This is something I've been thinking about lately and, in my efforts to break my terrible habit of blogging about once a month, I decided to jot it down here.
I've got two younger brothers that I have quite successfully learned to completely tune out over the years, and I've noticed that I apply this skill to other unnecessary background noise as well. There have been many times when someone has complained about a noise that's bothering them or keeping them from concentrating or something and I'm almost embarrassed that I hadn't noticed the noise until their complaint. It makes me feel extremely unobservant.
And it's not just me. A couple friends who also have younger siblings, and in one case a particularly loud and obnoxious stepfather, have found themsleves doing the same thing. Where they block out whatever noise they're not concentrating on, I mean.
And have you ever heard the expression "the buzzing silence" before? (I have a point to this, I swear) Maybe this is just me, but whenever I'm sitting in complete silence, it's like my ears decide to go haywire on me and blott out the silence with this low buzz that gradually builds as I concentrate on it. It's like true silence is unattainable.
So this is where we get to that idea that I've been rolling around in brain for the past couple days. Could it be possible that there is actually a sound wave or pulse or something (if it sounds like I have no idea what I'm talking about, it's probably because I don't) that comes from some unknown source and that we hear all around us without realizing it? I mean, if we've become so accustomed to tuning it out basically since birth, then it makes sence that no one would realize it's there.
The same can be said for the other senses too. Smells and tastes that are in the air that we've ignored for so long we can no longer distinguish them from anything else. It makes you wonder just how much of this world we've lost purely in our efforts to bypass what's unnecessary and only use our senses for the new and exciting.
It's kind of depressing. And now I really want to know what air tastes like...
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4 comments:
Mind if I go all science-y on you?
Sound is vibration. In order for there to be sound, there has to be vibration. That is, sound in the normal sense at least. Furthermore, sound travels by making other stuff vibrate, so since space is mostly vacuum in terms of normal matter, whatever would be making the constant buzzing would have to be on earth. Certainly in urban areas I can tell you that constantly driving cars can create a constant buzzing. And if we're not hearing something because it's constantly there, if it's within our hearing range, I would expect someone to have noticed it with some sort of machine. I'm also not sure entirely how the ear works, but everyone has experienced ringing in their ear, caused by a source that isn't there. Could easily be similar.
Additionally, there's something else I'd like to point out, slightly less science-y. In dreams (assuming they're not real) you often believe your senses feed you information, when (")really(") they don't. So it would make sense, then, that your senses could feed you information that's "false" when you're (")awake("), too. Sorry for all the quotes and parenthesis, just felt like pointing out that there's no difference between our experiences in dreams and in real life.
Also sorry to have shattered any hopes about something supernatural.
And as for your taste/smell ideas, the way smell works is that your nose has receptors, and when particles land on them they send signals to the brain. However, there's only so many receptors for any given stench, so eventually they fill up and we stop noticing the smell. Not sure how taste works, but it could easily be similar - or it could just be that our tongues don't have taste receptors for the gases in the atmosphere.
A comment on sight - I find people rely on it possibly far too much. Also, most of what is visible, you don't actually see as in take it in and remember it.
B.
Don't worry about the shattering of any hopes, it was more of a "wouldn't-it-be-cool-if..." kind of thing than an actual belief.
I don't entirely agree with you when you say our senses don't feed us information in dreams. Probably the strongest example of this is when you dream that you have to use the bathroom really bad and wake up with the realization that, in reality, you genuinely have to use the bathroom. There's the other common examples like when you kick off the covers or something in your sleep and you dream that you're in a snowstorm because that's your body's way of telling you you're cold. Of course, all this doesn't really help with my sound theory thing, but now that I've taken the time to type all that out, I don't particularly want to delete it.
I actually did know how the nose works and it still fits that we've lost possibly hundreds of scents because they are so common around us that those particular receptors in our nose have been full for the majority of our lives. Same for taste if our tastebuds also work using receptors.
Side question: "In dreams (assuming they're not real)" Do you believe dreams are real? Or at least in some aspects?
No, our senses definitely do feed us information in dreams; it's just that most of the sensual input we get in dreams, is not real. There is definitely no way my senses are telling me I'm fighting a Sith Lord on car rooftops on a highway.
And yes, the smell thing could be there… but you'd never notice it; it'd be blamed on the location or air type - which smells are, so, in fact, there (probably) are smells around you that you don't smell because you're used to them, and you notice different ones in different places.
Do I believe dreams are real? I'm not sure I understand what that question means. I believe that people certainly have dreams, obviously, that's not something hard to believe, but that's not what you're asking and I'm not sure what you are so could you try to ask it better?
And on a further side back-to-your-original-topic, I actually realized there could be a sound that nobody hears that's constant, but it could / would probably be out of our hearing range (humans can only hear pitches from around 20 - 20,000 hertz, if I remember correctly).
B.
I'm not actually entirely sure what I meant by it. I guess just that some people believe a dream is a foreshadowing of that person's future or there are even some who believe that when we dream, we're experiencing a different self in another dimension or something. And then there are the people like me, who just think dreams are leftover brain static. Where would you say you fall?
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