Slow Ethics and the Art of Care by Gallagher Ann;

Author:Gallagher, Ann;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
Published: 2019-09-25T00:00:00+00:00

Quiet and Slow Ethics

An article in the Irish Times in 2017 entitled ‘Ciúnas! The search for silence in the modern world’ (Katie Byrne, 2017) reported that silence ‘is an increasingly sought-after commodity’ as ‘multi-media landscape becomes even louder’. The article details how the quest for silence (or ‘ciúnas’ as is the Irish translation) is impacting on work and social life. There is, for example, the ‘Quiet Mark’ on domestic appliances, increasing popularity of noise cancelling headphones and an increasing array of away days, mini-breaks and retreats that promise quiet and relief from our frenetic lifestyles and digital addictions.

An author who is comfortable with silence is Norwegian explorer, Erling Kagge. Kagge walked for 50 days across Antarctica alone and without a radio. Kagge begins his book Silence: In the Age of Noise, as follows:

Whenever I am unable to walk, climb or sail away from the world, I have learned to shut it out. Learning this took time. Only when I understood that I had a primal need for silence was I able to begin my search for it – and there, deep beneath a cacophony of traffic noise and thoughts, music and machinery, iPhones and snow ploughs, it lay in wait for me. Silence

(Kagge, 2018, p. 1)

Kagge goes on to share insights on topics such as wonder, inner peace, the value of ‘pause’ and being ‘unborable’. Of wonder in daily life, Kagge (2018, p. 9) writes:

It is one of the purest forms of joy that I can imagine. I enjoy the feeling. I often wonder. I do it almost everywhere: when travelling, reading, meeting people, when I sit down to write or whenever I feel my heart beat or see the sunrise. Wonder is one of the most powerful forces with which we are born. It is also one of our finest skills.

Kagge writes of the ‘learning to value minuscule joys’ (p. 13) and of inner peace that comes with activities such as knitting, meditating, skiing, reading or brewing beer. He writes:

A great many of us have a desire to return to something basic, authentic, and to find peace, to experience a small quiet alternative to the din. There's something slow and sustainable about such pursuits, something meditative.

(p. 29)

We are reminded by Kagge that ‘discomfort’ with being alone and needing to turn to activities or gadgets to amuse ourselves to quell boredom is not a new phenomenon. He cites seventeenth-century philosopher, Pascal, who wrote that: ‘All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone’ (p. 37). Silence, according to Kagge, is ‘about rediscovering, through pausing, the things that bring us joy’ (p. 75).

Pausing to appreciate visual art, such as Munch's The Scream, can result in ‘a communicative silence’ between the art and the viewer. Kagge describes ‘a good work of art’ as:

…like a thinking machine that reflects that artist's ideas, hopes, moods, failures and intuitions.

(p. 112)

Kagge's perspectives provide, perhaps, a balm for hectic days, a directive to take pleasure from small everyday events and to be able to bear silence that enables us to get to know ourselves better.

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