I don’t know exactly when it started, but I know what it looks like. You open social media, scroll through news portals, sit down in a café, or get into a conversation with friends, and you realize that everyone already knows everything. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone is certain. Everyone speaks quickly, decisively, without hesitation. As if not knowing has become shameful, and doubt a weakness.

In that noise, the hardest thing is to admit that you don’t fully understand something. Or worse, that you do understand it, but don’t have a simple answer. Because simple answers are the currency now. Those who have them get attention. Those who don’t seem confused, weak, or suspicious.

I remember moments when I fell into that rhythm myself. I spoke before I had time to think. I shared articles I had only half-read, just because they aligned with what I already believed. Not because I wanted to manipulate, but because I wanted to be part of the conversation. Silence, in a world of constant talking, feels like being left out of the game.

But the more I listened, the clearer it became that we’re not listening to each other, but to our own positions. Conversations turned into parallel monologues. No one asks questions to get answers. Questions are asked to confirm a stance. And answers serve only as a trigger for the next reply.

The noise I’m talking about is not just volume. It’s an excess of words without weight. Headlines that shout, analyses that explain nothing, debates that end where they started. Everything moves fast, but nothing actually moves. And in that speed, meaning is the first thing to disappear.

What’s strangest is that we’ve gotten used to this noise. We’ve started to experience it as normal. If there’s no conflict, there’s no interest. If there’s no scandal, there’s no attention. If there’s no clear culprit, the conversation stops. As if silence has become a threat, and complexity a luxury we can no longer afford.

At one point, I realized it wasn’t the topics that exhausted me, but the tone. The way everything is talked about. Everything is urgent. Everything is historic. Everything is either a final victory or a complete collapse. In that language, there is no space for mistakes, but no space for learning either. No space for process, only for judgment.

What worries me most is not that people disagree. Disagreement is healthy. What worries me is that we no longer try to understand. As if we’ve accepted that shouting louder is enough to be right. And when everyone is shouting, no one is actually heard.

In that noise, truth doesn’t even need to be hidden. It’s enough for it to get lost. Stretched out, fragmented, drowned in a sea of comments, reactions, and quick conclusions. And then it no longer matters what is true, but what is louder, more provocative, closer to what we already believe.

This chapter doesn’t call for silence as escape. It calls for silence as space. A space where you can pause before taking a position. Where you can tell yourself you don’t have to know everything immediately. That you have the right to slowness in a world that keeps accelerating.

Because as long as we accept noise as a substitute for meaning, we will remain an easy target for any story that promises simple answers. And this book begins exactly there. Not with the question of who is right, but with the question of how we stopped listening.