Is there anyone out there who can help start a campaign of awareness to notify the billionaires who are now planning drone delivery of our packages within 30 minutes of an on-line order that the noise pollution they will inflict might be the absolute end of our very thin sanity? As I watched this story on NBC Nightly News tonight I don’t know when I have ever had such a sinking feeling. Within the next few years they hope to work out this delivery system. The horrible little devices make huge noise and will be filling the air in our neighborhoods so that people won’t have to wait a single extra minute to have their shopping urges satisfied. As those entrepreneurs being interviewed discussed the kinks they are working out it was all about air traffic and making sure no one gets hit on the head when the drones come to our porches, not a word about the fact that any quiet left in our home life might be forever eradicated. I felt so helpless. How can we make our protests heard? Literally, I’m not kidding, for the first time I truly understood the monks who burned their own bodies in protest.
Who ARE we now? What have we become that we can’t wait more than a few minutes to have our consumerist needs met? Use the drones to deliver medicine urgently needed, or to bring food to the starving – but please, NOT to drop off our latest Amazon acquisition. This is what they are preparing to do as I write this.
But I don’t want to go on about the ravages of consumerism. I want to talk about the deep need in the human soul for silence, a sacred value that is not being protected. How can we pay attention to what really matters, to that which speaks to us from the innermost sanctums of our lives and beings when our senses are bombarded with these chaotic, manufactured noises? People who meditate are searching for that inner tonic that silence provides, but silence is also an attitude that we gather and move out into the commerce of life. There is a reservoir of silence that when we tap into it we will find answers to life’s real questions and the satisfaction of our truest needs, as well as healing, refreshment and recovery from damage created by an over-busy existence. If we lose this value we may just be doomed I feel.
Noise pollution is as serious a pollution as any other. It threatens our spiritual, psychological, emotional and physical health. How can we ask those who are making these plans to care about the rights of those who will be profoundly affected by this assault on our quiet? I do not know how to make myself heard by those who are creating these changes. Do you?
Interesting how defending our silence may mean we cannot be silent. About this.
Tags: consumerism, drones, noise pollution, silence
December 3, 2013 at 10:29 am |
This is so lovely and important. Is there a way I could share this on FB or do you prefer not?
Marsha
*Marsha S. Crites, M.S.W* 500 Harvest Moon Road Sylva, NC 28779 828-506-4221 or 586-2726 marshacrites52@gmail.com
December 3, 2013 at 10:40 am |
Marsha, there are a couple of ways to share it, and of course I would be happy for you to do that. I think you can just insert the link at the top of the blog page into your message. And otherwise you can go to where I posted it and push “share.” I’m glad you feel it too!!! I don’t feel like we can sleep this out, it scares me!
December 9, 2013 at 11:31 am |
Tayria, thank you for giving voice to this. I, too, would like to share it online. When I caught this story on televised “news”, I had to shut it all off and leave the room half way into it. The absurdity of it truly sickened me. I felt deep grief over the banality of it all. Gives “service to self” a whole new twist, no?
Thanks for the newsletter today. I’m catching up on your blogging from 2013. Quite a difficult year, to say the least, for so many of us.
With love, Laura in Brevard
December 9, 2013 at 11:33 am |
Laura, I’m glad you appreciate the message as well. Maybe we can figure out how to protest effectively? Still thinking on that. Many blessings for the holidays. I send love right back to you. Tayria