# Street Cleaning



## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

The philosopher Schopenhauer hated noise. He hated a lot of things, he was a misanthropic man, but he had a particular aversion to noise. One thing that seemed to really annoy him was the "incessant and needless cracking of whips". The cure he prescribed was making the rider dismount and giving him "two or three good blows with a stout stick". No doubt very satisfying until the police come looking for you.

Things have not changed, in fact they've probably become much worse. It's no longer just hammering, but electric drills and other such machines. Whip cracking disappeared with the horse and trap, but was quickly replaced by noisy combustion engines and the horn. Commissions against noise pollution didn't exist in the 19th century, but the fact that they do now has a negligible effect. What, after all, can they actually do? They'll never advise that drills should be stopped or hammers made obsolete and that's probably sensible. On the other hand, there is a lot that _could_ be done.

Street cleaning in particular has become a very drawn out, noisy affair. What was once something carried out by men with brooms, a rake, hedge-trimmers and a handcart, is now an almighty orgy of strimmers, automated street sweepers and deafening leaf blowers.
I dislike leaf blowers, in fact I strongly dislike them. They are a product of brutishness and technological vanity masquerading as efficiency. Everything they do can be done with a brush, but brushes are too low tech for some people. It seems that the goal is to turn simple manual work into something completely controlled by technology. I've heard 1001 reasons for this out of the mouths of politicians national and local alike. I don't believe any of it.

Street cleaning appears on the whole to take three times as long as previously and is concomitantly three times noisier. It now takes several days to strim, blow and polish the entrance to a small park. The outrageous spectacle of a man whirling around like a Dalek, in one of those machines with spinning brushes attached, has to be seen to be believed. And it will be seen, there is little chance of missing it when it goes around in circles hour after hour. And as he finally disappears, which ought to signal the end of the whole caper, the teams of leaf blowers return.

It's plain to see that that city councils operate in a parallel universe separate from the rest of the their citizens. They apply themselves to a curious standard of street cleaning and never think about having replaced moderately clean streets by slightly cleaner streets and a brand of aural terrorism.

The truth is that noise is lost to most people in cities. Cities simply are noise. Neighbours slam doors, builders arrive at the crack of dawn and building sites are erected among residential areas. Councils build idiotic sound-walls around flyover roads (instead of building further away) and the streets are swept by the modern equivalent of a travelling circus. They can keep the clowns, as long as they get rid of those infernal leaf blowers.


----------



## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Re leaf blowers, I see them as a manifestation of solving a problem a la american way... i.e., by showing how grand, powerful and strong you are, by killing a mosquito with a bazooka. Everything is done in excess, in steroids. Not that I'm a USA-hater, I admire other things by them, but I also strongly hate others. The grandism and bloating of excess, in particular (and also their university system, which only favors the propagation of fashionable ideas, at least in my field, physics.)


----------

