up because
Speaker 1: we are going to look down on me and it's
Speaker 1: a it's a it's a long uh. I have a
Speaker 1: hard time understanding myself why I like it so well,
Speaker 1: But I guess my point is is that I think
Speaker 1: in these conversations and the coming common ground, there there's
Speaker 1: some crossover, and so there's these opportunities for humans to
Speaker 1: understand one another, which is largely what we try to do,
Speaker 1: is to find that common ground. But when we don't, again,
Speaker 1: it's this idea that we're going to be socially ostracized.
Speaker 1: And a lot of us don't think much about that. Okay,
Speaker 1: whatever many socially ostracized, but really think about I mean,
Speaker 1: the ability of the human species to have existed for
Speaker 1: as long as it has has largely been because of cooperation,
Speaker 1: all right. In cooperation means finding that common ground, but
Speaker 1: also gauging what the group thinks and choosing your battles,
Speaker 1: you know, and and sometimes sometimes it is just a
Speaker 1: matter of choosing your battles and saying, why would I
Speaker 1: possibly bring up something at the dinner table that I'm
Speaker 1: going to fight with my in laws about, you know
Speaker 1: why that that would be silly? But then also they're
Speaker 1: getting examples. Why would I bring it up if it
Speaker 1: could get me ostracized or killed, you know, and certainly
Speaker 1: there have been countless examples of that throughout history, when
Speaker 1: someone has a differing religious opinion, differing sexual orientation or
Speaker 1: gender orientation, etcetera. And that's currently at work in our
Speaker 1: modern world as well. Right, that's not just the stuff
Speaker 1: of days gone by. All Right, Let's look at this
Speaker 1: Pew Research Center study. They wanted to see how hot
Speaker 1: button topics were being expressed on the Internet, specifically in
Speaker 1: social media. So they selected the topic of Edward Snowden
Speaker 1: revealing mass surveillance by the n s A to look
Speaker 1: at how opinions are being parsed. And the reports author said, quote,
Speaker 1: we selected the issue because other surveys at the same
Speaker 1: time we're fielding this poll that we're fielding. This poll
Speaker 1: showed that Americans were divided over whether the n s
Speaker 1: A contractors leaks about surveillance were justified and whether the
Speaker 1: surveillance policy itself was a good or bad idea. And
Speaker 1: so the Pew Research Foundation found that one sort of
Speaker 1: a percent of people said that the release of classified
Speaker 1: information harmed public interests, by said it served public interests.
Speaker 1: So you have a topic basically here that everybody has
Speaker 1: an opinion on So the Research Center's Internet Project found
Speaker 1: that not only were the one thousand, eight hundred one
Speaker 1: respondent's less willing to discuss the Snowden n s a
Speaker 1: story in social media than they were in person, face
Speaker 1: to face, but they also determined that average Facebook or
Speaker 1: Twitter users were especially less likely to voice their concerns
Speaker 1: during real life interactions if they felt that their friends
Speaker 1: or their followers would not support their viewpoint. So, again,
Speaker 1: this is just one study and it's relatively small, it's
Speaker 1: one topic. It would be really interesting to see this
Speaker 1: in other areas like gun control or abortion or and
Speaker 1: many other topics that are lightning around topics um. But
Speaker 1: you do, at least in this instance, see that model
Speaker 1: at play where people do not want to be socially
Speaker 1: ostracized even though they have an opinion on this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then the media plays a huge ro on it.
Speaker 1: There was another Pew study that looked at Gulf War
Speaker 1: and US support for that war, and they found that
Speaker 1: those who watched television and perceived that the public supported
Speaker 1: the war were more likely to support the war thenselves, um,
Speaker 1: which which again plays into this idea that that if
Speaker 1: you know even if we don't agree with something ourselves,
Speaker 1: if we feel like the majority is directed that way,
Speaker 1: then that cons the way our opinion as well. Now Snowdon,
Speaker 1: I mean the thing about snow Snowdon, though, is that
Speaker 1: I feel like it at the heart of that, you
Speaker 1: do have a a difficult figure to get behind, you know,
Speaker 1: and you have these you have these different polls, like
Speaker 1: this whole topic is is is is made more complicated
Speaker 1: to just because you have such a such a polarizing
Speaker 1: figure at the center of it. I mean, you have
Speaker 1: the personality of the individual thrown in there, you have
Speaker 1: elements of of alleged treason, you have you have you
Speaker 1: have you know, criticisms of how he handled it, and
Speaker 1: then but then you still have lots of damning evidence
Speaker 1: about the use of domestic surveillance and another repelations. Yes,
Speaker 1: Snowdon is a polarizing figure. And I'm not going to
Speaker 1: say like Snowdon and Julian Massage or apples apples because
Speaker 1: they are not. But here you have another person who is,
Speaker 1: you know, essentially leaking secrets of governments, who is a
Speaker 1: very enigmatic character and not polarizing, but polarizing in a
Speaker 1: more of like a hero anti hero way as opposed
Speaker 1: to Snowdon is more a little bit like people aren't
Speaker 1: quite sure I think about his character, and so, um,
Speaker 1: I think maybe you bring that up because that could
Speaker 1: certainly color the results of how or why people want
Speaker 1: to express themselves about the topic. Right, Yeah, and in
Speaker 1: the labels we end up putting on those individuals. I mean,
Speaker 1: we could go on and on just player comparing those
Speaker 1: two figures that are both problematic in their own right.
Speaker 1: But but what to do with all of this information? Well,
Speaker 1: I think it's just to consider again the nature of
Speaker 1: silence and what it's doing for us as human beings.
Speaker 1: And um, I think that Susan Santag has a great
Speaker 1: thought about it. Um. This is from her nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: nine essay The Aesthetics of Silence. She's rights, silence remains
Speaker 1: inescapably a form of speech. So it's sort of one
Speaker 1: of those things that, yeah, sometimes we feel like and
Speaker 1: not expressing our opinion that we're removing ourselves from the situation. However,
Speaker 1: it just means that we're allowing one voice to dampen another.
Speaker 1: And as Newman tried to explore the ways in which
Speaker 1: actions spiral out of the spiral of silence. Indeed, and
Speaker 1: you know, I wanna advise everyone day to keep this
Speaker 1: thick in mind when you listen in to our next
Speaker 1: um episode of Stuff to Build Your Mind, which we'll
Speaker 1: get into the area of Nasty Stereo, where again we're
Speaker 1: dealing with how we behave within a community, how we
Speaker 1: think within a community, and uh, it's like all things human,
Speaker 1: it gets so so complex and strange. Indeed it does,
Speaker 1: especially with yes, yeah, all right. You can find us
Speaker 1: in a bunch of places, mainly Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. That's right, that's the mother ship. That's
Speaker 1: where you will find every podcast episode. Occasionally we get
Speaker 1: an email or a Facebook message where someone says, hey,
Speaker 1: I was looking for this episode or uh, you know,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't seem to be on iTunes. Well, all
Speaker 1: the episodes are at the website. So if you've ever
Speaker 1: heard us mentioned of an old an old episode you're
Speaker 1: just curious what we've covered over the years, that's where
Speaker 1: you will find all of them. And you also find videos,
Speaker 1: you'll find blog posts, and you'll find links out to
Speaker 1: our various social media accounts. And if you have some
Speaker 1: thoughts about a spiral of silence or even the arrats
Speaker 1: of silence. You can send those thoughts via email to
Speaker 1: blow the mind at how stuff works dot com. For
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com.