Our Willful Blindness to Deadening Noise

They're screaming at us, we don't need your kind
Sometimes I wonder if the world's so small
That we can never get away from the sprawl
Living in the sprawl
Dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains
And there's no end in sight
I need the darkness, someone please cut the lights
-Arcade Fire, "Sprawl II"

I often feel like I am drowning in the incessant sound and the reflective screens of the modern era. So, I'll spare you mine and offer Sherlock's finer words, from the show, "Elementary" on the subject.

Sherlock: I often wonder if I should have been born at another time. My senses are unusually, some might say unnaturally keen, and ours is an era of distraction. It's a punishing drumbeat of constant input. It follows us into our homes and into our beds. It seeps into our... Into our souls, for want of a better word. For a long time, there was only one solution for my raw nerve endings and that was copious drug use. In my less productive moments, I'm given to wonder.... If I had just been born when it was a little quieter out there, would I have even become an addict in the first place? Might I have been more focused? A more fully realized person? 

Questioner: What like ancient in Greece?

Sherlock: Do you have any idea what passed for dental care in the Hellenic era? No, I would want some of the wonders of modernity, just before everything got so amplified.