Campground culture in the USA. …It’s off the radar, not commented on. Total flyover topic. Yet it’s a huge part of public life. It’s part of the core of middle American culture. But it’s not studied. Maybe somebody has a link? It seems that to a significant and tragic extent that it’s about idiots and morons.
It’s also the USA in a microcosm, showing that we’re a fail. I suppose here and there we also have bright spots where individual initiative in managers results in rule of law and sustainability. But in how many places is a campground a place where you can make noise and be antisocial among your neighbors? Where the point is to make noise and get drunk.
In a microcosm it shows that NOISE is a huge social problem across the board in the USA. It shows that noisy people don’t care and that they drive away civilized people and they ruin and prevent civilization.
…But let’s not forget that both rich and poor make noise!
Campgrounds would be an easy place to study for a PhD or some longform nonfiction magazine writing.
There are, of course, per America, two kinds of noise: the human noise from screaming, yelling, being drunk, fighting, swearing. Then the machine noise of generators, power tools, motors, TVs, “music,” AC units. …Which is why I say it’s a story of idiots and morons. Maybe I’m dividing them wrong, but idiots are those who add booze then open their mouths. Morons are those who expose their neighbors to machine noise.
It is also now a world where economic divides also mean civilization divides: tenting is considered nearly synonymous with homelessness, crime, and bad behavior, and is biased against in many places, I think — places which prejudice machine noise and isolation: RV parks. I think many campgrounds are becoming RV parks. They are designed to prevent tenters because they are poor and drunk screamers, miscreants. They encourage loud machine-noise RVs instead. Lose-lose. They prevent tenting because tenters DO want/need to save $. So many campgrounds today charge rates that are HIGHER than local motels. …People with $ are happy to pay a premium to live in their own isolated machine-noise pod.
Of course this is a bit like the macrocosm of the USA where neighborhood pod-living units are sealed off from the world. Our own neighborhood is a sea of machine noise and barking dogs. And nobody complains about any of it because everyone is sealed within freshly installed double-pane insulated windows and AC units with TV’s running 24-7 literally, I suspect in most dwelling-pods. They don’t hear each other’s leaf-blowers…
…Except anyone who sits on a porch or lives with open windows DOES. And is deafened.
And because we have now been raised by the TV for a few generations, screaming drunkenness and insane noise occurs both inside the dwelling-pods and outside whenever anyone doesn’t have enough $ to seal themselves up.
Urban areas still have pods close to each other. But they can’t be insulated enough to prevent the screaming/noise either inside or out from being intolerable. So anyone who has $ flees from many American cities. …So that they can get into the country and seal themselves in better.
When we camp most others are sealed into RV’s so I end up having to hike across the campground to tell ppl to turn off their generator coz it’s after 10pm. Morons also become desensitized to noise. Yeah, earplugs, but they only do so much.
I recall setting up in a campground, hearing noise, when set-up was done then going about the next thing which was to sort out the noise: I walked over — in this crowded campground — and found that the source of the noise was a campside jampacked w vehicles… and ppl passed out in lawnchairs… and a truck w it’s doors open and its radio blaring. To nobody. I reached in and turned it off. Somebody stirred but nobody woke up. Noise is often created for its own sake. Morons want it as background, well, noise — to drown their sorrows. Literally.
Ppl blame racism. I don’t know if I buy it. Anyone who can flees noise violence caused by anyone else. It’s not the race of the violently noisy. It’s the noise. Trash is bad, too, but noise will really put people over the edge. It’s not White Flight. It’s flight. Yes, it’s also crime. But again I think the color of the crime is a non factor.
I wonder how the rest of the world is doing. Probably they’re Westernizing, Americanizing: and declining fast. When I bike toured in Europe the campgrounds had tents pitched cheek-by-jowl w one social bonfire for each section and whispering everywhere else. I now see mostly new, sealed RVs parked along the road in Tour de France footage. I wonder what’s their yahoo factor like today?
People can find it hard to live in cities w loud/violent ppl and machines.
it’s not so much loud ppl playing and being ppl. It’s not the sounds of ppl that cause destruction. It’s the sounds of violent ppl or depraved.
so it’s not so much noise that’s the problem: it’s the violence. Which is always loud. Or that’s one big vector. Silent violence of course destroys as well.
But when i go into the wild areas now i often find that the noise and violence is there too basically just as much.
Screaming and machinery noise carries really far. so the rural areas aren’t densely populated — except in trailer parks — but they are still hostile and violent. Destroyed.
I often find that the beautiful places in up north Michigan attract the destroyers very effectively. And are ruined as a result. The high banks of the Manistee river for instance are each “claimed” all summer by a different violent group who then screams all night. Or maybe managers have managed to stop all that? Wdn’t it be nice!
Oh, in addition to screaming parties, there are many, many lost-soul individual screamers — ppl who moan, scream and cry from ridgetops. About one of those per half mile of country will do ya. They intersperse w the insane groups.
In rural areas, ppl assault each other’s ears (and their own minds) w gunfire and recreational vehicles and fireworks (and screaming). racing motors is very popular. chainsaws, etc. …Removing mufflers for MORE violence. Midnight bonfire parties are extremely popular with mufflerless vehicles doing donuts around the fire all night, plus gun shooting, plus fireworks, plus screaming: THIS IS AMERICA.
And never forget development: people in rural areas all build on their 10 acre lots. Many of them like to shoot military weapons and race or just rev mufflerless vehicles when they are drunk or crazed. But what they do to be violent to each other is each 10 acre dweller builds their shooting range, race-track as FAR from their own sealed-pod as they can and as CLOSE to their neighbor’s pod as they can put it. So that they are each violently attacking each other at all times. YES MAGA!
I tend to wild camp by rivers and streams — per humanity of all millennia. The solution might be to only go to waterways w/o vehicle access: no 2-track nearby. Because thankfully only lazy ppl are violent.
So: Jordan River? Pigeon River? Both safe for civilization?
The love of the mufflerless motor goes hand in hand w violence.
Sadly the love of amplified electronic sound is also a factor in violence.
Up north rivers w 2-tracks along them are social centers in the summer and there ya have it. “Social” = loudest possible noise. They cd be a great place to camp. But they’re not. Anymore. I’m guessing they were fine before the 70’s — yes, back when ppl had manners and knew what civilization required. Not optional. So they’ve been ruined. Avoid. But where else is nice? Gotta get near water. Guess it can’t have access… But when i’m on a bike tour I need places I can get to reasonably. Oh well… If i can get to em the yahoos can too and it’s all over. Guess it’s gotta be hike in and just ride or push the trail…
I think that noise doesn’t have to be violent. …Tho the rich can push their noise of industry into poor areas.
Maybe intent matters. Tho the rich do intend to crush the world. If only passively intend.
Violence usually isn’t intended, after all. It just means mis-use. To violate. Maybe it’s just short-sighted. Ppl intend good. If it’s only good for themselves they usually end up hurting both themselves and others. Violent ppl seem usually unconscious. Probably most ppl are unconscious most of the time. So that much of what everyone does is violent in some way. …Whoa. When you don’t know what you’re doing the side effects often include violence. Also since humans largely behave as forces of nature, as animals, even like weather, they also aren’t responsible for themselves — other than being legally responsible, which probably often comes as a surprise to them, so that they feel innocent, innocent I tell you! Their culture, their leaders, create the content of their reflexes and then they automatically behave as Americans or what have you.
Anyway, ppl who live near railways don’t seem to mind them. They stop hearing them pretty quick i think. I used live in LA Harbor — full of industry sound — it all became soothing and seemed like home. The sounds of boats, of lines and wires clanking on masts. …Also freighters, the movement of payloads, even scrap metal sliding down conveyors… Even the smell of refineries came to smell like home.
