Reducing Noise in our lives (reflections on the Israeli book “Noise” by Jacob Burak, 2009)

Noise surrounds our lives. The biggest noise of all is our fear of death. To cope with it and to feel like we socially belong, we divide the world between “us” and “them” (i.e. the others). We look for connections with people like us so desperately even when such connections do not exist (psychologists call it 'affinity bias'). We are so extreme in this that we consider people that stayed in the same hotel as us and feel the connection to people who have similar names like us or look like us. We would tip waiters more if they repeat our order, speak like us, or even copy our gestures. We look for connections with others hoping that they would understand our thoughts and feelings. We do favors to others in the hope those will return favors to us in time, but in reality, we usually do not get back what we hope to get. Most of the people around us cannot get into our head and the fear to alone materialize when we feel no one understands us. Others, that are not familiar to us, look threatening and create “noise” we struggle to cope with.

Each of us has inside noise amplifiers that make the noises worst. We feed on media that provide half-truths and news-worthy junk. In a world as safe as ever, we live in a paradox as we fear even more. Some of those noise amplifiers are embedded in our genes, in sub-conscious fears that we cannot explain. Faulty statistics confuse us even more. We get easily emotional when a story is presented to us about a suffering individual, but we ignore news of thousands or millions suffering - think how people connect with the story of Anne Frank but cannot cope with the Holocaust as a whole. We fail to remember that things happen because of coincidences and not every event has significance or meaning or need someone to blame. We tend to regress to the mean and forget that extreme outcomes (often covered in depth by the media) usually tend to become normal again.

Having too much information around us does not help. One way to cope with this is to stop thinking about small things and look at the bigger global noises. It can help us forget our insignificant noises. But we should not cancel out all noise because noise is needed. Complete lack of noise brings boredom and can lead to craziness. But not always additional information is good. Many times, less is more. More information available to investors usually lead to worst performance because it improves their confidence and blurs their vision.

So, what can we do to have less noise in our lives? We can talk to psychologists to understand our own noises, limit our consumption of news (and turn off the TV...). We can improve our self-worth and trust others more and be willing to give up things, even knowledge, to make space for new experiences and thoughts. We can stop listening to “experts” (because they usually do not know more than us) and realize that the world does not revolve around us. We will continue to fear and be distracted by noise, but if we understand why, we can live calmer and fuller lives.

Book Reference

Burak, J. (2009). Noise: The profile of a cultural disorder. Kineret, Israel: Dvir Publishing House Ltd.