When I am not working with people, or chatting with friends, I live, essentially, in silence. I'm comfortable with that, up to a point. Silence is conducive to reading, to thinking, to writing. The sound of silence can be the sound of a mind at work. But it's also the sound of separation, of isolation, of death.
Silence is in some ways deeply inhuman.
If our species absolutely requires noise, it may be because we need the comfort of our own kind. We need friendship, gossip, news. We need to bounce our minds off other people's ideas. As long as we've got THIS noise, we're fine. My Fox column, Observing US is now weekly, usually posted on Wednesday afternoons.