If someone came up to you and burned you with a red-hot fireplace poker, you wouldn’t accept that, right?
If someone had a machine where they could pull a trigger and get right inside your mouth and make your dinner literally taste like garbage, you’d do something about that, right?
If someone could twist their wrist on a machine and get inside your house and make it stink, whenever they felt like it and for as long as they wanted and without warning, I bet you think you’d do something about it, wouldn’t you?
What if someone could push down on a pedal and assault you in your home, through closed doors and windows, with a strobe light? Whenever they wanted, day or night? You’d never put up with that, would you?
Well, get over yourself, because you do accept that kind of thing, all the time.
You do put up with that, and you do accept that kind of physical abuse, just with the one of the five senses I’ve left out of this deliberately provocative post: sound.
We need to wake up and realize that when it comes to sound, we’re no different than people who denied germs existed, even to their deathbeds, or the Victorians who drank literal sewage from the Thames, with no concept that it was hurting them.
We need to ban the use of all sound-making gas-powered machines from populated areas. It’s a matter of public health, basic human rights, and self-respect.
