OUR NOISY AGE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3783, 17 July 1936, Page 4

OUR NOISY AGE

THE RIGHTS OF QUIET PEOPLE. I NOBODY CAN DO WHAT HE LIKES. (By P.H.) Noise is part of the price we pay for progress. The aeroplane surpasses all other modes of transportation in speed, and also in deafening roar. The most urgent problem for engineers at the moment is that for making travel quieter. The latest thing in aeroplanes is not the final model. That will probably be as conspicuous for silence as it is for speed. There was deep silence “ before the winds were made,” and there are places within reach of all city people where they may bathe in stillness. In our noisy age one is sorely tempted to repeat the longing, “ Oh, for an empty room and .'a pipe.” Even there one is liable to be disturbed by the wireless in an adjoining room, and it is under the domestic roof that the sorrows of quiet people are most felt. What the aeroplane is to passengers the wireless sometimes is to guests. There are homes in which the radio is kept going all the while, and even when visitors are being entertained. The mental torture some of them suffer drives them to speculate on the inner make-up of host and hostess. Machinery has created a new economic situation; it is also responsible for a new social ethical problem. There are people who cannot live without noise, keep their wireless set blaring to all hours at night, and set it going again at seven in the morning. Quiet folk cannot understand such a taste, endure the infliction with what patience they can command, and at social evenings inwardly resolve to decline more invitations. They recognise that they are in the minority in a generation which finds delight in jazz and must shriek and scream in token of happiness. Lovers of quiet, would rather have the company of a book or of a friend who enjoyed an

hour of talk on men and things and cabbages and kings. With the most sociable instincts they feel unable to gratify them in an atmosphere of din and noise. The waters of Shiloah that go softly are more delightsome to tlr.n than the falls of Niagara. There arises, then, a kind of stalemate. Quiet people feel that they have rights which are unintentionally ignored; nor do they forget that every man has rights. What is forgotten by all of us is that there is no such thing on earth as a right without a corresponding duty. Robinson Crusoe had no duties- until Friday came upon the scene —no duties, that is, except to his Maker. When there were two human inhabitants each was at once clothed with rights and adorned with obligations. The rights in the one case were limited by the rights of the other. So is it in communities and nations. Nobody can do what he likes. What, then, happens when people who find pleasure in certain kinds of noise are forced to join the company of those who deem quietness the highest form of enjoyment ? There is nothing for it but compromise, prompted by downright good will on both sides. But how much quiet and hoW much noise ? Is that to be determined by vote or authority ? On board ship a limit is set to the hours when the piano may be used. In certain resorts and guest houses a similar practice prevails, or rooms are set apart for reading and silende, places where neither children, nor wireless nor conversation are permitted. In such a room everybody is as quiet as a goldfish. What is most sensible at a social gathering is not this too modest stillness but a reasonable and frequent interval from the intrusions of piano and wireless. Quiet people cannot help reflecting that even the most degraded savages have rights, and that we have duties towards them. It is our obligation to befriend them, to do them good, to introduce them to the best of our ideals. We have a right to buy and wear cheap clothing, but it is our duty to see that it is not produced by sweated labour. The moment we deny our duty we end our rights. They are so eternally joined together that no man can put them asunder. That principle runs through every human relationship, and applies to the mutual privileges and obligations of quiet people and those of the opposite type. To lode quiet and to love noise are quite nonmoral endowments, but since man is a social being his nature reaches its highest development in society; indeed, society may be regarded as his higher self. One hand washes the other. We educate each other, and the process calls for universal patience and tact.

It was reserved for George MacDonald in modem times to put into memorable form the principle laid down by the wisest of all teachers: “ One of the grandest things in having rights is that being your rights you may give them up.” It will be remembered that the same sentiment was cherished by one of Kipling’s famous characters. Rights are limited in two ways: by law and by spontaneous goodwill. Which is the nobler needs no discussion. Quiet people being in the minority it falls to them to sacrifice their rights with what frequency and grace they can command. They certainly have a right to be vocal upon occasion, to remind their friends in humorous fashion that while it is most excellent to have a giant’s strength it is tyrannous to use it like a giant, that minorities have rights, and that if it is their destiny to suffer it is also their triumph. A judicial view of the question leads to the verdict that the giving up of rights must be mutual. The good sense of hosts and hostesses leaves every guest the largest possible measure of freedom, and provides for all tastes. The religious organisation which numbers even only one per cent of the community has the same freedom as the dominant church. The situation is peculiar with regard to the rights of quiet people at social functions, and those under whose auspices these gatherings are held should be careful to make provision for the happiness of all who are present. Dr Johnson, on being told that ■ a certain piece of music he had beef listening to was exceedingly difficult, retorted that he wished it had been impossible. That feeling, with something more unpleasant, possesses many quiet people at social evenings. The whole subject deserves fuller consideration than it has yet received, and in the meantime those who dislike noise of all kinds must be prepared to suffer in silence. It is the penalty of a particular kind of greatness. Every hostess should provide a room for quiet people.