“Soon silence will have
passed into legend. Man has
turned his back on
silence. Day after day he invents
machines and devices
that increase noise and distract
humanity from the essence
of life, contemplation,
meditation…..”
Henry David Thoreau
Until now, you would
be forgiven, if you thought you were reading some latter- day Westwood Walden, or backyard bird guide. You
might have assumed, wrongly, that Robyn, Shiva and I are untouched by the more
mundane and unsavory experiences that affect all lives. Today I’ll take you to
the dark side’s factory floor, for a pastoral polemic.
We were awakened three
times last night, by a rabble of drunken louts, proclaiming along the
boardwalk. Their noise was at worst, profane and, at best, a cogent argument
against ten million years of human evolution. They cursed Shiva for her
protective barking, and later, the sound of squealing tires echoed down the
lake as they departed. And returned, and departed. When I awoke this morning,
it was from too little sleep. I wandered out to the garden with my coffee, to
sit and reflect. Even that effort was doomed. Less than a minute after I found
my favorite garden Adirondack chair, I was out of it.
Even waving my arms,
he didn’t see me. I knew he couldn’t hear me. Plugged into the iPod earphones
under his earmuffs, the leaf-blower danced and screamed in six-eight time. He
was three acoustic layers down, and a world away. On my other side, one of our other
neighbours started the riding mower she resides on, accompanied by the whining thrum of her weed-whacking helper. A
motocross biker gang emerged along the ridge across the lake, like a swarm of
chainsaws. The garbage truck combine-harvester began emptying bins two doors
down. A helicopter flew directly overhead, and the kid at the top of the drive
powered up his grunge garage band. It was a summer Saturday, after a long
summer Friday night.
In order for sound to
become noise, somewhere along the trail, the physical must travel through the
physiological, to exit through the psychological and the philosophical.
Sound is just sound when it is just physics, a simple form of energy,
expressed in units called joules. The
rate of production of energy, or power, is expressed in watts, a watt being one joule per second. But it is not the number
of watts of acoustical power generated that is the problem, it is the rate of
flow (i.e. flux), measured in watts per square metre, where the area of
concentration is your eardrum. When the engineers got hold of the unit of
acoustical energy flux, F, they made it complicated, by converting into a base
10 logorithmic decibel (dB), so that
D = 10 log F + 120
meaning that, for every increase of 10 dB, there is a tenfold increase
in energy flux. The only real facts you need to know are these- the louts last
night were shouting at 60 dB; quiet conversation occurs at 55 dB and if you
complain about ‘noise’, a Bylaw Official
in Saanich accepts 58 dB (the level at which you can’t hear what I am saying in
the same room), as a perfectly acceptable background ‘sound’ level. By civic
ordinance, it is entirely legal for someone to interfere with your ability to
hear conversation, with twice as much acoustic energy as you are adequately
communicating with.
Bylaw Bob would have determined you were mistaken that it could have
been annoying you. The leaf blower terrorism next door operates at over 75 dB,
legal between the hours of 0700 and 2300. All of those hours, inclusive. But
clearly, then, the difference between sound and noise is more than just about
physics. Could it, more accurately, be about physiology?
Moving from the physical
energy flux to measurements of acoustic perception, physiologists have recruited
human subjects to evaluate pure tones of different frequencies and intensities,
for the same ‘perceived loudness’, calling them ‘phons,’ and ‘sones’. For
sounds that are not pure tones and have a wide frequency range, physiologists
have used analogous units of the ‘noy’
(suggesting both noise and annoyance), and its logarithmic counterpart, PNdB,
(short for perceived noise in decibels). One problem is that the human ear is
not equally sensitive to all frequencies, at one frequency with varying
amplitudes in all individuals, or in the same individual at different ages.
None of this matters
to Bylaw Bob. He has a picnic basket full of his own metrics, to help him
decide what constitutes an acceptable sound level for various activities: LAeq,T for
the assessment of residential development sites, LA10,T for road traffic noise
monitoring, LA90,T for the background noise level, LAmax for the maximum
noise level, LEP,d the daily
personal workplace noise exposure level, and that all-important Vibration Dose
Value (VDV), the fourth root of the integral of the fourth power of acceleration,
after it has been frequency-weighted. But none of this,
Virginia- not the physics nor the physiology, tells us anything at all about
how annoying an intrusive sound actually is. Which would bother you more? 58 dB
for 3 seconds or 55 dB for 3 hours? 58 dB at 2:00 pm or 55 dB at 2:00 am?
Vivaldi at 58 dB or squealing tires at 55 dB? Rain on your roof or a dripping tap? Random thunder or
regular pile driving?
To get finally from
sound to noise, we need to ascend to the next level, the psychological, riding
those sound waves into the external ear canal, vibrating the eardrum, sending
the resultant neuroelectrical signals from the inner ear to the auditory
cortex, and on to the frontal cortex and the deep hippocampal and other
visceral centres of the brain, where our emotions live. Where our rage resides.
Annoyance is contextual, not mathematical. It’s not about the decibels,
its about the dumbbells. Noise is unwanted sound. Noise is trespassing. Quiet
is good. And disappearing.
The unfortunate truth is that one man’s noise is another man’s music.
Witness the moronic motorcycle engine-revving madness that goes on for hours
down our street. The backwards baseball-capped adolescent, so offended by the
use of the high-pitched mosquito deterrent at the local convenience store, boombox
thump-thumps behind closed truck windows down Arbot Road, breaking an otherwise
quiet Sunday without remorse. The whine of the mitre skillsaw addict in the
trailer park continues, unabated, for so many weeks on end, that he could have
built a dozen real houses by now. I know these people are enjoying themselves,
but if they were producing proportional smells instead of sounds, they would
all have been tasered by a Hazmat S.W.A.T. team in a heartbeat.
We need to know what is happening here, why it is happening and why it
matters.
What is happening is that we are making more noise than ever before.
This is not because there are more of us living in greater proximity (I’ve been
in some pretty crowded monasteries). This is our desert-derived monotheistic
heritage run amok, with two stroke Germs,
Guns, and Steel. Nature needs to be tamed, yea, verily, vanquished.
Progress is measured by a process of acquiring more and more petroleum-powered
weapons, to do just that. The ninety-year- old Buddhist monk, Diasetz T.
Suzuki, told the mythologist Joseph Campbell, after reading the Old Testament: ‘God
against man. Man against God. Man against nature. Nature against man. Nature
against God. God against nature. Very funny religion’. And a very noisy
one.
Now I’m not such a
Luddite that I can’t see that some unwanted acoustic poisoning is unavoidable.
As a society we all individually, implicitly, agree to tolerate a certain
amount of noise, for benefits that we think are worth the annoyance- motorized
transportation, labor-saving machinery, karaoke (strike that last one). In
fairness, there is continuous quality improvement going on, designed to make
our machines quieter, and I can’t wait for the real advent of the electric car.
However, along with the right to make some noise, should come the responsibility
of keeping the intrusiveness to a minimum, to make no unnecessary noise. The leaf blower is the hands-down antithesis of
this principle, an irrational instrument of questionable utility, operating at
the cost of self-immolation and social isolation, that exists solely because it
can. My father used to say that a man has the right to throw his fist as far as
he wants, as long as it doesn’t touch the nose of his neighbour. With that kind
of noise, we have failed this vital societal principle.
We have reached a
point where it is almost unimaginable for all our activities to be
unaccompanied by some form of noise. Some of this derives from our Western
cultural tradition of feeling uneasy in the company of others who are quiet. We
can misinterpret their silence as anger,
hostility,
disinterest,
or any number of other emotions.
Muzak evolved as a comfortable narcotic sound barrier to conversation and it’s
now louder than ever. More sadly, we have also reached that further point of
having a culture of total inconsideration for anyone else in, or even the
actual environment, itself. In these intolerant times, if you put your finger
to your lips, you’re more than likely to get another one back. To what depths
have we sunk, when we cannot even abide the quiet of the countryside? Even in
Calcutta, Mother Teresa had noted:
‘See how nature--trees, flowers, grass--grows
in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence...we
need silence to be able to touch souls’. But not on the ridge trails these days, where I can
hear the iPods coming, by the tinny sounds leaking from their earbuds.
When joggers run by our bedroom window at 5 a.m., their animated conversations
can be easily heard across the lake, when they should be listening to the
sounds of their own bodies instead.
So, why does it
matter? Well, one of the reasons is that there are negative health effects from
noise. For several decades, we have been aware of noise-induced hearing loss,
but it’s not about the volume. Most ‘convenience’ power tools bypass physical
exertion, but it’s not about the loss of exercise opportunity either. The real
life-killing effects start with disturbed sleep. More than 30% of
people living in the EU are exposed to nighttime equivalent sound pressure
levels exceeding 55 dB, mostly because of aircraft noise and traffic. This can be up to 80 dB in cities of
developing countries. The primary sleep disturbance effects consist of
difficulty in falling asleep, awakenings, and a reduction in REM sleep.
Stress hormones surge into the bloodstream, leading to primary
visceral effects like increased blood pressure, heart rhythm disturbances, and
an increased propensity to diabetes. But it is the secondary, or aftereffects,
where the evil begins in earnest. People who even perceive the quality of their
sleep to be impaired are more tired, depressed and irritable. They use more
sedatives and sleeping pills. They have trouble learning and, when
it happens all night long, every night of every year, the more susceptible will
develop mental disorders. They close their bedroom windows and have to
use earplugs instead of their balconies, turn up their radios and television volumes, write
petitions, and
complain to authorities, usually with no results. They begin to use alcohol and
drugs to get away. They become unfriendly, aggressive, and disengaged. And
then…they snap. In August 1995, the Daily Mirror published a report on more than 16 people in Britain
who had committed murder or suicide in the preceding six years, because of
noise.
The victims included:
Julie Harvey, from Manchester, who overdosed on painkillers after she moved to
avoid noisy neighbours, only to find herself near the friends of her previous
tormentors; Valerie Edwards, from Bristol, who died of pneumonia after sitting
in a park for several nights in the cold and rain, to avoid her neighbour's
loud music; Jack Gott from Bradford, who killed himself after noise from a
teenage neighbour drove him insane; James Bourke, from Birmingham, who was
battered to death, after neighbours became sick of his loud classical music;
and Harry Stephenson, from South Glamorgan, stabbed 22 times, for complaining
to a neighbour who incessantly revved his car in the early morning.
Another reason it
matters is because we have lost the right to enjoy our own property, without
the intrusion of noise, especially the unnecessary leisure lamentations of
louts. Alexander Pope knew them (‘It is with narrow-souled people as
with narrow-necked bottles; the less they have in them, the more noise they
make in pouring out’) as did Ben Franklin
(‘The worst wheel of the cart makes the
most noise’).
If noise, and
especially loud noise, belongs to the street and the vulgar, what company does
silence keep? Pretty impressive, actually. Nature’s silence allows us to ‘come to our senses’. We speak (or don’t
have to) of ‘peace and quiet’. ‘Inner peace’ is a spiritual goal
that is meant to bring us in contact with reality, ourselves or, if you’re a
believer, the divine. This is found in Christianity (especially Quakerism),
Sufism, Buddhism, and in
Hindu yoga. Silence is wonderfully represented in proverbs (‘We must have reasons for speech but
we need none for silence’; ‘One coin in the money-box makes more
noise than when it is full’; ‘When the river is deepest it makes
least noise’) and people. From Lao
Tzu (‘Silence is a source of great strength’)
through Gandhi (‘In the attitude of silence the soul finds
the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself
into crystal clearness’) to Einstein (‘I lived in solitude in the country and
noticed how the monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind’),
they got it right. And the Max Ehrman parchment that many of us hung on our
dorm room walls at University? ‘Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence’,
during the years we were anything but. Silence can be commemorative, as in ‘a moment of’’, or respectful, as in ‘you have the right to remain’.
Silence is
Golden but total silence is not. In laboratory experiments, animals that have
been subjected to complete silence show behavioral change and aggression. What
to make of prospective deaf parents, who consider themselves a ‘linguistic minority’, and demand a
selective form of IVF to ensure that their child will also be born deaf? After
last night, I don’t judge them too harshly.
But what can we do,
and what hope is there? We do have rules about noise. We’ve had them a long
time. The
ancient Romans enforced rules about the noise emitted from iron-wheeled wagons
which, battering the pavement stones, caused annoyance and disruption of their
sleep. Horse carriages were not allowed in certain Medieval European cities at
night, to ensure a restful sleep for the inhabitants. However, those were
different times. In our 21st century, we will bear a shortage of water and of silence.
Let’s start global and work local.
The World Health Organization has proposed
guidelines for community noise, in the categories of annoyance, speech
intelligibility and communication interference, disturbance of information
extraction, and sleep disturbance. Their Guideline
4.3.7, regarding Parkland and conservation areas, invokes keeping the signal to noise ratio low (whatever the
hell that means) using three principles: the Precautionary principle, the Polluter
Pays principle, and the Prevention
principle. Only one big problem: the Enforcement
principle. Noise is not like chemical effluent that sticks around and invites
inspection. Noise violates you at night, on weekends, and on weekend nights ‘cause
the louts are out when the lights are out.’ Noise may be transitory- a
motorcycle, for example, roaring along on the other side of the lake for thirty
minutes after midnight. Bylaw Bob and his decibel meter is currently
unavailable, but your call is important to us. And then the noise, after
causing its damage, is gone, no slick to be found. ‘Dadadadada,
vroom, putt, putt, dadadadada. WRAAAaaaaAAAHH.
WRAAAaaaaAAAHH.’ Gone.
Working our way down the food chain, we pass the Federal and Provincial
governments who have no interest, and land where the rubber literally meets the
road- the municipality. One needs to remember that there is money in
noise. Case in point was a communication from a certain Sandy
Currie, Executive Director of the Toronto-based Marine Manufacturers
Association who, in 1996, took umbrage at Saanich Council’s decision to ban
jet skis on Prospect Lake. Ms. Currie called the ban ‘a virus which must be snuffed out
before it spreads… The Municipality has basically thumbed its nose at all
procedures. They have taken it on themselves to pass a bylaw which seems
punitive, arbitrary, and very discriminatory… We haven't yet decided to throw
in the troops and high-priced lawyers. I hope that if they have a look at the
report and really think about what they are doing, cooler heads will prevail.’
Hey, jobs at stake here. To get to the finish line you need to begin with our
local Noise Bylaw:
City
of Nanaimo Noise Control Bylaw 1994, No. 4750
is a bylaw that regulates or
prohibits making or causing noises or sounds that disturb the quiet, rest,
peace, enjoyment or convenience of individuals or the public. The most common
complaints received by the Bylaw Services include barking dogs, loud music, and noise caused by heavy machinery
and construction activity. The playing of radios and stereophonic equipment or
any apparatus used for the amplification of sound where the noise is disturbing
and clearly audible is prohibited before 9:00 a.m. and after 11:00 p.m. Noise
due to construction shall not be caused before 7:00 a.m. and after 9:00 p.m.
Monday to Saturday and before 9:00 a.m. and after 9:00 p.m. on Sundays and
Statutory holidays. Noise caused by any domestic animal or bird that is
persistent and creates a disturbance by its cries, barks, or howls is
prohibited at any time. Depending on the nature of the complaint, a City
representative may be dispatched to the scene of difficulty, or a letter may be
sent to the individual or company that is alleged to be causing the noise,
advising them of the complaint and requesting compliance. Failure to comply
will result in the issuance of a municipal ticket. If a ticket is issued, the
complainant(s) may be required to testify in court if the allegation is
disputed. Should you wish to report a loud and/or disturbing noise outside of
normal office hours, please contact the local R.C.M.P. office at (250)
754-2345.
To its credit is the
absence of any arbitrary decibel level, a dismal failure of a criterion in any
jurisdiction that chooses to use it. It recognizes that, not only the public,
but also individuals who are annoyed, can have their grievances addressed. Its
simplicity and general interpretability is to be admired. But then it falls flat on its face, by restricting enforcement to
after 11:00 p.m. and
before 09:00 a.m. The Bylaw was obviously designed for residential and
commercial areas, but it may as well not exist, if noise is not more rigorously
controlled around natural reserves like Westwood Lake. The animal life doesn’t
know it’s 11:00 p.m. (not the four-legged kind, anyway).
Which brings us to the
hooliganism of last night. Because of the worsening squeeze from the nightly revelers,
and the early morning coffee chat joggers, (both of whom are in the Park long
after and long before the signs indicate the trail is closed and open), residents
along the trail had met with representatives from the Parks and Recreation Department, to discuss issues of noise, vandalism, littering, and personal
security. We have
always had an excellent relationship with the City. In the early years, we
contributed funds to help build the boardwalk that now graces the trail along
the lakeshore, finally solving the problem of the incessant, insistent
interloping declarations of riparian rights. This year, when the abuse hit
critical, the city acceded to our request for gates, to be placed at either end
of the inhabited part of the trail. The plan was to close them when the Park
was closed, and open them when the Park was open. The gates went in and the
venom came out. The rage was swift, and predictably irrational. The local
rag (‘somewhat undernourished’,
according to Mark Steyn) ran a blog question, inviting bile for the gates and
blood for the gangthink. There was denial (‘I don't think early morning joggers
tend to chat a lot’; ‘the sounds of a group out hiking would be welcome’;
‘birds chirp in the morning... shoot them’), class warfare (‘complaints of a
few wealthy landowners’; ‘buyer beware’; ’If this isnt NIMBY-ism’; ‘they want
to have their cake and eat it too’; ‘Give us ordinary people a chance to enjoy
this lake’; ‘Wouldn’t it be a novel idea to have people worry about others
rather than themselves’; ‘if you buy a house next to a park, YOU HAVE NO RIGHT
TO BITCH ABOUT THE NOISE!’; ‘my tax $$'s are paying for these gates to appease
a few complainers’), participaction (‘way to encourage fitness Nanaimo!’; ‘buy
some ear plugs and get a life.....or perhaps get up and go and enjoy the trails
yourself....ya bunch of’), and vengefulness (‘I need to go start my Harley’; ‘I
will bring along a ghetto-blaster as well, cranked to volume 10’; ‘What I would
like to see is a ring road around Westwood Lake’). It was only a matter of
time. We knew this. Last night they went around the gates.
There are only three
things that could save us from this evil. The first is nostalgia. What if we
started to hear the whirr of reel mowers, clicking across lawns again. Or the
sound of a bamboo rake. The rustle of a broom. The whoosh of a handsaw. That’s
not going to happen. There used to be an old guy that stood up in the back of
his canoe and sang Italian arias while he paddled. It was rather charming- now
he has a boombox playing Top 40. We live in inexorable times.
The second idea is the
Dutch Solution. In Holland, individual provincial authorities can
designate certain areas as ‘silent zones’ (Stiltegebeid),
areas of ‘at least several square kilometres or more, in which the sound load
caused by human activity is not high enough to disturb the natural sounds in
the area’. I like this one very much. There is no reason why it shouldn’t
happen here.
Then, there is a third
option. In the Early 1970’s, a nutbar named Marshall Applewhite formed a cult whose 39
members believed that the planet Earth was about to be recycled (wiped clean,
renewed, refurbished and rejuvenated), and that the only chance to survive was
to leave it immediately. They called themselves ‘Heaven’s Gate’, and on March 26,1997, they committed suicide in
shifts, the remaining members cleaning up after each prior group's death. All
39 were dressed in identical black shirts and sweat pants, brand new
black-and-white Nike Windrunner athletic shoes, and armband
patches reading ‘Heaven's Gate Away Team’.
Now there’s some participaction you can believe in.
Shiva’s barking at
some spandex on his cell phone down at the lake.
“Honey!” He shouts.
“You
wouldn't believe how quiet it is up here.”
German proverb
You
can download 2 minutes of silence here
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