Reject the Noise

The modern world is loud. Not just in sound, but in distraction, in the endless flood of notifications, advertisements, and meaningless obligations that drown out anything real. People don’t think anymore—they react. They don’t reflect—they scroll. They have traded depth for speed, silence for stimulation. The result is a life that is not truly lived, but merely endured, a drifting through days dictated by algorithms and obligations rather than by choice.

C.S. Lewis warned of this in The Screwtape Letters, where the demonic mentor instructs his pupil that the safest way to lead a soul astray is not through dramatic temptation but through distraction. “The safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” But Screwtape offers an even darker insight: “We will make the whole universe a noise in the end… the melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end.” This is the world now—a place where silence is nearly impossible, where every moment is filled with distraction, where even the smallest pause is seen as an opportunity for consumption.

Thoreau saw it too. He went to Walden Pond not to escape the world but to strip it down, to find out what was real beneath all the noise. He understood that most people mistake busyness for purpose. They fill their days with obligations, with the pursuit of things that ultimately do not matter, afraid of what they might find if they were ever truly alone with themselves. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” he wrote, and if anything, that is truer today than it was in his time.

This desperation is masked by the glow of screens. People wake up and reach for their phones before they reach for their thoughts. They consume, they react, they scroll through a manufactured reality that keeps them tethered, docile, passive. Marcus Aurelius warned against this kind of existence, though he never could have imagined the digital form it would take. “You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” Yet most today have surrendered even that last domain of control. They let themselves be ruled by impulses, dictated by whatever outrage or entertainment is fed to them that day.

Thich Nhat Hanh taught that mindfulness is the antidote to this kind of enslavement. To be present, to fully experience a moment, is an act of rebellion in an age of distraction. He taught that to wash the dishes is to wash the dishes—not to think about the next task, not to escape into thought, but to be there, fully. But how many are capable of that today? Even walking down the street, people wear headphones, stare at screens, numb themselves from the simple act of being where they are.

Even those who seek meaning often misunderstand what that means. Jordan Peterson describes the modern condition as one of avoidance, of the desperate attempt to evade responsibility, struggle, and the necessary suffering that comes with growth. A deliberate life is not a comfortable one. It is not easy, and it is not painless. It demands that a man faces himself honestly, that he takes responsibility for his existence, that he chooses hardship over indulgence. But in doing so, he finds meaning. “The purpose of life is finding the largest burden that you can bear and bearing it.”

The world will not make this easy. It will do everything in its power to keep people distracted, to keep them comfortable, to keep them passive. It will flood them with trivialities, with obligations that seem urgent but mean nothing. It will keep them scrolling, consuming, chasing things they do not need, terrified of what they might find if they were ever alone with their own thoughts.

But there is a way out. To step back. To reject the noise. To stop living reactively and start living deliberately. It is not an easy road, and most will never take it. But for those who do, there is something on the other side that most will never know. Life. Not existence. Not endurance. Life.