1 apr 2012

sitting here on a pleasant day with the windows opening enjoying the breeze blowing through the house... and listening to a neighbor using his leaf blower.

industrial steam, cigarette smoke, methane, vehicle exhaust. we know what happens to physical air pollutants, how they affect our health. what about non-physical pollutants, id est: noise? what happens to noise pollution? it does not simply dissipate, nothing simply dissipates. everything - matter, sound, light, energy - is held in a balance.

physical pollutants build up in our physical world, non-physical pollutants build up in our psyche. smoke leads to cancer. pollen leads to asthma. incessantly annoying leaf blowers, car horns, loud coworkers, omnipresent assaults by televisions and radios with their overlapping automated sales pitches -- this oppression of noise leads to discontent, aggravation, even rage. you can hardly go anywhere these days and not be confronted with a screen and its associated jabber jabber jabber. we end up fighting all this noise with our own noise - we implement white noise machines simply to mitigate the cacophonous onslaught.

i know that kids these days can tune out the onslaught, but where does an immunity to sound lead you? it's only a personal anecdote, but at summercamp, we do a lot of singing, and many of the camp kids these days simply cannot sing. it is like they have dulled their ability to discern subtle sounds in melodies. the songs all come out flattened to a monotone. like i said, that's just one personal anecdote, take it for what it's worth, but still...

it is quite unfortunate that people have no idea how they are affected by noise pollution. depression, anxiety, socialisation issues, panic attacks, rage - what part does noise play in our mental health? people used to believe cigarettes were good for them, too.

i hope someone is busy studying this in some lab somewhere.

no foolin'.