A noisy increase in the standard of living

Most of us would scarcely hesitate to agree that hardly anyone is actually in favour of loud noises, though we may be less likely to complain and kick up a fuss when it’s our own noise, our car door slamming at night, our lawn mower shattering the peace and quiet of a lazy Sunday afternoon. No, other people’s noises are much more irritating. Mind you, when it comes to the next-door-neighbours, the friendly ones, there’s not much else you can do than shrug your shoulders and add that they have to put up with your noise too. Unpopular neighbours somehow make much more noise - almost enough to complain about to their faces, and certainly enough to support a good twenty-five minutes of grumbling over the garden fence on the popular side.

Then we have the anonymous, annoying but acceptable noise in the sky overhead or at the building site over the road. We grumble but accept it as a necessary evil, a by-product of progress.

It may well be that we’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick. We feel that we have to put up with noise in order to secure and guarantee a prosperous future for the country. What we should be asking ourselves is: What is the purpose of technology? Is it to serve us and enrich our lives? Is it worth the sacrifices we have to make in order to make full use of its advances? We need seriously to ask whether any great advance in technology is worth the continual din we shall most probably condemn our heirs to live in.

Noise must be actively opposed - actively and noisily! Measures to reduce noise - eliminate it even - must be given all the support we can muster because, believe me, it’s going to get worse in the years to come if we don’t start doing something about it now.

Sonic booms will shatter the calm of the unspoiled countryside. Helicopters will clatter overhead carrying executive commuters from one airport to another, from city terminal to distant departure points.

Fifty million cars, lorries, motor-bikes on the roads; flyovers guaranteeing a nice thick blanket of carbon monoxide fumes around the chimney-pots; supersonic jets screaming over the roof-tops ... is this to be our legacy?

People who complain about noise are sometimes called sentimentalists, romantics longing for the long-lost days of peace and quiet, people who flee reality. Nothing could be more misleading. They are activists, more aware of the problems of the world than any blind believer in the benevolence of technology. If being aware of the dangers which threaten our peace and quiet condemns me to sentimentality, then I plead guilty. I am a sentimentalist!

PETERSON, L. et al. Our environment. London: Heinemann, p. 60

The statement below does not quite reflect what the author says in the passage. Can you explain what is wrong with it?

"Unpopular neighbours actually make more noise than other people.”