Growing up I did. Literally, nightly. That and loud bass boosted rap music from cars passing by. I got the fuck out of there in adulthood. And you want to know what was "weird" when I moved away from that shithole, laying in bed at night and not hearing those gunshots, was strangely unsettling. Like I was always anticipating it. The levels of conditioning to adapt to such an environment are truly disturbing, once you become counter-conditioned and see how bad it actually was. It's a truly third world experience.
The unsettling feeling makes sense, humans are pretty remarkable at what we can get used to, and when those things vanish it sets off all kinds of instinctual warning bells. "Something consistent is now missing, something must be wrong," even though our minds know the something that's missing is a bad thing.
It's true. Born and raised in a mill town. Never got out of town much. Industry and transportation 24/7. Visited daughter in New York. Hillside home with stunning natural beauty. I didn't sleep well for days. It was too damned quiet. And the thought of a fucking bear ripping your troat out. I couldn't wait to get home. How do people live like that? Seriously, we do adapt with time. Even more amazing is how we endure.
Inner city Detroit was like Gotham City. Can you still hear gunshots nightly?
Growing up I did. Literally, nightly. That and loud bass boosted rap music from cars passing by. I got the fuck out of there in adulthood. And you want to know what was "weird" when I moved away from that shithole, laying in bed at night and not hearing those gunshots, was strangely unsettling. Like I was always anticipating it. The levels of conditioning to adapt to such an environment are truly disturbing, once you become counter-conditioned and see how bad it actually was. It's a truly third world experience.
The unsettling feeling makes sense, humans are pretty remarkable at what we can get used to, and when those things vanish it sets off all kinds of instinctual warning bells. "Something consistent is now missing, something must be wrong," even though our minds know the something that's missing is a bad thing.
It's true. Born and raised in a mill town. Never got out of town much. Industry and transportation 24/7. Visited daughter in New York. Hillside home with stunning natural beauty. I didn't sleep well for days. It was too damned quiet. And the thought of a fucking bear ripping your troat out. I couldn't wait to get home. How do people live like that? Seriously, we do adapt with time. Even more amazing is how we endure.