Last night, 2004 May 26, I went to a public hearing to provide moral support to an old friend, Amy, who sought a special permit to keep a rooster and chickens behind her house.
I have known Amy since she was born. Also, it turns out that I went to school with the uncle of her main opponent, her neighbor Peter. The town Planning Board held the hearing. As you might expect in a small town, I knew its head, who nearly married another friend of mine.
Amy has already kept these chickens for several years. When she started keeping them, she did not realize she would need a special permit. That is why the rooster, chickens, chicken house, and fenced yard are all in place. Amy grew up, as I did, in the next town over, where no such special permit is required. Both our families kept chickens when we were little.
Others speak of a clash between civilizations, but our towns in western New England are more like neighboring valleys in Afghanistan. One town regulates chickens; another does not. Towns are as different from each other as they can be, unless an outsider comes upon them. What we see here is not a clash between civilizations but a clash within a civilization.
When I came to the hearing, I was not too sure why Peter would so strongly oppose Amy. I like chickens. I like listening to a rooster crow in the morning. I like fresh eggs. I like the taste of chickens that eat worms and ticks, even if they are old. (One reason Amy first kept chickens is that they eat the ticks that gave her Lime Disease.)
Amy will not eat her chickens any more than she would eat a dog. Just as dogs are not a part of American cuisine, her chickens are not part of Amy's.
The conflict revolves around noise. The rooster's crow wakes up the neighbor. Moreover, he notices it during the day. To cut the sound, Amy built a wall of hay bales around the chicken coup and insulated it, too. That is for the night. During the day the chickens and rooster are outside. The cock crows. But when I visit, I barely notice. Indeed, I would not notice except that the quarrel alerted me.
On the other hand, I notice and am bothered when distant trucks churn their gears. I do not like the sound of two-stroke engines, whether on lawn mowers or on the vehicles that kids drive. I dislike amplified music from passing cars.
At the hearing someone suggested using a electronic meter to measure the sound level at 4:30 in the morning at the neighbor's place. To be heard, a cock's crow would have to come through the sound proofing and the hay wall around the chicken coup and the distance. I am sure that an instrument would measure the cock's crow at or below the level of the ambient sound. It would be quieter than passing trucks.
This measurement would, I suspect, favor Amy. But I do not think the measurement reflects the issue. The human mind handles sound wonderfully. In this case, I can believe that Peter and his supporters hear and notice the rooster's crow, even when it is faint. Their minds extract the information from the background and focus on it. It is like my hearing a truck's clashing gears.
The conflict is, I think, over what should constitute a civilization:
Do we support our current technology or do we support an older one? Or do we support a yet newer possibility?
These are three alternatives. I myself do not think we should support our current technology; I think of it as a way-station to a better future. As far as I am concerned, the noise of trucks and two stroke engines is what an economist would call a `bad', a polluting side effect of the `good' that people want. I would not be so bothered by quieter engines, such as those that combine fuel cells with electric motors.
As for one way of accepting the first choice, going backwards: should we encourage a return to older technology? I am against that. It was inefficient. It was cruel.
Indeed, as far as I can see, one bad side effect of farming was political. Thousands of years ago, when people learned to herd animals, they learned to treat them as inferior, as entities to be herded. They learned to become shepherds. Rulers then extended the process of herding sheep to the metaphor of herding people. You may have heard the hymnal phrase `the shepherd guards his flock at night'. Lay people are supposed to hear that and think of themselves metaphorically as a flock of sheep.
Interestingly, in languages such as English, the words `governor' and `government' come from the ancient Greek word for the steersman of a ship. I have heard it said, but I do not know how true this claim is, that in Arabic a common word for governor comes from the same root as `horse tamer'. When the `ship of state' sinks, not only do its crew and passengers drown, so does the captain. They are all on the same boat together. But when a horse tamer has trouble with a horse, he whips it. (Or did in the old days. It turns out that better results come from rewarding good behavior than from punishing bad. But for a herdsman, punishment is generally easier and cheaper than reward.)
The third alternative is to convert a cat, a dog, or a horse, or a chicken, into a pet. Rather than depend on the cat to protect your store of food, your dog to herd the sheep, your horse to pull the plow, and the chicken to provide eggs, each becomes a pet, kept for companionship. This is only possible when new technologies displaces the old.
It looks to me that the complaining neighbor supports our current technology. He does not protest noise from trucks or loudspeakers. He protests the rooster's crow. He may figure that he has got away from the technology of the past, but lacks hope for a more quiet technology. Hence an acceptance of contemporary pollutions, as being inescapable, and a protest of noise from the past.
My friend, on the other hand, reflects an oncoming future. In this future, rather than eat chicken, which I like, people make them pets.
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