Humming away in the background – Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

“I know of no such story” I told him at last

“You mean you’ve never heard of it?”

“That’s right”

Ishmael nodded. “That’s because there’s no need to hear of it. There’s no need to name or discuss it. Every one of you knows it by heart by the time you’re six or seven. Black and white, male and female, rich and poor, Christian and Jew, American and Russian, Norwegian and Chinese, you all hear it. And you hear it incessantly, because every medium of propaganda, every medium of education pours it out incessantly. And hearing it incessantly, you don’t listen to it. There’s no need to listen to it. It’s always there, humming away in the background, so there’s no need to attend to it at all. In fact you’ll find – at least initially – that it’s hard to attend to it. It’s like the humming of a distant motor that never stops; it becomes a sound that’s no longer heard at all.”