Noise pollution (or sound pollution) is a modern day era problem, and if I dare say disease. It’s getting more and more difficult to isolate ourselves, especially in urban environments.
This feels true to me, but I suspect it’s not. Victorian industry was _loud_, and cars now are quieter than ever.
But no one drives cars any more. They drive trucks. And motorcycles. And anything with engines designed to tell everyone how powerful they are.
I appreciate my friends/neighbors with electric cars. They do not offset the neighbors with F150s, Silverados, Tundras and other behemoths with v6/v8 gasoline engines.
Cars are a very big carrot for hard work. They are the modern status symbol and toy which is available for entry to all budgets. Generally, big cars are luxorious, loud cars are fast. No one is gonna work their ass off to move from a 2003 Prius to a 2025 Prius. Plenty of people work their ass off to get a sexy car and to keep it on the road.
So, hypothetically of course, those people would be less stressed out if those cars were not available, as it would be one less attainable status symbol? No downside there I think.
The carrot isn't necessarily stress because you do it because you want to, not because you have to. Without shortish term goals work is often just a chore you do to survive and so your parents don't nag you. Maybe so you can own a house by the time your entire life has elapsed one more time in the wage cage.
Edit: Missed the status symbol itself being stressful. I don't think so. There's a lot of pride in just your status moving up. You get a 90s 7 series, you're happy as hell because it's yours. Moved from daddy's money to self sufficient. Your first car. Then you get a nice 00s 5 series, we moving up in the world. Then you get an old Jag as a weekend thing, oh shit, we getting fancy. It just gives you a pleasant feedback loop every year to couple years.
1. consensus on what is "big" and what is "loud" is politically impossible.
2. In the US at least, all is allowed except for what is explicitly forbidden. 3. So you're going to have to define what is too big and what is too loud to make it forbidden. go back to #1
As long as something is measurable, you can define it, even politically.
"Loud" can be defined as dB, perhaps a distance from the source of the sound or from a neighborhood/business etc. Ex. Any sound you produce much have adequate dampening or distance such that school zones and residential zones do not recieve greater than 75dB from any singular source, nor 90dB from the combination of all sources. Then legally concerts must use different venues, planes must take a more difficult path to avoid the nearby airport neighborhoods, etc. Maybe walls erected next to speedways.
"Big" would probably need greater specification. One that already exists is lane width, so you can base things off that. Ex. Single-axle vehicles may not have a height greater than its width, where width is measured as the distance between lugnuts in the tightened position of the left and right wheels, the greater distance if the front and back wheels are at different distances.
For the purpose of the conversation, I would say Victorian era classifies as "modern". It's a vague word with different possible meanings, but in many contexts "modern era" is taken to mean "since the industrial revolution" (give or take).
It's not a continual rise in noise levels – there are ups and downs – and for some things volume levels may decrease while for other things noise may increase. But by and large, there seems to have been an upward trend for quite a few decades now.
Possibly. But no cars, no AC, industry built away from housing. Of course there were horses, trains, loud people.
One place that can be quite eye-opening in this regard is Venice. It's really quiet, even when you hear people talking, there are no cars at all and in the evening it's very peaceful, more than any other city I have visited.
"Victorian industry" noise was only a problem at the locations themselves though, before cars and outside of cities it would have been a lot quieter than it is now.
This feels true to me, but I suspect it’s not. Victorian industry was _loud_, and cars now are quieter than ever.