Loud louts: Yeah, we know you’re here
September 2020
“I think, therefore I am,” French philosopher Rene Descartes concluded in his search for positive proof that he was more than a figment of his own imagination.
Just pinching himself on the nose wasn’t enough for this seeker of truth, this doubter-of-everything. He wanted an iron-clad, money-back guarantee that he was a reality, not the cruel joke of some cosmic evil demon toying with an ephemeral shard of consciousness that other scraps called “daycart”.
Not much of a philosopher myself, and not so worried that little pulse of pain at the tip of my schnoz was an illusion, Descartes’ reasoning was always good enough for me. I figured the guy I thought saw in the mirror every morning really was a me, and the person waiting impatiently at the door for her turn in the bathroom wasn’t just an illusion but was a wife, my own very real wife.
And I had no doubt that the sounds I heard – they usually translated into the words “My turn!” -- were real. I’d uttered them myself from time to time.
So lately I’ve been thinking, in my own pursuit of Truth, that the real proof we really exist is the noise we make.
Noise. Intentional noise. Noise we create solely to get other sensory critters to notice us. That’s the proof we’re the real deal.
Exhibit One: We arrive in the world making noise. We announce ourselves with a wail.
Exhibit Two: For the next several months, we continue to cry. We drool, we flex our tiny fingers, we poop and we pee. But to make sure everybody around remembers us, we cry. And cry some more.
Exhibit Three: Over ensuing years – in many cases, decades -- we continue to create sound to affirm our presence, not only by utilizing the vocal chords we’re born with, but by manipulating other original equipment in our anatomies: lips (whistling), tongues (clucking), hands (clapping) and feet (stomping).
As if that weren’t enough, over time we’ve learned to make devices that create still stronger waves of sound, measured in units we’ve called “decibels”.
We started out, more than likely, banging sticks on rocks. We moved on to banging sticks on hollow logs. Then a really smart guy figured out how to stretch a piece of mastodon intestine across a hollowed-out tree stump and bang a stick, maybe two, on that.
(Some really nasty guy also learned that beating a stick against the head of the fellow standing next to him produced yet more sound – the stick on the skull and the yell from the mouth. While that worked pretty well, he also learned that the beater could in turn become the beaten, so the procedure had short-term, limited value.)
We figured out, as time went on, how to make noise by plucking tight strings of animal gut, blowing through seashells and affixing little pieces of metal to the bottom of our feet to make tapping sounds as we danced.
When we discovered electricity, we soon learned it could do much more than light up glass globes, heat up stoves, power street cars. A quiet fellow named Alexander Graham Bell used it to send noise traveling long distances over wires so it could be moved from one place to another place. Who would have guessed?
But that wasn’t all; no, far from it. The unsung hero of noise is Lee de Forest, who in 1906 invented the Audion triode, a vacuum tube that could amplify sound and make it louder. LOUDER. LOUDER. (Don’t ask me to explain how it worked. I have no clue.) By 1912 de Forest had blessed the world with true amplification, and the noise went through the roof, riding the waves of wireless radios and things called Victrolas.
Of course, there was some negative feedback. Not everybody was thrilled by the prospect of hearing the sweet sounds of Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, Barry Manilow and then Metallica, Twisted Sister and Black Sabbath through the walls of the apartment next door at 2 a.m. Unhappy would-be sleepers even started calling the police.
But by now you’re probably tired of all this history; you’re wondering where this recitation is going.
OK, here it is, short and sweet: The ultimate assault on our ears is not Van Halen, not the kid next door learning to play the drums, not the lawn mower at 6 a.m.
It’s the knucklehead who just graduated from a scooter to a rumbling, grumbling motorcycle, a vehicle which is annoying when it idles and infuriating when it accelerates. It’s the guy imagining he’s a Hell’s Angel and trying to look mean and sound mean.
Alright, buddy, we know you’re here because, yes, we hear you’re here. We’re all tuned in, we’re all impressed.
But why don’t you go somewhere else for a while, like to the library, and check out the book Descartes wrote back in 1644 called “Principles of Philosophy”? Maybe there’s a section on self-illusion.
Maybe that’ll help your self-esteem problem. Maybe it’ll just put you to sleep.
But on second thought, that would be OK, too. It would let the rest of us sleep.