Chapter 9 on noise

Kant once wrote a treatise entitled "Vitality", but I want to sing an elegy for it.Every moment of my life I have suffered from this excess energy in the form of thumps and bumps.Of course, some people or many people laughed at this, because they are very insensitive to noise. In fact, they are also very insensitive to all mental activities such as debate, thought, poetry or art. Their brains are too coarsely organized.For intellectuals, noise is a form of torture.In the biographies or collections of personal remarks of almost all great writers, I have found their complaints about noise, such as Kant, Goethe, Lichtenberg, Jean Paul and so on.If there is any writer who hasn't mentioned it, it's just that he hasn't had the opportunity.

I'm very disgusted with noise.For example, when you divide a gemstone into several small pieces, the gemstone loses its value as a whole; and the power of a large army is greatly reduced after it is divided into several small units; Once disturbed, his attention is distracted or disturbed, and his intelligence drops below the level of the average man.The development of intelligence lies entirely in the concentration of energy, that is, all intelligence is concentrated on one subject, just like the beams of light shining on a concave lens are all concentrated on one point.Noise interferes with concentration.It is for this reason that men of superior intellect abhor any disturbance of any kind, which diverts or distracts their thoughts, and noise, above all, does not disturb the common man.One of the wisest and quickest peoples in Europe has enacted a "Do Not Disturb" statute, enshrined in the Constitution as Article XI.Of all the forms of interruption, noise is the most impolite, not only interrupting the train of thought, but also disruptive.And even when there are no other distractions, the noise can be painful.Occasionally a slight but constant noise bothered me, and after a while I clearly felt that my train of thought was becoming more and more difficult, as if I were trying to walk with a weight on my legs, Eventually I realized what the problem was.

I now turn specifically to the noise problem, of which the most intolerable and unforgivable noise is the cracking of a horsewhip, which is truly abominable in resonant alleys.I condemn this noise, which disturbs one's peace and interrupts one's quiet thoughts.In my opinion, the fact that the noise of the horsewhip is not prohibited shows how stupid, selfish and insensitive human nature is.Those who are thinking will definitely feel real pain from this sudden sharp sound of the whip. It paralyzes people's minds, interrupts their thoughts, and seriously strangles people's thoughts.Whenever the whip is sounded, about 100 people who are dedicated to various tasks will be affected.To the man who is thinking, the effect is disastrous, because it interrupts his train of thought and makes him feel like the executioner's knife cut him off from the place.There is no sound as sharp as the whip, which pricks the brain so much, and gives a burning pain in the brain which is as effective as touching a mimosa, even for a similar length of time.

But I don't understand, because I always respect the noble public, but a boy driving a cart full of gravel or excrement has the right to kill the thoughts that may come from a million brains. , even if he drove through the town for half an hour, he could disturb so many people one by one.The collision of the iron bell, the barking of the dog, and the crying of the baby all sound annoying, but the sound of the horsewhip is what really ruins the train of thought. Maybe the existence of the whip sound is to destroy the happy time when people enjoy the silence in their thoughts. !It would be pardonable if the coachman had no other means of driving than to make this noise, but the point is that on the contrary, this whipping is unnecessary and serves no purpose.The purpose of whipping is to have an effect on the intelligence of the animal, but after being abused, the animal has become accustomed to it and becomes insensitive, so it has no effect, and the animal will not be accelerated by it.We often see a taxi driver cracking his whip frequently, and the empty carriage that attracts passengers is still moving forward slowly as always, which is a powerful explanation.Had he only lightly touched the horse with the whip, it might have had a greater effect.If you really need to keep using the whip to drive the livestock, you can only use 1% of the whip sound.Everyone knows that animals are very sensitive to vision and hearing, and they can sense even subtle signs or things that are difficult for humans to perceive. In this regard, police dogs and canaries have provided us with amazing instance.

Obviously, what we have seen here is purely a prank, an unreasonable provocation of the mental workers by the manual workers.It was an outrage, a crime, that the city tolerated such a scandal.In fact, it's easy to solve the problem, just use the "whip must be knotted" and other security notices.The mob should be reminded that the people above them work with their brains, and this is not harmful. Any kind of mental work is a kind of mental trouble for the people of the lower classes.Those who drive their horses through towns and alleys in densely populated areas should be dragged down and whipped five sticks severely from time to time.

All the philanthropists and legislators in the world who advocate the abolition of corporal punishment have difficulty convincing me.What could be more shameful than the above.You can often see coachmen loafing about the streets, without horses or carts, alone, and still cracking their whips now and then, and the poor people treat them with an unreasonable tolerance that seems to be used to it. up.Today, when people's bodies and their needs are favored everywhere, is it not possible to take even the slightest steps to protect those who work with the mind?Do they really deserve no respect?Coachmen, porters, and postmen are beasts of burden for humans, and they should be treated fairly, kindly, and leniently, but that doesn't mean they can make noise unscrupulously to hinder humans' highly intellectual activities.I really want to know how many great and brilliant ideas have been buried by the sound of the whip.If I have the power, I must make these people think of the feeling of being whipped while waving the whip in their hands.

We hope that wise and refined peoples will forge a way for this, and we hope that Germany will follow suit.Here, I would like to quote Thomas Hood's words: "Of all the musical nations I have met, only Germany is the most noisy." They are used to this, not that they are more willing to make noise than others - you If they were asked, they would immediately deny it, simply because their senses were so dull that they would not respond to a noise.Because they don't think, the noise doesn't interfere with their reading and thinking.They blindly use abstraction as a substitute for thinking.The degree to which the slamming of a door is tolerated in the most impolite and ill-bred manner is a direct testament to the habit of the brain of being dull and unthinking.In Germany, no one seems to pay special attention to the noise made, for example, some people keep drumming without purpose.

Finally, as the main literature on the subject of this chapter, I can recommend only one book, and it is an excellent one, a third rhyme-like epistolary by the famous painter Boulanger, entitled "DeRomart: aMesserLuca".It depicts in detail the suffering caused by various noises in a small town in Italy, written in a tragic style and therefore full of wit.This poem can be found in Volume II of The Jokes of Bernie Altino et al., published in Utrecht in 1771.