“[The modern age] knows nothing about isolation and nothing about silence. In our quietest and loneliest hour the automatic ice-maker in the refrigerator will cluck and drop an ice cube, the automatic dishwasher will sigh through its changes, a plane will drone over, the nearest freeway will vibrate the air. Red and white lights will pass in the sky, lights will shine along highways and glance off windows. There is always a radio that can be turned to some all-night station, or a television set to turn artificial moonlight into the flickering images of the late show. We can put on a turntable whatever consolation we most respond to, Mozart or Copland or the Grateful Dead.”― Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose
I wrote a few years back about being fed up with the modern obsession of “cleanliness”. Recently, I’m just as irritated by all the noise, the constant brouhaha, cacophany of senseless humming, roaring machine noise that I seemingly can’t get away from. Am I the only one?
I remember our rough street cat “Snowball”. We rescued her from under her junk rowboat home in our backyard, 131 Jamestown Crescent, Toronto and took her up north to our homestead, a rough farm. She’d spend days outside hunting. A scrappy, tough one, she was. But eventually, like me, she got old, her bones demanded she spend more time inside, among the trappings of civilization and the comforts of this modern age.
However, whenever there was a lot of noise. The vacuum cleaner roaring, us kids yelling and screaming, Snowball would have none of it. She’d raise up her old body and look at us, ready to pounce if the noise didn’t stop. She’d jump right on your back and dig her claws in, if silence wasn’t forthcoming quickly. The cry “Snowball’s coming!” was enough to shut up everyone in the house.
I think I’m becoming like Snowball. The noise everywhere is suffocating. It just crawls up the back of my body and I grow so irritable, tense, maddened even.
You can’t get away from this noise, the hammering on of civilization, everyone trying to turn everything into money; I climb the local trails and mountain with the dog and all I hear are jackhammers below. I sit to watch a documentary on TV and outside the local fruit-hawker blares “Tomatoes, tomatoes!” from his truck’s loudspeaker. At night, honking and loud engines race through our bedroom window. Riding my bike, there is a symphony of whipper-snippers buzzing along the roads.
I know of no scientist that has studied the effects of noise on modern human society. Noise, the result of machines, a tireless technology that is embedded everywhere into our daily lives. But I’m sure there are some scientists studying this. Our ear is our most sensitive sensory apparatus - noise, the lack of natural silence in our lives, must be a killer, a life changer. Noise is doing something to us - I’m sure of that.
I’m not one for silence. I actually think no such thing exists. Just like nothing, silence is an imaginary litote. It’s why sensory deprivation has never become a carnival attraction.
Let me put in my vote for calm as the natural condition of manunkind. The natural noise of a life that lives sufficient unto itself - the swell of air, the tweets of birds, the chatter of a room of people. I can support that. But the buzz of my overheated computer, the whirl of the fans in our apartment, the earsplitting jets’ screams overhead, the constant whizzzzz of tires over pavement … I do no longer support.
Maybe modern life is just a young man’s game? Maybe I need to get myself to a nunnery? Perhaps.
My wife says I just need a new type of technology, some noise canceling thingamajigger … I’ll pass. You should never solve a problem with the fascimile of the same problem (take note all you lovers of AI, solving problems of AI with AI).
I’ll be heading back to the edges of Canada, its north soon. Maybe I can find some somber solace there. Not sure thought, the land of Snowball is now overrun with constant heavy trucks running down our once tranquil, quiet sideroad. The jet skis have deafened all the loons. The telephone vibrates every 5 seconds. They are blowing up tree stumps constantly as they devour the forests around us.
So, it remains hopeless. I’m left to my own devices. It’s up to me to find a way to live among this “noise”. The only other option, to become Snowball and risk being sent to prison, no hope, no way to turn off the noise there.
Or should I just chill and take this guy’s advice?
“There is no world where trade-offs don’t apply, where we can have all the nice things we want without anybody, anywhere, getting upset. Externalities are everywhere, but if we want to live prosperous lives, some part of those lives will be impacted by others.
Get over it.” ~ Joakim Book
