I Am So Serious When I Say Dark And Quiet Are Both Human Rights.

i am so serious when i say dark and quiet are both human rights.

i don't mean like absolute silence. obviously in an ideal community, there would still be sound and noise from people and music and work etc. but it haunts me that when i camp in the forest i can hear the howl of semi trucks on the interstate miles away. and the people who live beside it never know quiet. it haunts me that many people will live their whole lives never seeing the stars in the sky that were fully visible with NO electric light pollution as recently as my great-grandparents' childhoods.

so much of our lives is bright bright unnecessary noise. neon mcdonalds signs 200 feet in the air so we can see it from the road. led lights over billboards. parking lots lit up like sports stadiums at closed office buildings. advertisements playing at gasoline pumps. streets lined with led porch lights and decorative garden lights that genuinely threaten entire species of wildlife. music blaring outside pharmacies to deter homeless people. everything always shining and wailing for no purpose but profit and cruelty.

obviously not everything can be turned off or made quiet and i wouldn't want it to be anyway and there is a lot of nuance and room for "but what about" here, but MANY things HAVE to change because none of us are supposed to live like this and we shouldn't have to!!!