IN A 2002 VFR entry on the relentless noise in public places, Lawrence Auster wrote:

One expression of this breakdown [in the Western idea of form] is the ubiquity in our society of loud unpleasant “music” and other electronic noise and, more significantly, the unthinking acceptance of same. In today’s New York City, for example, you will walk into a retail store or a hair-cutting salon, and not only will there be loud black funk music blasting from speakers in the ceiling from morn till night, with its interminable, melody-less, rhythmless, lyric-less (and identical in every song), “oh ooo ohh, ooh, hoh baby, woohoo, uhh, uhh, Woohoo WoohuahAHahAAA, yeah-huh, baby oh yeah”, but the radio reception is so bad it’s all static. I’m talking about loud static, filling the establishment from powerful speakers. When you ask the employees to adjust the tuning of the radio station or to turn the volume down, they will do so, but there seems to be absolutely no consciousness on their part that there was anything inappropriate about this horrible noise. There is a shocking insensibility in young people today, a complete acceptance of noise and disorder in one’s environment.

It reminds me of India, where villagers love to have all-night festivals with electronic speakers turned up to the max, where people in cities are surrounded by unbelievable, all-encompassing noise and disorder and are not disturbed by it at all. In one sense, this is an impressive quality, expressing the spiritual dimension of the Eastern civilization and the idea of the soul unaffected by matter. But it also means that people—calmly accepting a disordered unpleasant environment—will not do anything to improve their environment. I was once shopping in a small department store in Ahmednagar, a medium- size city in western India a couple of hundred miles east of Bombay. The city consisted of one crowded, dusty street after another, with not a single pleasant prospect or anything uplifting to the senses and the mind. As a young salesman was helping me I said: “Where are the nice places in Ahmednagar?” He answered matter-of-factly: “There are no nice places in Ahmednagar.”

                       — Comments —

Youngfogey writes:

I fear circumstances are even worse than Mr. Auster recounted. The presence of the “music” he describes is no longer limited to establishments one may choose to enter or to refrain from entering. Everywhere I go, I am assaulted by noise emanating from automobiles equipped with stereo systems whose main selling point seems to be their ability to deafen.

Countless times I have been sitting at a stop light and been pummeled by the thud, thud of the bass from the car next to me. I live in relatively small town and yet many times I have been inside my home only to hear this same sound pushing its way through the walls of my house from a car passing by.

Even this behavior (which obviously shows callous disregard for others by forcing noise on those who don’t desire it) is not the limit of the problem. There indeed seems to be a widespread addiction to noise. My wife and I last year had to remove our child from participating in a week long program for children at our church because the music played during the thing was so loud.

When my wife asked the director to reduce the volume, the woman in charge refused. Clearly, there is an unspoken conviction that lack of substance can be covered over with noise, and this conviction makes itself too often felt on the street and in the pews.

Laura writes:

Some people think that because children are active and noisy, they like LOTS and LOTS of noise. In fact, children have much more sensitive hearing and though they make noise, they don’t always want to hear very loud sounds. My older son was hypersensitive to noise as a child.

What bothers me most is the ubiquity of rock music, most of it heavily sexualized, in all stores today. A supermarket is now the audio equivalent of a nightclub. The quality of the music reminds me of José Ortega Y Gassett’s Revolt of the Masses. Only in a society in which the second-rate (and sixth rate) felt free to flaunt itself would such music be tolerated. We should all complain and ask stores to turn it off.

Lydia Sherman writes:

When rock music began to be broadcast in public places, my father called it noisic. One Whole Foods grocery store has recently tuned in to a classical station. It attracts a different crowd, and the experience shopping there is not as hard on the ears or the nerves.

Laura writes:

I don’t get it. Why don’t more places play classical music? 

Laura F. writes:

“Why don’t more places play classical music?”

About 10 years ago at a mall department store (a fairly classy one, too) my mother and I complimented the lady at the cash register on their lovely background music, which was arias from Mozart operas arranged for a chamber ensemble (no singing, just the tune) and she seemed really surprised. She said, “Oh really? You like it? That’s sure nice to hear. We get sooo many complaints about that music.”

Laura writes:

Interesting. Perhaps when people hear classical music so little,  it is exotic and makes them angry.  But I would think everyone would love to hear, maybe, Rodrigo’s guitar pieces or Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade.  Too elitist, I guess.

Randy B. writes:

When I hold a public meeting and want to control the audience composition, I have classical music playing as a mood setter. 

I usually get the audience I would prefer. The rest walk out irritated, and not knowing why. Or could it be specifically because I am the one talking?

Kristor writes:

“I don’t get it. Why don’t more places play classical music?”

Did you hear about the 7-11 owner who wanted to discourage the young punks from hanging around the doors of his store all the time, discouraging patrons? He started playing Baroque music out there. The young punks stopped hanging around. It may be an urban myth, but it conveys a truth. The more orderly the aural environment, the higher the order of the civilization it environs – and, ipso facto, the more sane and prosperous, and the more profitable for merchants.

Lisa writes:

The whole world is turning into Chuck E. Cheese.

Laura writes:

 It would be an interesting experiment to see what would happen if Baroque music were broadcast on the streets of, say, Detroit.

Randy B. writes:

I live in Utah, and have twice been to Blaze Arena Football games in the last month. Had both games not been free I would not have returned for the second. The only quiet time (aside from crowd noise during a play) is from the time the quarterback is under center, until the ball is blown dead, otherwise the place is a rap, ghetto, thug haven. They feel the need to be constantly attacking the senses, and from my position this reduces the focus on football; as an old white guy I am confused by this distraction from the game.

Until shortly before Katrina, Utah was easily less than 3% black in population. The government decided (in the first wave) that we were to be forced to receive 1,600 Louisiana migrants, and I would guess that number to be nearing 10,000 now (you should see the crime statistics since their arrival). My less than scientific assessment is that we still have a black population of something than 5%. In spite of this small percentage of black representation, it seems that the majority of our public music displays are rap, hip-hop, or some form of ghetto tribal influence. We are not protected or isolated from the dress that is also associated with the rap/prison lifestyle, and we have a very visual representation of white kids who look like walking trash bags (shirts down to mid thigh tucked into the pants, pants hanging well below the rear, boxer shorts and butt-cracks, and shoes untied with the tongue dragging or flopping). My latter point is that the noise is not always audible and has, in the last 20 years, become very visual. 

I have read studies that discuss the IQ (The Bell Curve,Richard Herrnstein, and others) and different potentials based on race (I know, it’s a racist myth to suggest that we are not all the same with the same potential). Studies show the lower your IQ the louder you act and behave to compensate. I see rap as a direct reflection of IQ irrespective of race. When people are losing an argument, they very often get louder and more emotional. The volume is to drown out the point that they now realize they have exceeded their ability to logically argue, and that emotion is subsequently revealed though red faces, sweat, shaking, and sometime physical violence. Rap and ghetto attire are public displays of a lower IQ.

Lydia writes:

There are laws against smoking in public and ruining everyone else’s air. Why not laws against this kind of noise pollution, which harms the hearing?

Sheila C. writes:

It’s interesting that, although I’ve increasingly tuned out political discourse (and websites) as hazardous to my mental well-being, your blog continues to cover subjects that remain near and dear to my heart. Although I remain passionately concerned about most of them, they do not inspire the same sort of impotent rage and despair I feel regarding my county’s future. Perhaps it is because I do have some control in many of these areas, particularly in the domestic sphere. I can (and do) keep the radio and t.v. off whenever possible. I can shut out as much of the outside world as possible and try to make my home a haven from the poison of modern culture and the enriched, multicultural morass that I encounter on a daily basis. Noise pollution is ubiquitous, however, wherever one is, and I have railed against it for years. When forced to wait at an auto repair shop or doctor’s office, I resort to a pair of foam earplugs I keep in my purse for just such occasions. They don’t block out everything, of course, but mercifully mute the worst of the daytime t.v. and pervasive rap music. Like Youngfogey, I too hear the thump of overloud bass in passing cars, and not a day passes that my ten-year-old doesn’t comment, during the commute to and from school, that he can hear someone’s radio (although our windows are always up and the air conditioning almost always running). On the rare occasions that we go to see a movie, the theater’s volume is always loud to the point of pain, and I’m amazed at the level of noise people subject infants to (they may sleep through it, from apparent exhaustion and sheer physical need, but I guarantee it damages their delicate hearing).

One type of noise pollution I detest, yet know is controversial, is eternally barking dogs. One of my neighbors, a single career woman (and lovely person) keeps three large dogs (can’t remember the breed) for company and safety and their incessant barking drives me to distraction – many is the night I’ve stuck in earplugs to go to sleep, and woken in the morning and they’re STILL barking. Plenty of people like to propound on personal space, but there are other limits that should also be inviolate, such as personal privacy and personal hearing.

In the final analysis, though, I think modern noise is just another symptom of modern vapidity – empty-headed people who are terrified of silence and what they might see or hear if they looked inward or listened for God’s voice. It’s a way to fill the emptiness of their existence (bright lights, big city excitement 24/7).

Laura writes:

Thank you. I’m glad to hear some people are actively railing against all this. Isn’t there any kind of noise ordinance in your town about those dogs? That could send you around the bend.

Bob writes:

You may be familiar with the essay called “Pleasure Spots” by George Orwell. How he would have hated the current mania for constant noise. I particularly avoid restaurants with banks of televisions playing different sports channels at once! 

Great blog!

Laura writes:

Televisions in restaurants, televisions in bars, televisions in supermarkets, televisions in cars, televisions in bus stations, televisions on Mars. 

I hate them all. 

Sean writes:

I cannot remember the last time I walked into a restaurant or shop with no music playing.  Even the places where you expect the ambient noise to drown out music – say, mechanic’s shops – the radio is simply blasted louder.

I also remember an acquaintance in high school who spent several hundred dollars replacing the back seat of his car with a piece of plywood embedded at a 45-degree angle, into which he inserted massive bass speakers.  I never once got into his car because I could hear him arrive at school from inside the front doors. Surely he must be deaf by now.

Then there the screens everywhere. Like Neil Postman said, you cannot not watch a television screen.  I give a silent thanks to God every time I have to wait in a place where there is no television screen.

Noise and screens everywhere.  There is no escaping them.

Of course, some perspective is in order. There have always been noise and bustle in public places. Yet these were always balanced by places in which noise was definitely not permitted or encouraged, and they are growing fewer and fewer.  Even libraries and churches are noise-filled these days.

Laura writes:

There has always been noise, but there’s no question, as you say, that now a public place is considered vacant without it. Stores and restaurants use it to create an aura of busy-ness and fun. When I was a child, there was a strict code of silence in libraries, with old ladies ready to raise their fingers to their lips at the slightest whisper. In my local library, some of the librarians at the desk talk loudly with patrons and music is always played in the children’s section. There seems to be no sense of the sacredness of silence, the necessity of peace for any kind of reflection or reading. It is one blaring sign of the decline of manners. Respect for silence at certain times and in certain places is something one is taught early in life. As sound becomes more ubiquitous, people are becoming more desensitized to it.

Randy B. writes:

Sounds like Shelia C. and I share what is commonly defined as a grumpy demeanor traits. I have Tinnitus and can’t clearly explain how the same noises all but completely disrupt my day. From tapping a pen on a desk, to smacking gum, to chewing with your mouth open. I attribute this type of disconnected or ignorant behavior to being completely disconnected from ones surroundings, and as a matter of fact not caring for anyone but oneself. When I call someone on it (regardless my tact) I am instantly attacked as intolerant and even elitist. It has been suggested that because I make every effort to chew with my mouth closed, or that I try not to make irritating noises when around others, that I am somehow trying to show that I am better than others. Not unlike every other argument against civility, this too is a straw man without arms or legs. 

I believe noise and civility are something akin to the gateway drug argument. If you build up a threshold and tolerance to the minor irritants, the next level of noise replaces the last as the minor irritant. Here in Utah where a child can do no wrong, and most parents can’t define right from wrong in child rearing (unless a moral authority declares it as such every six months), we experience another form of irritant; that of the completely undisciplined child that runs the parent. This might not be exclusive to Utah, but since the average family out here has two baker’s dozen children, it sure feels like we are the center of child neglect. Another noise that is common place to us is the constant cry of attention by children; Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dog, dog, dog, dog, dog, and on and on. On two separate occasions I have walked up and asked “what (insert son or daughter here)” just to get the kid to shut up. Shock is your answer to how their parent reacts. 

Fortunately my life is on the down side of being over. I would not choose to be alive in 30 years when families in the suburbs are forced by law to share their homes, vehicles, food and income with illegal’s. I can only imagine a day in the life; you wake up in you tiny corner of the basement with a three year old illegal jumping on your chest demanding breakfast, at the same time you are bombarded with both Salsa and MS13 Rap being played so loud that you can’t get up stairs due to the fact they have rattled loose, and after you step over the leavings of your empty cupboards on the living room floor which is constantly obscured by drunken illegal’s, you again have to act as school transportation for the 35 kids and your recently raped (while at home) and pregnant daughter, with your broken radio blaring rhythmic gangsta’ Latin vulgarity, before leaving the school you are beaten and robbed of your cash (lunch money) by three of your “children,” all culminating by going to work as the sole bread winner for your home of 52 people not having a say in what music or how loud it is played because your supervisor is an affirmative action employee with an IQ of 70. The future sounds awfully loud to me.

Hannon writes:

Wow. Every single comment in this entry struck a chord with me. I realize that I am almost certainly more sensitized to urban noise than those in the general population. Still, I can’t help but think something is very wrong in a society that cannot allow a drive of more than five minutes, in an average looking neighborhood, without hearing the bass from a car driven by someone who appears to be going to prison or just got out. even when running silent the visual signs are repellent for their frequency and implications: dark windows, tricked-out rims, shaved heads, etc.

I think the rap music with such distinctive emphasis on bass is a way for them to recognize each other, like noisy crickets. I suppose they know who is “chronic” and truly dangerous and who is just a punk. But overall the message of faux dominance is clear and there is little risk of resistance from others. One of the more serious of Hollywood’s black marks is their lionization of this subculture.

We tend to focus on the men in these cases, but are they not raised by mothers, more often single mothers? I think their culpability in delivering to us a criminalized or at least thuggish fraternity deserves more attention.

There are ordinances here and the police respond to stationary sources, but there isn’t much they can do about rolling speakers because the drivers will turn down the sound when they see police. Anyone who feels these intrusions are undesirable should not hesitate to call police to enforce local noise ordinances. This is true at any time of day, at least here in California– disturbing the peace is disturbing the peace. If the police were getting dozens of calls for this problem every day then the city would be forced to consider stronger mandates.

Just the other day I read that Los Angeles is getting tougher on owners of noisy dogs. They will get a $100 fine for repeat offenses. I know of at least one instance where neighboring residents of a large barking dog persuaded or forced the owners to “de-bark” him surgically.

Laura wrote, “Only in a society in which the second-rate felt free to flaunt itself would such music be tolerated.” This is spot on. As with so many social issues, it is really more about the tolerance by a graceless and slothful majority that allows the decay we see and hear around us.

Laura writes:

Does modern democracy have to sound this way?

Samson writes:

Incredible that you would post this topic today. My wife and I have just returned from a day off, spent out of town. We stopped to have dinner tonight at a restaurant with our young baby. We elected to eat on the patio, partly so as not to disturb the other patrons if our baby began crying, but also partly because indoors they were playing pop music at a level that was overpowering for what should have been a relaxing dinner environment. Fate had it, though, that across the street they were setting up for an outdoor concert and the soundcheck periodically drove bone-shattering bass into our bodies. Not much can wake a sleeping baby, but this did.

Your other commenters have made a number of great points; it’s like reading my own thoughts on screen.

Lydia Sherman writes:

On booming sounds at the stop lights at intersections: Once I found a CD that claimed to block out noise, playing only the noise of the wind and the ocean. Because I did not think to take the CD with me in the car, I was caught off guard at one of those noisy, booming intersections. I tuned into the classical radio station, rolled down my windows and turned the volume all the way up. Think of the effect if everyone did that in their own defense: the soft harp music, chamber music, the lonely flute, or recorded bird songs.

Laura writes:

The remedy may lie in universal deafness.

Hannon writes:

Maybe  blindness too.

Karen B. writes:

Here’s a good site. The emphasis is on barking dogs, but it also deals with noise in general and on why it is so difficult to deal with legally.

John P. writes:

I’m reminded of a science fiction story, “IIRC,” by Ray Bradbury in which, in order to equalise IQs in society, the state mandates the wearing of headphones blasting noise to disrupt the thinking of high IQ people.

I suspect something like this may be going on. By the way, noise-suppressing headphones are an option – as long as you don’t want to engage in conversation.

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