Stille • (stil-leh) • noun
Definition: stillness, calmness, silence
Origin: German, Dutch
Not Silence
In early 2020, I attended a listening party for an NPR radio segment about how Germany is a much quieter country than other industrialized nations. It was an interesting segment because the producer needed to fill up radio space with a program devoted to silence or the absence of sound; and yet as I listened to the episode, there was hardly any silence. What was frequently articulated as “silence” in the episode were actually the sounds of nature without the interference of mechanized, industrialized noise. I heard sounds of birds, streams of water, wind, and rain, which were definitely not akin to silence. It unnerved me how during this episode the sounds of nature were described as silence or the absence of sound.
For more context, Germany pays close attention to the noise their machines create. If you buy a washing machine or lawnmower in Germany, it tells you how many decibels it emits and people buy products based on how loud or quiet they are. Also in Germany, there are rules about when someone is allowed to mow their lawn. This helps ensure that your weekend is not filled with a cacophony of noise. It is common, and expected, for your neighbor to call the police on you if you are mowing your lawn at the wrong time. The police won’t arrest you, but they’ll tell you that you need to mow at another time.
After the episode, I spoke with the producer of the show about why he believed that Germany prioritized “silence” so much, and he mentioned how Germany has a lot of forests. Berlin, despite being a major international capital, is filled with trees and forests. He speculated that German culture has an attachment to the forest and that Germans are accustomed to escaping into the forest for its tranquility and “silence.”
Next, I asked him what the German word for “silence” was and shockingly discovered that it does not mean silence at all.
Stille is Not Silence
Stille means “stillness”, but also means “still”, “calm”, and “calmness”; and this word is used in both German and Dutch. When translated into English however, stille has primarily been translated to “silence” and not “stillness.” As with geist, the distinction between the English and German words are subtle, but the nuance of the German word provides a cultural depth that the English word lacks.
At SCL, we believe that culture has an inherent attachment to place and that America’s ethnocidal culture destroys this attachment. Ethnocide has always consisted of destroying culture for monetary gain, and due to this, the environment/mother nature under ethnocide is perceived as something from which one can profit from and not as something which we have a profound cultural attachment to. Through this ethnocidal perspective, the environment gets reduced to nothingness, and the sounds that it makes --a cool breeze, flowing water, chirping birds-- equate to silence within an ethnocidal world.
A stillness that brings you closer to the environment and distances you from industrialized noise is difficult within ethnocide, and we can see this disconnect today. Americans have long distanced themselves from nature and made access to the environment largely contingent on one's wealth, free time, and disposable income. People need a car, a day off, a park pass, and nature equipment if they want to spend time in a national park. Wealth and ethnocide negatively affect our relationship to nature, and our anthropocentric language fuels this unfortunate status quo.
When Germans regulate the sounds coming from machines and police how much noise people can make, it is because they understand the importance of stillness, calmness, listening to nature, and being closer to nature. This is a cultural norm for an entire people, and not solely the subgroups within a culture who care about the environment. This is not America’s cultural norm.
Asking for Stillness
One of the reasons I’m attracted to Germanic words is because these languages already influence English, and therefore the profound concepts that may reside within a German or Dutch word are less foreign to English speakers. It becomes easier to incorporate these words and ideas into our lives without them feeling too strange. Stille does exactly this, and we all need a bit more of stille today.
COVID-19 has greatly reduced the amount of industrialized, mechanical noise polluting our space. Fewer cars are on the road and hardly any planes are flying overhead. Life has more stillness nowadays. People are growing more plants, cultivating their gardens, and appreciating the tranquility of getting away and taking a walk in the woods. There are so many benefits to this stillness, and it is tragic that we need a global pandemic to make us more aware of it.
By thinking about the importance of stille, we will be more inclined to think about nature and ask for stillness instead of ignoring nature and demanding silence.
During COVID-19, we need to embrace the opportunity for stillness that is being forced upon us, and afterward, protect our connection to nature and our shared stillness once this pandemic is over. A simple way to make this subtle, but seismic change is to ask for stillness instead of silence.
This week, when things get too noisy, think about stille and ask for stillness, and let us know how it impacts your perspective. Small linguistic changes can make a big difference.
Please share your thoughts with us via email, Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter using #TheWord to join the conversation. We will be hosting a Live Q&A session on our Instagram today at 5PM EDT so that we can answer your questions about Stille. We hope to see you there.