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Per Blaise Pascal, no they cannot: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
We need to keep growing, building, making, taking. Some people seem to really love the bustle and creative destruction. I'm in my 40s, and I've always hated it. When I was a child, I wondered if when I grew up, I would fit naturally into the world the way that so many others seemed to. The answer was no. I don't know why people need to be the way they are. I don't feel comfortable in so many normal situations. The things that bother the animals bother me too, but for most people this is unthinkable in the same way that other modes of thought are unthinkable. (eg, when someone who thinks mostly in words learns that some people think only in pictures)
You would absolutely love Switzerland.
Many things surprised me there, but it's the relative quiteness that did it the most.
Trains arriving like massive ghosts, cars obeying the speed limit and not a single soul gunning it from the intersection.
Meanwhile back home every night I can hear all kinds of "motoring enthusiasts" abusing their machines so that they won't hear their intrusive thoughts or something. It feels like a zoo in comparison.
I experienced this in Japan and Korea as well. There are of course, neighborhoods where noise is tolerated but while I was there I noticed most commuters whisper conversations on their phone. The thought of blasting a call or music on speakerphone is unconscionable.
Nice philosophising, but it's vehicles. Primarily cars, but not only.
By far the most common and the loudest source of noise, especially in cities, are vehicles, again, primarily cars.
During the pandemic it became painfully obvious how loud cars are. Every time a city closes down streets, the same thing can be noticed. It can be shocking to some, but even the most crowded places on the planet are quite silent when vehicles aren't around. There are some minor exceptions like concerts (duh!) or other huge public gatherings where the noise is the point.
It's going to take a really long time to heal this wound.
Nice philosophising, but it's vehicles. Primarily cars, but not only.
Around here cars are more common, but quiet enough that I rarely notice. Trucks, motorcycles, quads, trains, and boats are all significantly noisier.
I don't know where you live, but I have lived in a few cities in the US and cars don't make much noise by themselves, other than people turning music up inside the cars. Car music, in turn, is eclipsed by people turning up music from their homes, which is outpaced by people just screaming on the streets or inside venues.
Use your favorite chatbot to find out how much noise cars make, at different speeds. And they make that noise constantly. I don't know where you live but people can't scream constantly unless you live in some sort of bazaar.
> By far the most common and the loudest source of noise, especially in cities, are vehicles, again, primarily cars.
Hugely depends on the city. Where I live it's the cargo trains and airliners. Congestion is too severe for anyone to make significant noise, unless they have modified/dysfunctional exhausts or particularly large engines.
Lawn care: mowers and blowers. Loud, polluting, waste of time, money, and water to maintain America's largest "crop", turfgrass. Would be immeasurably better to have something even remotely native that supported pollinators and birds.
Even quite a distance away I hear constant noise from a highway. It's a bit surprising too just how loud and for how long you can hear the cars and motorcycles they mod to be even louder, even through walls and windows.
I live in an apartment that's sandwiched between a freight train line and a light rail track that is on a 6-lane stroad. The noise from all of that is highly filtered and attenuated, and I consider it calming and soothing (90% of the time anyway.)
Most of my life I've used public transit, but I've also been a motorist and a vehicle owner. Looking back on my long rides on the train and bus, I began to miss them, because they are (70% of the time) an opportunity for stillness, solitude, and contemplation. I can be alone with God and the angels and I don't need to stress about driving or traffic or navigating anything but my own mindscape.
Riding around in taxis more often these days, it really puts on pressure and a rush. The taxis arrive way way faster than any bus. They put me on someone else's schedule when they arrive to pick me up and rush me somewhere, going at or above every speed limit. If there is a human driver, then there is some forced, awkward social interaction, and sometimes an incipient scam as a bonus!
It is why a lot of urban people take up walking, even getting a pet dog as an excuse to go walking on the regular, because walking is likewise low-stress, an opportunity for solitude and contemplation.
I like white noise and I like background noise. I can be alone in a busy nightclub or restaurant where there is pleasant, amiable background chatter of many people and instrumental music. I have slept inside elevators and on park benches outdoors. I also enjoy libraries, which are not always temples of silence, but at least calm and relaxing atmospheres conducive to thinking and studying.
Yeah, radio and TV can really get to me sometimes. The speech pressures and high-anxiety of capitalist swine trying to shove words into my ears, it hurts. More often I find myself seeking out Jesus in a silent Adoration chapel. It's become the best way to simply listen and open myself up to the numinous.
Case in point: Marc Andreeson denigrating introspection not only in his own life, but extrapolating that to the population at large. As Dr, Jung noted, healing happens in solitude. That’s one of the reasons that Alcoholics Anonymous really didn’t help me much. Sitting around broken people isn’t going to magically cause a “spiritual awakening” but in a few, nearly statistically negligible instances.
Turning off Social Media from 10pm to 8am local time would be a great start toward the recovery of human interaction sabotaged by COVID. To put it another way, Grocery Stores which supply life sustaining nutrition are not typically open 24 hours. Comparatively speaking they are more “Good” than social media. As such, rein in the latter rather than expand the former (Wal-Mart finding open 24 hours isn’t worth it is an economic proof of concept here) and we can improve our collective ability to make progress.
Where did Jung say that healing happens in solitude? Do you happen to remember where you heard/read this?
You are not alone.
I'd like to say that there may be some human cultures that are / were generally respectful to their environment and the animals therein, but it's hard to say how much that was an 'enforced' position based on their level of technological evolution.
I think it's a fundamental rule that the 'rape and pillage' types will always overrun the non-'rape and pillage' types. Much in the same way the sociopaths are able to climb the corporate ladder with relative ease. The nature of nature, seemingly.
Ecuador has Rights of Nature articles incorporated into their 2008 Constitution [1] effecting national decision making in investment and development.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_of_nature_in_Ecuador
As a kid I remember wondering why all the countries that exist seem to be jerks. Why aren't there any nice countries? Then I thought about it for another 5 seconds and it made a lot more sense.
Machiavelli nailed this 500 years ago in the prince. If one person always plays by the rules, they will lose to the group who ignore the rules,
I'd like to include "humans" in the list of animals being hurt by anthropogenic noise.
Unfortunately those least responsible will receive the greatest damage.
Often, but I do feel bad for the groundskeepers with a literally deafening motor on their back for hours a day.
I'm autistic and have misophonia and hyperacusis, not to mention auditory processing issues which mean I'm more likely to lock on to a noise rather than what I actually would like to listen to.
There's so much noise around - it really does tie in to the "social model of disability" in that a lot of my issues would disappear if environments weren't so hostile - that includes noise, smells, and lights.
During the Covid lockdowns in India, I saw birds I had not seen in decades. It was amazing; the skies had cleared up, and nature truly was recovering.
And humanity as-a-whole learnt nothing.
Let's hope there's some more movement in the right direction as a result of _this_ crisis.
There will almost certainly be more pandemics and they'll probably be worse. The world is getting smaller, and what takes a super high end lab these days (in terms of virus creation) will be done by college students in 20 years.
The amount of suffering people go through because of noise is pretty insane (some more than others). The most common situation I see in Europe is living in poorly insulated apartments with neighbors who act like they're in a pub 24/7.
Put an 8cm thick rockwool under your ceiling and you are 90% sound insulated. The rest is 5cm at neighbouring walls.
That does nothing for impact noise for example.
Yep. For contrast, I loved the elbow room in US flyover country.
The noise we make is hurting _us_. Decibel levels in cities are unconscionable.
Lol have they seen what we do to animals for taste pleasure?
It's not a question of "can we learn to shut up?", it's "will humans ever care enough to even want to learn?".
Whenever there's a beaching of whales I wonder if a submarine has sailed past blasting sonar so loud the whales have to jump out of the ocean to their death.
We don't have compassion for fellow human beings. I don't think we will ever have compassion for animals who are sensitive to noise.
Example: Diwali is a horrible time to be a stray animal in India. Heck, even my pets hate the festival. But humans will always be self obsessed and say it's for celebration. Sure.
I noticed this directly a few weeks ago. I was camping with a friend pretty deep in the woods, but at a campground. About a half a mile away there was an RV running a generator, which was annoying as hell, but not the end of the world. Then in the middle of the night, while we were stargazing the generator turned off, and we could noticeably hear the wildlife adapt to the change. Some got quieter, but mostly it was wildlife returning to the area. As if the sound from the generator was a forcefield keeping everything away, or at least hidden.
That last part is what really opened my eyes about the noise polution from datacenters
Not mentioned in the article is that whales were once able to communicate globally, but the low frequency noise generated by maritime traffic killed the "Whale Internet."
I've never seen an article mention researchers so many times, without mentioning any actual research. They really made their point, by publishing an article that is nothing but noise.
We breed animals into the most horrific existence imaginable just to eat them by the trillions.
But here we're concerned for the aural experience of some birds.
Also noise pollution. Also pollution pollution...
Hurting us, too. i have to wear noise cancelling headphones all day to filter out noises from outside my apartment
It's horrible. Often feels like the lawn guys plan things out so that as soon as one finishes, the next starts up, to make sure there's no time to be free
The noise we make is hurting humans too.
This is a completely paywalled article.
Not being able to read the argument, I'll just note that dogs are horrible sound polluters. Possibly only when they have bad human owners, but I'm pretty sure they're biologically evolved to mark territory by sound pollution, and should learn to shut up, too.
The amount of noise on this website is ridiculous
the deers and boars running around in my neighbourhood seems to DGAF
What about the impact of EMF pollution? The book "the invisible rainbow' goes into that, though I don't expect this type of position to be well received in HN. I find it very healthy that this type of "invisible" pollution gets at least some discussion, however. We have to start somewhere.
Is that book actually based in science?
It's a book that challenges some established views. If that makes it anti-science... It's up to a person whether they judge a book based only on a superficial understanding of it and without having read it.
I recommend it. I can't promise you will like it or find it interesting or agree with any of it. I find it important enough to recommend to people when this type of subject comes up.