Plough Quarterly • Winter 2018 67 That’s why it matters that silence is endan- gered. This state of affairs hasn’t come upon us all at once – even before the Industrial ­ Revolution, technologies such as print were transforming and increasing the flow of infor- mation, with profound effects on the interior lives of human beings. Yet the revolution in digital media has made the loss of silence not just one reason for concern among many, but an acute threat – and indeed, an accomplished fact for most humans alive today. The huge increase in information flooding our brains makes dramatic new demands on their capacity for mental processing, which in turn may help explain why stress and related anxiety disorders are on the rise. 1 “Information/ action imbalance” is what the educator Neil Postman called this growing phenomenon in a book written in 1985, years before the internet was widely available. 2 Postman hypothesized that the ratio between information received and a person’s ability to act on that information creates psychological stress. Postman, in turn, built on the work of Jacques Ellul, a French philosopher and historian writing two decades earlier. Already then, Ellul foresaw the implications of big data for the interior life: “Like a fish’s perfect adaptation to its water environment, we are enveloped in data, absorbed into a mono- dimensional world of stereotypes and slogans, and integrated into a homogenous whole by the machinery of conformity.” Today this “machinery of conformity” permeates every niche of our culture. Nearly five billion people use mobile phones, 3 and “depressing” – these are just a few of the descrip- tors I come across when grading the essays of my students after asking them to fast from elec- tronic media for twenty-four hours. The titles of their essays are telling: “My Day from Hell,” or “Death – take me now!” Over twelve years of assigning this exercise, I’ve noticed students have found it increasingly difficult to successfully stick out the digital fast. For many, severing the link to their main conduit of information causes something near emotional pain. Yet those who persevere through the initial feelings of loss often report an unexpected breakthrough. Some say they attain moments of great clarity and awareness; others find themselves gaining an almost ecstatic creativity. It’s not uncommon for students to feel the urge to pray. All the same, few if any of my students feel urged to make digital fasting a regular part of life. I suspect this has to do with the third and most powerful reason we avoid silence: it presents us with the stark realization of our own frailty, failure, and eventual death. Loosed from the concerns of the workaday world, we can feel purposeless and adrift, aware of the short span of human consciousness we call life. For those who are older, silence may push the lost dreams of youth to the forefront of the imagination. We live, we die; the cycle continues. Who wants to be confronted with the harshness of that reality? Yet this is a medicine we need. Silence does the deep work that speech cannot accomplish. Through its discipline, we come to better understand our own thoughts and motivations. We find ourselves relating more cohesively to our world and to others. We can gain a ­ stronger grasp of what it means to be human. Stephanie Bennett, PhD, is fellow for student engagement and professor of communication and media ecology at Palm Beach Atlantic University. She is author of several books, including The Poet’s Treasure (Wild Flower Press, 2016), a work of fiction about the future of community. Silence does the deep work that speech cannot accomplish.