Silence

A nice conversation dies down, people looking away, trying to think of something to say but fail. Silence. The most awkward thing one can encounter in Muwci as well as most other social settings. Somehow not having anything to say has become the greatest fear of all, because what are you if you have nothing to say? Boring. A word even worse than silence. Especially here in this place were you're expected to be Superman, Einstein and Leonardo Da Vinci at once. Being one of those people who don't say interesting, smart and original things every hour of the day is even worse than failing your IB, it means that you're boring.
This extreme fear of silence has lead to two things. One, the awkward turtle, where to make things less awkward when the conversation has reached its natural end, one moves ones hands to imitate a turtle in the hope that the gesture will create a conversation-starter( this rarely works and tend to create an even more awkward mood, even in settings where the silence was not awkward). The second, and much more effective, result of the SilenceMonster is bullshit. The sweet salvation we reach for when there is nothing left to say or when the need to show that we are in fact the offspring of Superman becomes too strong. The skill of bullshitting is the most valued skill of all and if you master it well you might even achieve the Nobel Peace Prize just from talking.
Personally, I've gotten a lot better at bullshitting since I came to Muwci but I'm still an amateur, constantly finding myself in situations where I don't have anything to say or where I don't have an opinion, to relate this to democracy. You might shoot me, but I'm not capable of having an opinion of absolutely everything and on certain issues I just don't care. And in those cases, when there is voting involved, why on earth should I screw up the result with my "uneducated" vote when I don't care about the outcome? It would be rather unfair to those actually caring about the result and voting out of actual conviction. Unfortunatly I think we do tend to vote and speak even when we don't have an opinion or anything to say( I can only speak for myself of course). But if we are so active and always have something to say, when do we find the time to think?....