Sometimes, when people look at me and speak, I don’t hear the words—I see the mouth moving and hear the noise, nothing more. It feels like those moments when a familiar word suddenly turns strange, hollowed of meaning, its surface exposed. I think this happens to all of us: every so often, language reveals itself as just air and motion, patterns of vibration mistaken for thought. Much of what people say is little more than noise for the sake of noise, because that is what’s done, habit without sense or reflection.
What survives is not substance but probability. The simplest sounds, the phrases easiest to repeat, are the ones that spread, entropic diffusion in action. Social media makes this more visible, accelerating the process so that the lowest-energy signals dominate the field. Probability, not wisdom, determines what thrives, and destructive utterances spread fastest because they demand the least effort to process or repeat.
That is why rallies like [INSERT GENERIC POLITICAL EVENT OR MOVEMENT HERE] strike such a chord. Replace the words with nonsense syllables and the rhythm would be much the same: repetition, belonging, resonance. Simplistic solutions—blaming [INSERT GENERIC SCAPEGOAT], shouting slogans—scratch a neuropsychological itch, offering temporary relief from insecurity. Yet they don’t resolve it. They defer it, amplifying it for later, ensuring that the existential instability which drew people together only ever deepens.
In the end, the noise binds, but it does not build. Hate is contagious because it is simple; love requires effort to sustain. Noise can momentarily soothe, but it cannot heal. What spreads is what survives easiest, and what survives easiest is rarely what we most need.
Daedelus Kite 