On Silence and My Leader.

I think I mentioned once before on this blog that I seem to be able to perceive two levels of silence. Simple silence is an entirely passive phenomenon, being merely the absence of sound. The other sort – let’s call it ‘profound silence’ – is something more palpable and energetic that settles on you and makes your skin tingle.

So is this right? Are there really different levels of silence, or merely different states of perception which vary with mood? The latter would seem to be the obvious answer, but it’s too mundane to convince me. Besides, I remember once watching a documentary in which some logician argued that there are three levels of zero (I think he called them something like zero, deep zero and absolute zero.)

What I don’t remember is the logic he used. Whether that’s because I don’t have sufficient intelligence to fathom the logic of a professional logician, or whether it’s because my favourite maxim is ‘perception is the whole of the life experience’, I don’t know. The problem with holding to such a maxim is that it makes logic seem much less important.

Of course, this capacity I have to merely hear one sort of silence while feeling the other might indicate something else about me, the most obvious possibilities being:

1. I’m not human.

2. I really am schizoid.

I think option 1 is by far the more likely.

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By the way, I just saw a short video clip in which a CNN journalist referred to the President of the USA as ‘the President of the Free World.’ Isn’t that just a bit… erm… arrogant? Is that what Americans really think? If so, could you please tell me where I should go to vote in November? And when I get to the voting booth, will there be somebody in attendance who can explain to me exactly what ‘the free world’ means?