I live in a very noisy neighborhood. The evening hours, the only ones in which I am really subjected to these ills, are often disturbed by someone who feels it is somehow masculine to have a car that sounds a great deal like a Mack truck or a motorcycle owner that equates power between his legs with some other sort of physical prowess. Children at play do not disturb me as much as the self-indulgent noise caused by these adults and the racket produced by their combustion engines that, presumably, they confuse with mating calls in the African wilds.

Because I do tend to retire earlier than most, I have long found that I can drown out these untimely and unpredictable disturbances with a wonderful device that generates "white noise." This can be best described as the noise one hears between broadcast stations when tuning a radio. More commonly, I suppose it might be called "static." Regardless of what one may call it, the little sound machine serves the purpose of drowning out the noise of the ostentatious cretins who exhibit their auditory plumage at inconvenient hours of the night. The artificial noise distracts me from that which I do not want to hear. It allows me to sleep, presumably, though the roof were blown off my abode by a tornado. I do not, however, wish to test that particular assumption.

I have also found, after years of using this little gizmo, that I have become quite habituated to it. When I have taken a holiday and left behind the device (under the false assumption that a decent hotel will be more serene than my neighborhood) I have found it extremely difficult to fall to sleep. To save carrying along yet another electronic device, I have assumed that I could turn the bedside clock radio to an unoccupied frequency on the radio dial and get the same sort of sound. My assumption, as is so often the case, was incorrect. I have, for all practical purposes, become addicted to noise, at least as far as sleep is concerned.

One wonders, in this day of modern devices designed to capture our attention, if we are all addicted to noise. It certainly does seem so to me. We, apparently, have abandoned the quiet pleasures of self-reflection and contemplation for the unceasing din of digital noise. If I were to ask you to observe your surroundings at this very moment, what would you describe? Would it be sitting quietly in front of your computer screen and mentally digesting the symbols your eyes discern or would it be an entirely different setting? Are you chatting online while you read? Is the television on and within view? Is there music playing? Are you talking on the phone? If you count the number of audiovisual inputs your senses are processing, what would be the final (and truthful) tally? Two? Five? More?

Think for a moment about your ride to work this morning. Were you driving in the quiet solitude of your car, enjoying the however brief time you might have to be entirely and utterly alone with your thoughts? Or were you listening to your iPod or radio, talking on your cell phone, text messaging, drinking (or eating) your breakfast and reading the billboards? Are we so addicted to noise (auditory, visual or other) that we have completely abandoned time with our own thoughts? And if we have discarded ourselves, what are the implications? What sort of people will we become?

I, for one, believe that we have put ourselves up for adoption. And, not surprisingly, we have found eager and willing new parents. The parents have given us our identities, our thoughts and beliefs, our dreams and provide our entertainment. They tell us who we are and who we should try to become. Our adopters are quick to point out our flaws and shortcomings but are equally adept and timely in showing us how we can correct them. We are the dependents of the digital noise machine. And she has welcomed us to her ample bosom.

But in what Richard Weaver called "insulation by technology," we have become increasingly unaware of ourselves, unmindful of others and oblivious to the world around us. As we live "in the now" (as we apparently must in the digital world) we have lost all anchorage to our past. And with that loss, we have become increasingly disconnected and isolated. And, with this isolation, comes a tragic rise in depression, anger and teen suicide.

The great irony of the 21^st century is that we have more and more methods of connectivity yet we

actually, in the classic sense, communicate less. Our discussions are skewed and manipulated by the ever-present mass media toward topics of ever-diminishing importance. We spend hours dissecting the death of Anna Nicole Smith, the latest self-destructive antics of Paris Hilton and Brittany Spears and the latest inanity of a YouTube video and neglect the subjects that give meaning to our lives: T.S. Elliot’s "permanent things" like family, church, community, and friendships.

And those who seek to delve into the things that actually matter are simply overwhelmed and unheard over the clamor and deafening din of what our adopters push us toward. We hear the faint noises of impending danger and glance toward the distant alarm and, when we seek them out, our new parents shake a shiny new rattle in our faces and say: "Look here! Look here!" We cast our gaze back to the frivolous and quickly forget that something - possibly of dire import - was calling to us - possibly warning us - to look at the world around us. Our perpetual childhoods are encouraged by those who desire us to be forever unaware and forever dependent.

What of public discourse? Due to the competitive and ever-expanding competition for our attention, the issues for which we might seek truths are not the subject of civil dialectic. They are alley fights, staged with all the chaos, distraction, non sequiturs and dramatic flair that can be conjured. Information is not conveyed or critically examined but the attention of the child are held, if only briefly.

In our state of technological insulation, we have little need for interpersonal relationships. All our primordial needs for affirming our human worth and validating our thoughts are provided for by the comforting voices of the digital noise. We are beautiful, we are "simply brilliant," we are smart, and we are happy or can be, if only we... These things must be, as we are told it is so by the data stream that all these wants and desires are ours or, at least, certainly within our grasp.

We do not need friends as these ancient relationships in which we shared our deepest concerns and discussed our inner fears and misgivings have been relegated to the trash heap of history. We now have "pals" whose connectedness with us is based on proximity at work. Our most interpersonal exchanges, which occur at the water cooler or the coffee room, are superficial and meaningless dissections of the latest titillations or debauchery glimpsed from our self-enclosed cribs. [N.B. How the word "crib" has come to mean our homes speaks volumes on our current state of existence.] We dare not engage in discussion of our vexations or fears lest we bore our "pals" and send them away where they can satisfy their infantile quest for informational pablum elsewhere with someone "less serious."

As our nation sits, precariously, over the abyss of imminent demise, we have "no fear." We have our fosterage to comfort us and whisper in our ears, as the slave riding on Caesar’s chariot: "Ego me bene habeo" ("with me all is well"). But, gentle reader, all is decidedly not well. As we sit in our "cribs," distracted by noise and false promises, we are in the end times of our civilization. We have lost sight of those things that once made us great and we are in danger of losing them all forever. To avoid this tragedy of tragedies, we must reconnect. First, to ourselves, our humanity and the soul that faintly flickers but is yet not dead.

Only with self-enforced refuge from our noisy new parents can we ever hope to regain our humanity.