A Generation of Deaf Americans?

This Blog First Ran in May of 2005!





Audiologists Will Make a Fortune.

If I were a young man, just out of High School, I’d be searching for a college, or university, which offered a degree in “Audiology”.

If there is anything certain, besides death and taxes, it is that we have an entire generation of young people who will be deaf, or near deaf, by the age of 30 and a fellow with a degree in “Audiology” can make a fortune selling hearing aids!

Can anyone explain the burning desire of young people to share their music with other folks living two and three blocks away? Can you explain their generosity with the audio systems in their automobiles on the highway? What is this pathological urge to blast their music (I’m using the word “Music” here generously and graciously!) across five or six lanes of traffic to burst thru the windows of your car and cause your teeth to hurt?

Having asked the question, I will now attempt to shed some light on the subject before my young neighbors get home from school and start blasting the neighborhood with the sounds of jungle drums, or voodoo rituals in music.

What we have these days is a generation of self-centered, narcissistic, rude, crude, hedonists masquerading as members of a social society, which claims to actually care for one another! Whew! I feel better all ready!

Some of the amplifiers in automobiles today have more power than the Hiroshima bomb! If you are ever unfortunate enough to find yourself behind one of those $1500.00 cars with a $3000.00 sound system in it, watch the truck lid. Every time a bass note is struck the lid vibrates and nearly flies up. Now, I ask you, if the impact of that sound wave can nearly knock a trunk lid off it’s hinges, then what kind of damage is it doing to the eardrums of those near-humans in the passenger compartment of the car? Huh?

What possible good can come from a sound system that causes the floor of a home, two and three blocks away, to vibrate and the windowpanes to rattle?

Talk about air pollution! What ever happened to “Disturbing the peace?”

I recently saw that the US military is seriously investigating the use of sound waves as a weapon of war. I can testify that it will do a great deal of damage to the enemy, starting with the loss of his sanity. If the military is, indeed, serious, I have a young neighbor, two, or three, blocks away; I’d like to introduce to them! Give this kid one amplifier and the entire Iranian, or North Korean, armies will surrender in short order!

I have a friend who spent much of his life among the” mentally challenged” and even today resides in a group home. He is now in his mid sixties. Turns out he is as smart as the next guy. The problem was, all these years; he is deaf as a post! Which leads me to wonder… if all the blank faced young people, we see all around us today, are not really as dumb as they appear. Could they just be deaf?? (Maybe 50 - 50?)

As I said… somebody is going to make a fortune off hearing aids!

Longstreet