Yours truly has written about becoming deaf and how, in a strange but wonderful way, how silence becomes golden when taking out hearing aids, thus being "in the world but not of it", quietly separated from the noise and din of modern society, something the Finns discovered as a real plus when marketing their country to the world.
A few months later, the delegation issued a slick “Country Brand Report.” It highlighted a host of marketable themes, including Finland’s renowned educational system and school of functional design. One key theme was brand new: silence. As the report explained, modern society often seems intolerably loud and busy. “Silence is a resource,” it said. It could be marketed just like clean water or wild mushrooms. “In the future, people will be prepared to pay for the experience of silence.”
People already do. In a loud world, silence sells. Noise-canceling headphones retail for hundreds of dollars; the cost of some weeklong silent meditation courses can run into the thousands. Finland saw that it was possible to quite literally make something out of nothing.
Sounds good to me. :)
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