Our culture's cradle is situated by comon assent in Hellas, that loose confederation which invented Occidental philosophy we are so fond of conjuring up in ceremonial adresses even though we cannot distinguish Ancient Greek letters from the Cyrillic alphabet. Maybe this is what makes it attractive. For philosophizing as the expression of non-technical Rationality devoid of time and accordingly money constraints has become quite unfashionable in Western countries, banished to the circles inhabited by melancholy unsalaried lecturers or in its trivial form by people who have just drunk their fifth beer. Today education means above all knwoledge which is applicable, exploitable, useful for the market - in short any information which is not an end in itself.
Only that person will be held competent who is the first to answer any undecidable question. We nearly imagine we hear the buzzer when it comes to discussing problems of integration, economical measures or balancing the welfare state. It is good form to send the employees to rhetoric seminars as a further training. Talk shows dominate the political discussion. We do a lot of talking.
In past times it was a little different. A philosopher is meant to think, and thinking was always easy to distinguish from speaking: Either temporally by conceptually preparing a stetement or factually by wisely abstaining from speaking. To present ears the ancient reproof a speaker has forfeited his philosopher's status might sound amazing: If you had been silent, you would have remained a philosopher. If we take that statement seriously, we will inevitably draw the conclusion nowadays nobody wants to be a philosopher anymore and that is the way it is.
In public discourse it is only the word that counts, not the silence. Who begins to speak and then to be silent, will be regarded a loser. Who is silent in the first place, will live in the shadow. The latter might be all the more risky, as people easily suspect someone is saving his communicative efforts for strategic tricks and is up to something unpleasant. And as social systems are based on communication and due to their survival instinct experts so elegantly call autopoiesis cannot perish silently, in case a member refuses communication they make do with excluding the member, making that person redundant, or with communicating about instead of with such a person. If necessary, they will produce rumours which will keep them going. Often the both options are causally linked - someone is silent and gets suspected to be an eccentric, philosopher, sodomite (for all these attributes equally mark the opposite term to being normal), so that the talkative majority can expel him from the group. Any conviction can be excused - except that silence is valuable.
However, it can be. Sometimes it does make sense to stockpile rehearsed sound emissions. Contrary to the gabbily demanded communication culture there are still some places which insist on silence. A clear case in point: the working place, the hotbed of asymmetrical communication. Whenever a superior wants to bring his (her?) power to bear, he (she?) will order the employee to enter an open dicourse while insisting on his (her) right to speak. A subordinate who contradicts three times is anyhow about to change the job, a happy single person who need not be woried about paying the rent. Or take the communication forms characterizing the social system armed forces. If the instructor barks out a command, not even a reception signal, a communicative feedback will be appropriate: Stand still! OK, why not? Do not get worked up.
To the person keeping mum, silence serves as a consolating chance of making sure he or she is only inferior in terms of power, but not of intellect. Thoughts will be free, even if the body must stand to attention, bow or be kept on the leash. From that perspective any kind of repression quitely proves the superior's inferiority who is compelled to surrender to such a provocative passivity. Maybe this gives a less obvious reason why we still have to offer language courses to immigrants or why denseness is thriving. How can I be blamed for offending the ground rules if nobody taught me them?
No matter if silence is approppriate or tabooed - it is a genuine means of communication, equal to talking. Given the psychological conviction we cannot avoid communicating the lack of words means proceeding a conversation in its own way. There is telling silence, because the difference of speaking and silence which starts any system formation is repeated, copied, absorbed within the boundaries of that emerging inside. If I do not have anything to talk to a person, I must distinguish if I have nothing to talk to a person or not. To put it differently: It makes a big difference if someone disregards another person who is trying to open a dialogue (the German service problem) or someone prefers to keep his mouth shut when confronted with his superior's suggestion (who is looking around, eagerly waiting for objections he might use against the objector).
Qui tacet, consentiri videtur - the phenomenon of fellow travellers whose claim to be innocent makes them guilty is widely known in Germany. Which raises the ultimate question whether there is really too much public talk about socially relevant issues - or whether talking without consequences is only meant to legitimate silence. As can be seen, silence, too is subject to the (not so) New Confusion.
Only that person will be held competent who is the first to answer any undecidable question. We nearly imagine we hear the buzzer when it comes to discussing problems of integration, economical measures or balancing the welfare state. It is good form to send the employees to rhetoric seminars as a further training. Talk shows dominate the political discussion. We do a lot of talking.
In past times it was a little different. A philosopher is meant to think, and thinking was always easy to distinguish from speaking: Either temporally by conceptually preparing a stetement or factually by wisely abstaining from speaking. To present ears the ancient reproof a speaker has forfeited his philosopher's status might sound amazing: If you had been silent, you would have remained a philosopher. If we take that statement seriously, we will inevitably draw the conclusion nowadays nobody wants to be a philosopher anymore and that is the way it is.
In public discourse it is only the word that counts, not the silence. Who begins to speak and then to be silent, will be regarded a loser. Who is silent in the first place, will live in the shadow. The latter might be all the more risky, as people easily suspect someone is saving his communicative efforts for strategic tricks and is up to something unpleasant. And as social systems are based on communication and due to their survival instinct experts so elegantly call autopoiesis cannot perish silently, in case a member refuses communication they make do with excluding the member, making that person redundant, or with communicating about instead of with such a person. If necessary, they will produce rumours which will keep them going. Often the both options are causally linked - someone is silent and gets suspected to be an eccentric, philosopher, sodomite (for all these attributes equally mark the opposite term to being normal), so that the talkative majority can expel him from the group. Any conviction can be excused - except that silence is valuable.
However, it can be. Sometimes it does make sense to stockpile rehearsed sound emissions. Contrary to the gabbily demanded communication culture there are still some places which insist on silence. A clear case in point: the working place, the hotbed of asymmetrical communication. Whenever a superior wants to bring his (her?) power to bear, he (she?) will order the employee to enter an open dicourse while insisting on his (her) right to speak. A subordinate who contradicts three times is anyhow about to change the job, a happy single person who need not be woried about paying the rent. Or take the communication forms characterizing the social system armed forces. If the instructor barks out a command, not even a reception signal, a communicative feedback will be appropriate: Stand still! OK, why not? Do not get worked up.
To the person keeping mum, silence serves as a consolating chance of making sure he or she is only inferior in terms of power, but not of intellect. Thoughts will be free, even if the body must stand to attention, bow or be kept on the leash. From that perspective any kind of repression quitely proves the superior's inferiority who is compelled to surrender to such a provocative passivity. Maybe this gives a less obvious reason why we still have to offer language courses to immigrants or why denseness is thriving. How can I be blamed for offending the ground rules if nobody taught me them?
No matter if silence is approppriate or tabooed - it is a genuine means of communication, equal to talking. Given the psychological conviction we cannot avoid communicating the lack of words means proceeding a conversation in its own way. There is telling silence, because the difference of speaking and silence which starts any system formation is repeated, copied, absorbed within the boundaries of that emerging inside. If I do not have anything to talk to a person, I must distinguish if I have nothing to talk to a person or not. To put it differently: It makes a big difference if someone disregards another person who is trying to open a dialogue (the German service problem) or someone prefers to keep his mouth shut when confronted with his superior's suggestion (who is looking around, eagerly waiting for objections he might use against the objector).
Qui tacet, consentiri videtur - the phenomenon of fellow travellers whose claim to be innocent makes them guilty is widely known in Germany. Which raises the ultimate question whether there is really too much public talk about socially relevant issues - or whether talking without consequences is only meant to legitimate silence. As can be seen, silence, too is subject to the (not so) New Confusion.
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