Reporting a music tech piece in 2018 led me to re-engage with sound in an intentional way, which pulled me out of a years-long stretch of silence I'd been unaware of. Playing albums now is a vital part of mental wellness. Many of us underwent a great & gradual quieting of the world with conversations having moved from voice to text & social interactions partly supplanted by scrolling peoples' social feeds.
It's interesting how the word "tinnitus" has barely had a look in during these discussions (and I had read the NYTimes article earlier), when a considerable portion of the public is suffering from it, a number that will only get higher with increased exposure to noise both externally (the sources mentioned in the articles and by you) and internally (from incessant use of earbuds/headphones). As someone who suffers from tinnitus (I have written about it my own page a couple of times) I don't see this as an environmental issue relating to climate change, but it is an environmental issue in how all the noise in the world contributes to it and also exasperates it.
Read right through to "Cooking" and thought: "Noise Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe." Other than that, I'll try to heed my neighbors' pleas that I not blast "More Sad Hits" at full volume with the windows open. (And yes, leaf-blowers. There are worse things.)
On framing the issue as a societal and global problem vs one of personal well being: If nobody felt personally threatened by second hand smoke, would they care about regulating it? It seems to me that framing the noise issue as one of personal well being is an important and necessary first step towards having the problem recognized as societal and then global. I think it’s ok for people to be the most concerned about themselves first and then to project their concerns outwards later once they’ve firmly integrated them into their worldview. My 2 cents.
Reporting a music tech piece in 2018 led me to re-engage with sound in an intentional way, which pulled me out of a years-long stretch of silence I'd been unaware of. Playing albums now is a vital part of mental wellness. Many of us underwent a great & gradual quieting of the world with conversations having moved from voice to text & social interactions partly supplanted by scrolling peoples' social feeds.
It's interesting how the word "tinnitus" has barely had a look in during these discussions (and I had read the NYTimes article earlier), when a considerable portion of the public is suffering from it, a number that will only get higher with increased exposure to noise both externally (the sources mentioned in the articles and by you) and internally (from incessant use of earbuds/headphones). As someone who suffers from tinnitus (I have written about it my own page a couple of times) I don't see this as an environmental issue relating to climate change, but it is an environmental issue in how all the noise in the world contributes to it and also exasperates it.
Read right through to "Cooking" and thought: "Noise Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe." Other than that, I'll try to heed my neighbors' pleas that I not blast "More Sad Hits" at full volume with the windows open. (And yes, leaf-blowers. There are worse things.)
On framing the issue as a societal and global problem vs one of personal well being: If nobody felt personally threatened by second hand smoke, would they care about regulating it? It seems to me that framing the noise issue as one of personal well being is an important and necessary first step towards having the problem recognized as societal and then global. I think it’s ok for people to be the most concerned about themselves first and then to project their concerns outwards later once they’ve firmly integrated them into their worldview. My 2 cents.
When do we get to move to step 2?
A little late commenting on this, but I just got done reading an Alex Ross piece in the New Yorker that's a pretty good overview of "noise" that you may like to check out: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/22/what-is-noise