Silence!

TopicSocial Sciences

AuthorWolf Lotter

PublisherKohlhammer

The End of Inattention

Constant stress, noise and permanent availability shape everyday life in modern societies. Activity is taken as the measure of performance, busyness as a sign of productivity. Yet this constant bustle has consequences: concentration, quiet and retreat, the prerequisites for thinking, knowledge work and political judgement, are increasingly being lost.

The essay collection Silence! explores this development in three interconnected essays.

In part one Wolf Lotter focuses on the culture of busyness: a working world in which communication, meetings and constant activity often seem more important than targeted problem-solving.

Part two examines the issue of noise both as a health hazard and as a symptom of a society that confuses loudness with vitality.

The third part is devoted to the diminishing right to privacy. The right to be left in peace was one of the central civil freedoms of modern societies. Today, it is increasingly being undermined by constant digital communication, social intrusiveness and organisational pressures.

Lotter combines observations from the world of work and everyday life with insights from neuroscience, occupational psychology, economics, architecture and philosophy. The book is not a self-help guide to self-optimisation, but rather an analysis of our present age and a defence of concentration, tranquillity and distance as prerequisites for work, reflection and democratic culture.