We live in a time when humanity has unprecedented access to information, mobility and technological power. Yet beneath this surface of progress runs a persistent sense of disorientation. Anxiety, burnout and loneliness have become defining features of contemporary life. The paradox is striking: Never before have we been so connected and yet never before have so many people felt so profoundly disconnected from nature, from community and even from themselves.

Adem Ince’s "Varoluşun Tınısı: Modernite ve Yaşama Sanatının Yitimi" ("The Tone of Existence: Modernity and the Loss of the Art of Living") offers a penetrating diagnosis of this condition. Rather than attributing modern malaise solely to economic or political factors, Ince argues that the crisis is fundamentally existential. What has been lost is not simply tradition or stability, but humanity’s capacity to live meaningfully in the world.

Ince, an academic with a background in sociology and theology, writes from a perspective that bridges modern social theory with the ethical and spiritual resources of Islamic intellectual tradition. His work draws on a wide range of thinkers from Heidegger, Bauman and Byung-Chul Han to Cemil Meriç, Rumi and Taha Abdurrahman, creating a dialogue between Western critiques of modernity and non-Western conceptions of human flourishing. This intellectual breadth allows the book to move beyond nostalgia for the past and toward a deeper civilizational reflection.

At the heart of Ince’s argument lies a striking observation: modern individuals increasingly "look without seeing” and "live without hearing.” The dominance of instrumental reason has flattened perception, fixing attention on surfaces while severing it from depth. The world is no longer encountered as a living reality but managed as an object to be optimized. In this sense, modernity has not only transformed society but altered humanity’s relationship with being itself.

Cities offer perhaps the clearest illustration of this transformation. Traditional towns once possessed distinct rhythms, textures and silences that shaped human experience. Contemporary megacities, in contrast, produce a constant and anonymous noise not only acoustic but also visual and informational. This noise overwhelms the inner compass through which individuals orient themselves. When everything speaks at once, nothing can truly be heard.

One of the book’s most compelling insights concerns the nature of rest. In modern society, leisure has become instrumentalized. Breaks are taken primarily to restore productivity rather than to cultivate reflection or presence. Genuine tranquility, the state in which individuals can encounter themselves and their surroundings, has become rare. Motion replaces meaning, and acceleration becomes an end in itself.

Technology, in Ince’s analysis, plays an ambivalent role. Using a powerful "hardware-software” metaphor, he suggests that human nature constitutes the hardware, while modern institutions and systems function as software. When software fails to align with hardware, dysfunction arises. Much of contemporary fatigue and alienation, he argues, stems from this mismatch between human nature and the structures designed to organize modern life.

Education provides another revealing example. Modern schooling produces technically competent professionals but often neglects the formation of character and wisdom. Individuals learn how to succeed but not how to live. Drawing on thinkers such as Jacques Ranciere and Ivan Illich, Ince contends that education has shifted from cultivating persons to producing functional units for economic systems.

Central to the book is the notion of the retreat of wisdom, what Islamic intellectual tradition calls "irfan," a form of experiential insight that transcends mere information. Modern culture has elevated analytical reasoning while marginalizing deeper modes of understanding rooted in self-knowledge and ethical refinement. As a result, contemporary individuals may be intellectually sophisticated yet existentially impoverished.

Importantly, Ince does not reduce the crisis to external forces alone. Humanity itself bears responsibility. Environmental destruction, social fragmentation and the erosion of meaning reflect a deeper impulse toward domination and control. Modern individuals seek mastery over the world but often lose mastery over themselves.

Yet the book ultimately resists pessimism. Its central message is not that meaning has vanished, but that it has been obscured. The "tone of existence,” humanity’s capacity to resonate with the world, can be recovered through renewed attention to silence, contemplation and ethical awareness. Progress, Ince suggests, should not be measured solely by speed or output but by the depth of human experience it enables.

The "Tone of Existence" is not a polemical manifesto but a reflective work that invites readers to pause and reconsider the assumptions of a civilization built on efficiency and control. Its calm, densely woven prose encourages slow reading, a deliberate contrast to the rapid consumption that characterizes contemporary culture.

In an age obsessed with innovation, İnce’s book proposes something far more radical: the recovery of attention, depth and presence. The question it leaves lingering is both simple and unsettling. If we can no longer hear our own voice amid the noise of modern life, can we still claim to know who we are?