I first heard of Volume Control through my book club. One of the members brought back to us a typical question that could arise at some point in time: Would you rather be blind or deaf? And, surprisingly enough, most people choose to be deaf over blind.
I am still daunted by that question but after reading about how intricate our hearing system is, or how difficult it is to improve next to glasses or surgeries helping someone with myopia, I will not be answering so fast next time.
David Owen has researched from corporations and lobby involvement in hearing aids improvements to how the educational system and society has adapted to deaf individuals. Like many of us, the author approached this subject because everyone has at some point in time some hearing loss, it either comes with age or it is conditioned, meaning it was provoked by external factors.
One of the things that I had never stopped to think before is, for example, how people with tinnitus cannot help but hear persistent cumbersome noises and all the things people do to try to solve or reduce this source of pain.
Noises shape our lives, even those sounds that are on the background and we ceased paying attention to. Some studies like that of Bronzaft have shown how classrooms exposed to constant noise inevitably fall behind those who are more quiet: “(…) in classrooms on the side of the building facing the tracks, passing trains raised decibel readings to front-row rock-concert levels (…)”.
Between the stories the author revisits, we find that of Amar Bose, the founder of Bose audio-equipment manufacturer, who during the Second World War helped support his Indian immigrant family by repairing radios from his father's basement and skipping school, always on a Monday, after making a pact with his family.
Owen also delves into the stigma of deaf people and how different systems such as sign language and lipreading became different schools of thought with different acolytes.
The finding that struck a chord was that many times we injure our hearing system but don't realize it, not even doctors sometimes find out. This is because even though hair cells (not actually hairs) of the system remain undamaged, the nerve fibers are not the same after being exposed to loud sounds.
Volume Control will make you feel different afterwards. You will not think of professions as construction or activities such as lawing your mown or shooting in the same way.
Protecting your ears is the first thing you will probably be thinking from now on. Whether hearing loss runs in your family or only in old relatives, David Owen takes us down an eye-opening and ear-opening experience that will make you think twice before cranking up the volume of your stereo or listening device (and I'm definitely guilty of this).
We cannot cure completely our hearing loss, but we can at least be more conscious about it.
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