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A Civilization That Cannot Be Quiet Cannot Think

A city can be awake and still be unwell.

In many Nigerian neighbourhoods, morning does not arrive. It is announced: by generators coughing into life, horns holding arguments, loudspeakers conducting private business in public air, and construction workers who appear to believe concrete sets faster when frightened.

We call this liveliness. The body may call it an assault.

Noise is usually treated as an irritation, something a serious adult should endure with a stiff face. But the ear has no eyelid. Even when we stop listening, the nervous system keeps receiving the message: remain alert.

That is why chronic noise can disturb sleep, trigger stress responses and contribute to cardiovascular and metabolic harm. The European Environment Agency estimates that transport noise above recommended levels affects more than 30 per cent of Europeans. Its 2025 assessment linked long-term transport noise to tens of thousands of premature deaths each year. Those are European estimates, not Nigerian ones. The biology, however, does not require a visa.

Children pay too. The RANCH study, published in The Lancet, found that chronic aircraft noise was associated with poorer reading comprehension and recognition memory in schoolchildren. A classroom cannot compete fairly with a runway, a highway or a speaker placed beside its window.

Yet quiet has quietly become a luxury. The wealthy buy thicker walls, gated streets and distance. Everyone else receives the soundtrack of other people's ambition.

The trader wants customers. The driver wants passage. The preacher wants souls. The neighbour wants a party. Each desire may be understandable. Their combined volume is not.

Freedom of expression cannot mean compulsory listening. Religious conviction is not weakened by a lower amplifier. Commerce does not become more legitimate because it can be heard three streets away. Sacred intention does not cancel acoustic consequence.

This is not an argument for cities that whisper. Cities must breathe, bargain, build and celebrate. It is an argument for limits: enforced quiet hours, sensible zoning, building standards, quieter machinery and reliable electricity that reduces the generator chorus. Hospitals and schools deserve protected sound environments, not merely hopeful signboards.

We should also recover the small discipline of asking: must everyone hear this?

Silence is not emptiness. It is where sleep repairs the body, thought finishes a sentence and conscience becomes audible. A society that never lowers its voice eventually loses more than peace. It loses attention.

And a civilisation that cannot be quiet may soon discover that it can no longer think.

Abraham Ikongshul Ashindortiang

Sources:
European Environment Agency: Environmental noise in Europe 2025
WHO: Environmental Noise Guidelines for the European Region
Stansfeld et al.: RANCH study on noise and children's cognition

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