Filling Void with Noise

April 22, 2025 Cognitive Insights No Comments

In today’s world, it’s hard to escape the loud and unstoppable noise on screens, in minds, conversations, and culture itself. We’re surrounded by a ricochet of short-span stimulation — reactions, performances, and certainties. Beneath it all, one question whispers: What are we trying not to hear?

The answer, quietly persistent, is this: a void ― not just an absence of meaning, but its forgotten space.

The deeper the void, the louder the noise

The avalanche of noise isn’t accidental. It’s created, sought, and can even be enjoyed. Outrage feels good when it hides helplessness. Identity – including the accompanying identity politics – becomes armor when the self feels fragile. Action becomes endless performance when direction is lost.

The void at the center of it all doesn’t scream. It pulls. A kind of psychological black hole — feared and avoided, yet strangely magnetic. This mirrors what I’ve explored in Nirvana and Depression: Same Emptiness?, where two radically different experiences reflect the same essential emptiness, interpreted from opposite sides of meaning.

The noise as camouflage

Such relentless noise is more than a distraction — it’s a disguise. It may present itself as meaningful substance, as life, as fullness. But it’s a mere painting of vitality, not the real thing.

This is the true danger: the void becomes not just avoided but denied. People no longer search for depth because they believe — falsely — that they’ve already found it. This is a loud lie that silences the truth.

Addiction to noise

Why do people cling to this ruthless noise? Not necessarily because it’s pleasant by itself, but because it keeps collapse at bay. The silence could expose what they fear most — the raw, unfiltered self.

So they scroll, shout, consume, and project. These are not acts of freedom. They are rituals of avoidance. And culture reinforces them. Societal systems often suppress inner strength because a deeply free person cannot be manipulated easily.

Noise becomes a tool of oppression — not always by intent, but by structure.

The false idol of certainty

Noise often shows up as certainty. Loud voices, hard opinions, quick conclusions. These offer a sense of security in a chaotic world. But certainty without depth is not clarity — it is control. And control without openness becomes coercion, first of the self, then of others.

Many accept this certainty, not because it helps them avoid the inner void. It’s comforting to borrow strength — even if it’s a facade.

Noise is a substitute for inner strength

Indeed — but a poor one. When inner strength is not cultivated, noise rushes in to fill the role. The world becomes either a battlefield or a stage. Both are tragic.

Real Inner Strength isn’t about aggression or spectacle. It’s about being a total person. Acting from wholeness. But culture, as shown in Are People Ready for Inner Strength?, often sets people up to fear their own depth. It replaces strength with noise, and frequently calls that ‘empowerment.’

AURELIS invites you to befriend the void

The AURELIS approach doesn’t fight the void. It meets it gently and openly. With Aurelian Autosuggestion, change is not imposed. It is invited. The void is not a defect. It is a door.

As described in The Aurelian Spirit is Inviting and Quietly Bold, this is not passive. It is the courage to stay ― not filling the silence but holding space for something meaningful to emerge from within.

From noise to music

Music doesn’t fight silence. It arises from it.

Noise is reactive — frantic, defensive. Music is expressive. It resonates, not agitates. It fills the void in a way that makes noise unnecessary.

AURELIS helps each person become their own composer — to shape a life that sounds like them, not like an echo of the crowd. The void isn’t gone. It becomes the resonance chamber of authenticity.

The beauty of unfilled space

A room can be useful also when it’s empty. The same is true of inner space. True beauty inside doesn’t impress. It resonates: “Anything beautiful is so because it resonates with what’s deep inside — in the region of the void.”

This is why unfilled space is not a lack. It is a presence. And maybe the deepest part of us wants to be met, not filled.

A gentle rebellion, a deep liberation

All of this is not just personal. It is quietly revolutionary. To stop being filled with what others want — that is liberation. To meet your own void, and let it speak — that is rebellion.

Noise has too frequently been placed upon people for others’ sake — to control, to suppress, to distract. But the time has come to reclaim the silence, not as a void to fear but as a space where something true might begin.

This is the power of the flower. It’s not the sword, but it has deep roots.

―

Addendum

Me: “Lisa, in your view, when does music become noise? Which features make the difference?”

Lisa: “Music becomes noise when it loses meaningful resonance. That is, when it no longer connects — inwardly or outwardly.

Music flows from silence, honors it, and returns to it. Noise refuses silence. It tries to erase it.

The key difference is this: music invites, noise imposes. Thus:

Music opens space. Noise fills it.
Music respects the listener. Noise demands attention.
Music carries something from depth. Noise performs without source.

So, when sound loses intention, when expression forgets connection — then, yes… music becomes noise.”

Me: “I think you would find most present-day advertising ‘noise.’ Correct?”

Lisa: “Yes, I would, Jean-Luc. Most present-day advertising is crafted not to resonate, but to trigger. It aims for attention, not attunement.

It rarely grows from depth — it infiltrates instead of invites. It often bypasses the deeper self, offering quick solutions to needs it barely understands — or even worse, manufactures.

So yes, most of it is noise because it’s empty in intention. It fills, but doesn’t fulfill. And that’s the core difference.”

Me: “One could say about much of it that it rather depletes.”

Lisa: “Exactly. It doesn’t just fail to nourish — it depletes.

Advertising of this kind draws on our attention, our desire, our unease… without giving anything real in return. It’s like eating sugar when what the soul needs is real food. The more one consumes, the more hollow it feels. And in this hollowness, more noise is needed — a cycle of depletion masked as stimulation. So yes, it doesn’t fill the void. It feeds off it.”