A Problem:
“I feel as if I must be producing some sort of work constantly in order to still be a worthwhile photographer, whatever that means. Is it true?”
I think noise is killing me. Or, at least it feels as if it could. It’s dangerous, and I’ve noticed something about it lately that makes me rather upset. Not just because it affects me, and I have been rather frustrated and disheartened by it, but because I see it affect my friends – people with tremendous talent, marvelous intellects, and genuine drive – and it beats them into the ground. I am speaking about the cruel master of “content.”
“The faculty of sight, which ought to see and contemplate the essential things is turned aside to what is artificial. Our eyes confuse night and day because our whole lives are immersed in a permanent light” - Robert Cardinal Sarah, The Power of Silence
Have you seen Succession? Have you seen The Witcher? Have you seen Loki? Have you seen Avengers 15? What about that cool video Mr Beast posted the other day? No, I mean the other cool video. What about that last podcast episode? Did you see the NFL is adding another game this year? What did Stephen A say about it? I saw a really cool picture of Dubai yesterday, we should go there. The Lofoten Islands are cool too, I just put them on my bucket list. I just learned this cool fact that you can time travel by going around a black hole. Did you see the article I sent you about that congressional hearing? Sure seems serious. Wow, what silly little animals, I love these videos. Wait, I need to post something for the holiday. Look at the engagement I got on this one. Do you think I’m growing my audience? What’s your news podcast? The Daily is the best, I love starting my morning informed. Did you see what I put on my story the other day? It’s important. Anyway, have you seen the new season of Yellowstone?
Enough already. For the sake of silence, for the sake of your soul, please. Stop.
We’re very familiar with this tyrant, Content. Our lives are soaked in content. One might also call it Noise. Our culture is dominated by a voracious need to consume more of this…stuff, this constant churn of news, shows, movies, images, videos, reels, TikToks, and on and on and on. At the same time, our consumption perverts our basic creative impulse too; turning it into a slave for the production of even more content. The most obvious examples are social media grifters who intentionally and explicitly take on the title of “content creator,” but many people in different fields end up falling into this category too. If you are someone with a desire to make or say something, you are pressed into service for the machine, to the ultimate detriment of your work and soul.
You don’t have to be a beanie-wearing vagabond, traipsing around the Pacific Northwest taking pictures of your girlfriend in the mountains with the newest pair of sponsored leggings to be susceptible to the temptation of constant production. It's in the very air we breathe. The cultural landscape slopes downwards into a pit of endless production and consumption, and once there we subsist on empty calories of content. We’re pummeled with so much from every angle that it can’t possibly all be original and worthwhile. So much of it is repetitive, uninspiring, vapid, or outright harmful to us. Even those who do have something to say or a talent to share eventually end up melting into the muck with the rest of us.
The vast majority who engage in constant content production to show off or make a statement eventually burn through their schtick. Meanwhile, whatever worthwhile work we were doing ends up drained of all substance and stripped of consequence by its own repetition and excess. Critics start with something interesting to say and beat it to death. Writers get to their point, complete a magnum opus, and then feel the need to keep churning out little essays and stories for no other reason but to maintain attention. Movie and TV writers have this constant refrain of “I think there are more stories to tell in this universe” every time they finish one. The problem is that any pattern of creation that seeks to produce primarily for the sake of production is hollow and a perversion of the act itself. Whenever we click the shutter, put pen to paper, brush to canvas, etc. for the sake of appeasing the algorithm, wooing brands and other faceless entities, or, with a veil of false love, feeding the voracious consumption of our glassy-eyed audience, we have lost the plot and become just another bit of noise. That is a tragedy from the biggest studio to the most humble artist, and in the manner of consumption, it consumes us.
So my friend, if you consider yourself a creative and vacillate between posting on pointless platforms or just leaving them forever, you know what I’m talking about. If you just hate the comparison game and “rat race” of the internet, you know what I’m talking about. If you’re someone who finds the endless production of franchise films, shows, and products nauseating, you know what I’m talking about. If you have, at any point, wondered why and how the intelligentsia always seem to have a new thing to say, you know what I’m talking about. Almost every single person in America knows what I’m talking about because our culture’s telos has become the passive consumption of this noisy content, with a correlative impetus to produce more of the same. We churn out nonsense that stifles practically all that is good, noble, and inspiring in mankind, and I, for one, am tired.
The Cessation of Content:
It is for that reason that I make the bold yet utterly sensible assertion that the life of the “content creator” is not worth living. At least not for me, and, I suspect, for the vast majority of us. “For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?” says the Lord. Many quite literally gain the whole world, traveling so prolifically, whether physically or in their minds, that I can’t imagine they remember where home is. Some of these digital pioneers are even bravely venturing into the abyss to reconstruct the world itself in 1s and 0s. But do any of them have life? Noise is not a sin, silence is not a virtue, true,1 but this lifestyle, this practice, this culture of constant content is built on the dual, symbiotic vices of always having something to say and always needing something to consume. In that way, the content creator is the true avatar of the age. There is never a moment to rest, never time to reflect — there is scarcely time to say one thing before the next must be said. Each sentence, each thought, each work great and small is drowned in the noise of the one that follows. Everything must be commented on, built upon, followed up, or simply seen. Every message, insight, idea, and identity trumped, shared, and harped on to the ultimate detriment, decay, and exhaustion of each and every one of them. The only reason they do not appear to die is that their corpses enjoy the same treatment until even the bones have been ground to cultural dust.
What’s worse is that these things are done by the creators themselves. They are like parents who destroy their children with endless school, sports, and extracurriculars. These content creators, many of whom are or could be great artists, talents, and thinkers, degrade and often completely erase the value and impact of their own work by never allowing it to breathe. They are mindless consumer-creators who, rather than allowing each and every thing they create the space to be appreciated, would rather beat us and our senses into mind-numbing supplication by stretching their own work into endless droning threads of noise. What could they achieve if this were not the case? Wonders, perhaps.
But do these things that they churn out produce, facilitate, or call forth wonder? No, they do not. They merely tease the desire for wonder, deceiving a good and honest longing in the soul. ‘The world is charged with the grandeur of God” writes priest-poet Gerard Manly Hopkins, and we are meant to respond in kind with awe and wonder, but this constant noise bombards us so relentlessly that we cannot see through the smoke and shrapnel to the beauty that has existed since the foundation of the world. This culture of content is killing us, and we, producers and consumers alike, have become blind as we march toward the grave. We feel as if we must see everything. We must passively encounter every possible stimulus as if the mere sight of a thing marks a meaningful life. No, my friends. There are people who have never seen more than the fields, flowers, and far away hilltops right outside their doorstep and they lived richer, deeper lives than any of us. And they did so in comparative silence. There is no right or need to behold the world, and while we do need to encounter it, that cannot be meaningfully substituted by any of the content we passively consume. In fact, authentic encounter is actually hindered by passive consumption.
Where, then, to go?
“It is better to keep silent and be something than to talk and be nothing.” - St Ignatius of Antioch
I do not come to set fire to this culture. I cannot, but oh how I wish it were already burning. Knowing I can’t change or mold it on a whim, I instead come to invite each and every one of you to journey with me to a life outside the Content regime – a life of silence and authenticity, of contemplation and passion, all in pursuit of real, beautiful things rather than artificial, mindnumbing things. Some of you have already left, and are much farther down the road than I am. Others share this desire with me, but have yet to get up and actually leave. All, wherever the starting point, should be moving.
We weren’t made to live as passive, droning consumers. Participation in the culture of content is a choice. We don’t have to watch show after show, movie after movie. We don’t have to swear fealty to the franchises. We don’t need the endless news cycle. We don’t have to always have something to say. I don’t have to always have photos to show and talent to assert. You may not be able to sever yourself from the web of noise in one clean stroke, but that’s not the point. The point is that we desire the quiet and real stuff of life (ie the good, the true, and the beautiful) so much that noise no longer has anything left to offer us. I long for a day when each of us loves real life so much that these posts and porn have no allure at all. That is freedom; when our hearts, minds, bodies, and souls are so aligned with that which is good that we choose and act upon it without hesitation. Perhaps I will always hear this world’s siren song, but someday it will be nothing to me but a fly buzzing in my ears, something to be swatted away without a thought.
To find this freedom, I think we may have to set out on a path far from the safety of our homes and regular lives, in some form or another. The heart often follows the body, so if you feel you must have a radical change of scenery I pray for your prudence, but this exodus doesn’t necessarily have to be to the physical wilderness. Since the world is so saturated with noise and controlled by content, we have to find and cultivate gardens of silence2 where we can. Only from there will we be able to rest and rejuvenate for eventual forrays back into the maelstrom when the need arises. This must be done with genuine passion and zeal, not with a lukewarm heart. The saints of old ran to the wilderness to escape the noise of this world, and it is in their footsteps that I intend to walk. Interior or exterior, the wilderness is essential, and so I will be taking on the life of one in flight and leaving behind many comforts for a while. Chief among them will be the cradle of content itself: social media. I may visit once in a while to put out a notice of my newsletter or other writing, but other than that this will be it till about Easter, in March.
That, coupled with the various other disciplines of the spiritual exercise Exodus 90, will become a mode of living something like that of a people in the wild. Comforts are few, life is lean and unadorned, and the bread is unleavened. It will be a simple and bare-bones existence to the extent that it can be for a man living in the suburb of a major US city. But in that difficulty, and it will be difficult, weak-willed as I am, I will be quiet and, to the best of my ability, attentive to the voice of God rather than the noise of the world. God does not ask me to talk, yell, comment, and produce, he asks me to love as in he loves; in silence and service.
So I exhort you to join me. Reject this noisy and ceaseless culture of content. Examine your life and find ways to radically break out of its numbing, flattening grip. Many of us have complained and lamented the tragedy of this culture together. Now it’s time to do something about it, silently. You cannot change the world with an Instagram story about limiting your social media use and other comfortable, easy actions. If we wish to reform the world, we must reform ourselves. I am going into a desert of sorts, to pray and to fast so that I might have the strength to depart this cursed land. I hope that I will emerge a better, quieter, more focused man. I am going into the desert, and my friend, I would like you to join me.
“The conquest of silence has the bitter taste of ascetical battles, but God wills this combat, which is within the reach of human effort” - Robert Cardinal Sarah, The Power of Silence
quote by Thomas Merton
There’s much more in this idea. I have been and will be meditating on it for a while.
I read this last month and have been meaning to leave a comment for some time now! This post was a great blessing to me during a period of despair about the noisiness of this world. Thank you for using your voice with intention and providing an invitation to hope - it certainly reached me! Peace.